MANHATTAN (CN) — New York’s highest court of appeals on Thursday morning overturned former independent movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape and assault convictions due to prejudicial trial testimony, and granted the disgraced movie producer the possibility for retrial.
The 72-year-old founder of the Miramax movie production company was convicted by a Manhattan jury’s split verdict that found Weinstein guilty of committing a criminal sexual act and third-degree rape, but acquitted him on the more serious offense of rape in the first degree and two counts of predatory sexual assault.
On appeal before New York's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, Weinstein argued the conviction should be overturned because the trial judge allowed prejudicial testimony from three women whose accusations of sexual assault by Weinstein were not part of the state’s case-in-chief.
“Defendant 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,” Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals Jenny Rivera wrote in the high court’s 4-3 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 because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose.”
“The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial," the judges wrote.
New York Court of Appeals Associate Judge Madeline Singas wrote a scathing dissent, finding the majority's order “perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability.”
“While the majority’s holding may, at first glance, appear to endorse a utopic vision of sexual assault prosecution in which a victim’s word is paramount, the reality is far bleaker,” the Long Island-based judge wrote in her dissent. “Critically missing from the majority’s analysis is any awareness that sexual assault cases are not monolithic and that the issue of consent has historically been a complicated one, subject to vigorous debate, study, and ever-evolving legal standards.”
Weinstein's defense attorney Arthur Aidala held a press conference on Thursday afternoon and said he is ready to go to trial again before a new judge and new prosecutor.
"So Harvey will be here," the Brooklyn-based lawyer told reporters. "And Harvey will — under this new ruling — be able to take the stand, be able to tell his side of the story, and be very consistent with what he said all along, which was 'yes, there was a sexual encounter between me and Mimi Haleyi, but I never forced her to do anything.'"
Aidala had previously said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the disgraced Hollywood mogul’s conviction would be overturned after the New York Court of Appeals held oral arguments on his appeal two months ago.
“The court was concerned with several critical issues that made it clear that Mr. Weinstein did not get a fair trial,” Aidala said in February.
Aidala is also representing Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell in her pending appeal of her sex trafficking conviction in the Southern District of New York, for her role in procuring young women and girls for abuse by Epstein and others.
Juda Engelmayer, a longtime spokesperson for Weinstein, said the state’s highest court correctly concluded that Weinstein was dealt prejudicial testimony at trial.
“The appeals court judges seemed concerned with the introduction of the Sandoval ruling that essentially precluded Harvey Weinstein from taking the stand in his defense,” Engelmayer said in February. “They also appeared concerned with the seemingly dishonest manner in which Juror #11 presented the facts of her book and research.”
The reversal of Weinstein’s New York conviction will not see him released from prison, however. Instead, he will be transferred from prison in upstate New York back to the jurisdiction of the Manhattan judge overseeing his case, before he is likely to be extradited to California to serve out the 16-year sentence imposed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge for raping an Italian model after barging into her LA hotel room in February 2013.
New York prosecutors called the additional witnesses to testify about prior uncharged sexual assaults under precedent from the 1901 case People v. Molineux.
“Weinstein was stripped of the presumption of innocence when the trial court allowed the jury to hear excessive and disparate Molineux evidence that served no legitimate non-propensity purpose and was designed solely to breed contempt for Weinstein and distract the jury from fairly evaluating the evidence on the charged offenses,” Weinstein's attorneys wrote in an appellate brief.
Public accusations against Weinstein for sexual assault and rape sparked the global #MeToo reckoning that sought to hold powerful men accountable for a culture of gender discrimination, misogyny and rampant sexual misconduct.
A Manhattan jury had deliberated for five days before delivering the split verdict in February 2020.
Three weeks later, Manhattan Supreme Justice James Burke sentenced Weinstein to 23 years in prison.
The date of Weinstein's sentencing hearing, March 11, was the same day the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.
Weinstein himself denied "any non-consensual sex" with the women who came forward against him.
His lawyers argued at trial that the women who have come forward and accused Weinstein since the start of the #MeToo movement in 2017 are trying to rewrite history and that they engaged in consensual, transactional sex with him as part of the Hollywood "casting couch" culture.
They were "fame and fortune seekers" who were hoping to get Weinstein's support for their careers in exchange for sex, Weinstein's attorneys argued.
Donald Trump’s historic first criminal is taking place in the same 15th-floor courtroom of the Manhattan criminal courthouse where Weinstein’s trial was held.
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