Why a US court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction

A New York appeals court has ordered a new trial in the landmark case that drove the #MeToo movement. The majority opinion argued that the judge committed serious errors and swayed jurors by admitting invalid testimony.

FILE PHOTO: Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court in Los Angeles

FILE PHOTO: Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, California, USA, 04 October 2022. Harvey Weinstein was extradited from New York to Los Angeles to face sex-related charges. Etienne Laurent/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

A New York appeals court on Thursday overturned 2020 sex crime conviction against former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein and ordered a new trial.

The court said in a 4-3 decision that it found errors in the landmark trial that helped drive the #MeToo movement.

Why was the ruling overturned?

New York’s Court of Appeals argued that the previous ruling had committed serious errors by admitting invalid testimony.

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“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the court’s majority opinion said.

“The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” it declared.

“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them,” the court said.

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In making the appeal, Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that judge James Burke swayed the trial by allowing three women to testify that weren’t part of the case.

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Dissenting Judge Madeline Singas said that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative.”

She said that this continued a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” she argued.

What was Harvey Weinstein convicted of?

Weinstein has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of criminal sex act for sexually assaulting a production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for attacking an aspiring actress in 2013.

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The conviction had stood for more than four years. It is currently unclear how the decision will affect Weinstein.

The film producer was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 in another rape case and was sentenced to 16 years, meaning he will stay in prison even as the New York ruling is overturned.

Weinstein’s trials came after dozens of allegations against him surfaced in 2017, which prompted a global reckoning over sexual misconduct and abuse in the film industry.