NEW YORK (NCC NEWS/AP) – New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, a major part of #MeToo, on Thursday in a shocking decision. Weinstein was convicted of felony sex crime charges in the case.
The decision was made by the New York Court of Appeals, who found that the trial judge that was in charge of the case made multiple mistakes. One of those errors was allowing prosecutors to present, as witnesses, women who accused Weinstein of assault, even though those accusations were not part of the actual charges against him. The court ruled to reverse the case in a 4-3 decision.
Due to the errors found, the appeals court decided that Weinstein had not received a fair trial. The majority judges said that Weinstein was not only tried for the crimes against him, but for past behavior as well. The allegations in question began in 2017 against Weinstein.
“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 court’s decision said. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
The decision of a retrial will fall into Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg’s lap. Bragg is currently dealing with former President Donald J. Trump’s hush money case as well.
Dissenting judges, in a statement written by Judge Madeline Singas, said that the decision “[whitewashed] the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative.” They also pointed to the fact that the court continues to “[overturn] juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence in a Rome, N.Y., prison after his conviction on charges of criminal sex. He will remain in prison due another rape, which he was convicted of in Los Angeles in 2022. That conviction has a sentence of 16 years.
