Harvey Weinstein: New York court overturns 2020 rape conviction

The disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on sex crimes was overturned by a New York appeals court on Thursday, as prosecutors say they will retry the firestorm case.

In a 4-3 decision, the state of New York court of appeals ruled that the judge who oversaw Weinstein’s 2020 conviction prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings and was mistaken in allowing other women whose accusations were not a part of the 2020 case to testify.

“[Weinstein] was convicted by a jury for various sexual crimes against three named complainants and, on appeal, claims that he was judged, not on the conduct for which he was indicted, but on irrelevant, prejudicial, and untested allegations of prior bad acts,” read Thursday’s decision.

“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 remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” the decision continued.

In a striking dissent, Judge Madeline Singas accused the ruling majority of “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative”, adding that the appeals court was participating in 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“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Singas wrote.

On whether prosecutors will retry Weinstein’s case, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in statement: “We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”

In a separate dissenting opinion, Judge Anthony Cannataro called the ruling a “unfortunate step backwards” and credited the original decision as correcting the false belief that sexual assault occurs with a “stereotypical stranger in a dark alley who isolates his victim or waits for her to be alone before launching a violent assault”.

Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2020 for two sex crimes: forcing oral sex on a production assistant in 2006 as well as rape in the third degree of an actor in 2013.

He will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.

Weinstein’s attorneys previously attempted to get his rape conviction overturned in 2022 by a New York appellate court, arguing that the testimonies from women not a part of the criminal case prejudiced the judge. But the five-judge panel upheld the original decision.

The latest 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. His accusers could again be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.

Survivors of Weinstein shared their disappointment and outrage at the latest ruling. The actor Ashley Judd, one of the first people to publicly share allegations against Weinstein, told the New York Times: “That’s really hard for the survivors … We still live in our truth. And we know what happened.”

Lindsay Goldbrum, an attorney that represented several survivors of Weinstein, including one featured in the New York case, called the ruling a move “backward for the rule of law.”

Goldbrum said that in New York so called “Molineux witnesses”, or “prior bad act witnesses”, played a “critical role in establishing a defendant’s common scheme or plan to commit alleged crimes”. She said: “When a defendant is accused of being a sexual predator, especially one as powerful as Weinstein, the testimony of Molineux witnesses is crucial to disproving the defense that sexual encounters were consensual.”

Advocacy groups have also condemned the appeals’ decision. In a statement, the Silence Breakers, a group of people who publicly called out Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, called the ruling “profoundly unjust” but added that it did not diminish the testimony of survivors.

“The man found guilty continues to serve time in a California prison. When survivors everywhere broke their silence in 2017, the world changed. We continue to stand strong and advocate for that change. We will continue to fight for justice for survivors everywhere,” the group said.

Weinstein’s attorney Arthur Aidala applauded the decision as “not just a victory for Mr Weinstein, but for every criminal defendant in the state of New York, and we compliment the court of appeals for upholding the most basic principles that a criminal defendant should have in a trial”, in remarks to the New York Times.

Aidala said in a Thursday press conference that Weinstein will be transferred to a place closer to New York City to prepare for the upcoming trial, the Times reported.

The overturning of Weinstein’s rape conviction is not the first time the decision of a milestone sexual abuse case has been reversed.

In 2021, Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the sexual assault conviction of Bill Cosby on a legal technicality, after discovering an agreement with a previous prosecutor prevented the actor from being charged in the case.