Harvey Weinstein’s vindication
New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era. The court found the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against the ex-movie mogul based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.
Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. But the New York ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures – an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein.
While Thursday’s ruling was a blow to #MeToo advocates, they noted it was based on legal technicalities and not an exoneration of Weinstein’s behavior, saying the original trial irrevocably moved the cultural needle on attitudes about sexual assault.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it intends to retry Weinstein, and at least one of his accusers said through her lawyer that she would testify again. The state Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, saying “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts.” It called this “highly prejudicial” and “an abuse of judicial discretion.”
In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” She said the ruling came at “the expense and safety of women.”
The reversal of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction.
Weinstein has been in a New York prison since his conviction for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013. He was acquitted on the most serious charges -two counts of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in the Los Angeles case.
Weinstein’s lawyers expect Thursday’s court ruling to have a major impact on the appeal of his Los Angeles rape conviction. Their arguments are due May 20.
Jennifer Bonjean, a Weinstein attorney, said the California prosecution also relied on evidence of uncharged conduct alleged against him.
“A jury was told in California that he was convicted in another state for rape,” Bonjean said. “Turns out he shouldn’t have been convicted and it wasn’t a fair conviction. It interfered with his presumption of innocence in a significant way in California.”
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala called the Court of Appeals ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”
Attorney Douglas H. Wigdor, who has represented eight Harvey Weinstein accusers including two witnesses at the New York criminal trial, called the ruling “a major step back” and contrary to routine decisions by judges to allow evidence of uncharged acts when they help jurors understand the intent or patterns of a defendant’s criminal behavior.
Debra Katz, the prominent civil rights and #MeToo attorney who represented several Weinstein accusers, said her clients are “feeling gutted” by the ruling, but that she believed – and was telling them – that their testimony had changed the world.
Dunning, a former actor who served as a supporting witness at the New York Weinstein trial, said in remarks to The Associated Press conveyed through Katz that she was “shocked” by the ruling and dealing with a range of emotions, including asking herself, “Was it all for naught?”
“It took two years of my life,” Dunning said. “I had to live through it every day. But would I do it again? Yes.”