Film mogul Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape in a 2020 trial seen as a defining moment for the #MeToo movement.
However, an appeals court overturned that conviction after the presiding judge found numerous errors and instances of bias. The court has ordered a new trial, meaning his accusers will have to relive the trauma all over again.
The #MeToo movement may have gone too far in many instances. But Weinstein is a first-class scumbag and deserved the 23-year sentence he was given.
Fortunately, Weinstein will not be set free. He is serving a concurrent 16-year sentence for rape stemming from a trial in 2022.
In truth, the behavior of the trial judge in Weinstein’s New York case was outrageous. The judge “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.” The appeals court said the testimony “served no material non-propensity purpose” and “portrayed [the] defendant in a highly prejudicial light.”
This was a huge mistake by the prosecutor, and the judge should have known what an appeals court would think of the testimony of women not part of the criminal complaint.
It was overkill. Weinstein was almost certainly going to be convicted based on the powerful testimony of the main complaining witness.
The 4-3 appeals court decision was met with disbelief by #MeToo advocates.
“This is a shocking and disheartening day for survivors of sexual assault,” said Jane Manning, the director of the Women’s Equal Justice project and a former sex crimes prosecutor. “This just shows how much more work we all have to do, to bring the ideals of the #MeToo movement forward.”
You’ve done enough, Ms. Manning. This one’s on the prosecutor and the presiding judge. It has to do with the rule of law and not the “oppression of the white male patriarchy.”
Citing that decision and others it identified as errors, the appeals court determined that Mr. Weinstein, who as a movie producer had been one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, had not received a fair trial. The four judges in the majority wrote that Mr. Weinstein was not tried solely on the crimes he was charged with, but instead for much of his past behavior.
Now it will be up to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg — already in the midst of a trial against former President Donald J. Trump — to decide whether to seek a retrial of Mr. Weinstein.
The illegal testimony did not involve criminal acts, according to the appeals court. In fact, according to New York law, some kinds of “prior bad acts” can be admissible. But the majority-female appeals court determined that the testimony was too prejudicial and thus, had denied Weinstein a fair trial.
“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges,” Judge Jenny Rivera wrote on behalf of the majority.
Another issue that Weinstein’s lawyers brought up was the decision by the judge to allow questions about Weinstein’s “bad behavior” from decades ago if he testified.
Judges identified two major issues that led them to overturn the conviction: testimony from four women who told the jury about encounters with Mr. Weinstein that were unrelated to the crimes with which he was charged; and the trial judge’s decision to permit prosecutors to question the producer about uncharged allegations — spanning back decades — if he decided to testify.
That decision, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers wrote in their appeal, kept their client from testifying in his own defense and, in combination with the testimony from the four women, “destroyed even the semblance of a fair trial.”
Prosecutor Alvin Bragg will be under enormous pressure to retry Weinstein. But the filmmaker is 71 and not in good health. He’s already serving 16 years for rape, and rather than force the women to go through the trauma of another trial, Bragg may decline to retry the convicted rapist.