HE SAID, SHE SAID

Overturning of Weinstein’s conviction by New York court is a setback to Metoo movement and its hard- fought agency

THE OVERTURNING OF the sex- crime conviction of Harvey Weinstein by the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, by a 4- 3 majority, points, yet again, at the unevenness of justice and the long, excruciating path that leads up to it — if at all. Based on a technicality — the state's Molineux rule disallows the testimony of those who have not been part of the litigation process and deemed three such accounts as prejudicial — the 72- year- old Hollywood mogul will face a fresh trial in New York. The judgment, however, leaves unchanged his 2022 rape conviction in California, for which he was sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment.

In 2020, Weinstein's conviction had been a moment of powerful affirmation for the Metoo movement and the survivors of sexual abuse at workplace who had come forward to indict their violators — powerful men in high offices, with money, machinery and ease of influence. The sorority it had birthed was honed by anger and sorrow, by experiences of being diminished and disbelieved, abused and silenced. It demanded accountability and, for a while, as the movement gathered steam globally, it seemed like it would get it too. But accountability — at every stage of the process, including even in a court of law – can be a sharp scimitar that turns on the aggrieved, jabbing repeatedly at old wounds, hoping to hit upon an incontrovertible armour of facts. Instead of the accused, it often lays the burden of proof on the survivor. Could concern might have been misread for advances, temptation or mutuality of intentions overturned in the bitterness of the aftermath? Could wavering memory be indecision? The misalignment between law and its interpretations are picked at by the finest legal representation the accused can buy, showing how the power asymmetry continues. Before Weinstein, in 2021, Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out comedian and actor Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction on similar technicality; the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal against the decision.

In his judgment, one of the dissenting judges in Weinstein's case wrote that the decision set back “decades of progress in this incredibly complex and nuanced area of law” that had always exhibited a “deeply patriarchal and misogynistic legal tradition.” It shows that despite the changes initiated by the Metoo movement and the impetus it gave to female agency, its gains still remain limited and its emotional cost disproportionately high. As in Weinstein’s case and that of several other accused around the world, it remains a battle that only the most resilient and often the more privileged can afford to fight. That is a pity.