Weinstein to stay in prison as appeal fails

Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sex crime conviction was upheld by a New York appeals court on Thursday.

“[We] reject defendant’s arguments, and affirm the conviction in all respects,” reads the Appellate Division opinion.

A jury found Weinstein guilty on Feb. 24, 2020, of rape for an attack on aspiring actress Jessica Mann at the DoubleTree hotel in 2013 and criminal sex act for assaulting film assistant Miriam Haleyi at his SoHo loft in 2006. He was acquitted on the top count of predatory sexual assault for allegedly raping “The Sopranos” actor Annabella Sciorra inside her Gramercy Park apartment in 1994.

The Miramax co-founder is in a California prison in Los Angeles, awaiting trial on 11 counts of sexual battery and rape.

Weinstein’s appeal lawyer, Barry Kamin, said he would ask the Court of Appeals to review the ruling. It can decline the case.

The once-powerful producer had argued that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice James Burke’s pretrial rulings allowing testimony about uncharged “bad acts” prevented him from getting a fair trial.

Tarale Wulff testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted her at work when she was a waitress at Cipriani’s and raped her inside his SoHo loft in 2005. Lauren Young testified that he pinned her against a hotel room sink in Beverly Hills while groping her and masturbating when she was an aspiring actress in 2013. Dawn Dunning testified about running out of a hotel when Weinstein tried to force her into a threesome to get a movie role in 2004.

The panel of five women justices had been critical of the DA’s case when they heard arguments in December, describing the uncharged victims’ testimony as “pile on” and “incredibly prejudicial.”

But the opinion written by Associate Justice Angela Mazzarelli struck a different tone, finding their testimony was helpful to the jury. The court said prosecutors proved Weinstein’s “goal at all times was to position the women in such a way that he could have sex with them, and that whether the women consented or not was irrelevant to him.”

“Dunning, Wulff and Young helped to fill out a picture of defendant as having no interest in ‘courting’ women in the traditional sense of building a romantic connection,” wrote Mazzarelli.

“Rather, their testimony was offered to demonstrate that defendant’s interest in Haley and Mann was strictly for the purpose of smoothing the way to a sexual encounter.”