Weinstein conviction thrown out in New York
District attorney plans to retry former mogul
NEW YORK • New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #Metoo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.
Weinstein, 72, will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
But the state Court of Appeals 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.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office signalled its intention to retry Weinstein, and his accusers could again be forced to retell their stories on the witness stand.
In overturning Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in New York, the court said in its 4-3 decision 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 called this “an abuse of judicial discretion.”
In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/shesaid narrative,” and said the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
Weinstein has been in a New York prison since his conviction on charges of criminal sex acts 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.
In the Los Angeles rape case, Weinstein was acquitted on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.
In a statement, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said: “We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala said immediately after the ruling came out: “We all worked very hard and this is a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”