And whether or not the disgraced movie mogul will be released from prison.
In a shocking turn of events on Thursday, New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault conviction from 2020. The 4-3 decision found that the presiding judge in the case made “egregious errors.” prompting a new trial.
“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 reads. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
The disgraced movie producer had been serving a 23-year sentence in New York on felony sex crime charges. Prosecutors said the former studio tycoon abused his power and took advantage of aspiring female actors by coercing them into unwanted sexual advances. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing and maintained that these encounters were consensual.
The allegations against him went on to spark a nationwide conversation on sexual harassment and abuse of women in the workplace that has since become known as the #MeToo movement.
Why was Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction overturned?
New York State Court of Appeals said the movie mogul didn’t receive a fair trial because Justice James Burke allowed three women to testify on allegations that weren’t part of the case.
The women in question — Lauren Young, Dawn Dunning, and Tarale Wulff — were brought in as prior bad acts witnesses to testify about their experiences with Weinstein to demonstrate his long pattern of bad behavior. Though courts in New York have long allowed the use of witnesses who offer allegations of previous bad acts, Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala argued that these testimonies attacked the movie mogul’s character without shedding light on the allegations. “It was his character that was on trial. It wasn’t the evidence that was on trial,” Aidala told the predominantly female panel of judges. A similar argument was also used in disgraced comedian Bill Cosby’s successful appeal of his sexual assault conviction in 2021, which led to his prison release.
The appeals court also agreed with Weinstein’s lawyers that Burke violated the former movie producer’s right to testify in his own defense. At the time, the trial judge had ruled that if Weinstein took the stand, prosecutors would be allowed to question him about his past bad behavior, including allegations that he punched his brother at a business meeting. The appeals ruling said this impacted Weinstein’s decision to skip taking the stand.
“In the Weinstein case, a very divided Court of Appeals held that the trial court allowed too much prejudicial evidence of other acts to be admitted, some pretty far afield from sexual assault, like showing he had a bad temper in a disagreement with his brother,” Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain tells Katie Couric Media. “And that such evidence may have discouraged Weinstein from testifying in his own defense because he would have had to respond to questioning regarding other acts that were not charged that would make him look bad.”
Not everyone on the court agreed on Thursday’s verdict — in her dissenting opinion, Judge Madeline Singas accused the majority of “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative.” She also wrote that “this court has continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
Will Harvey Weinstein be released from jail?
Despite the New York court’s decision, Weinstein will remain behind bars due to separate charges in Los Angeles. In February 2023, the disgraced Hollywood executive was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of rape and sexual assault.
As a result of Thursday’s ruling, he’s expected to be transferred from New York to California, where his conviction still stands. But his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said he plans to appeal that sentence next month.
While it’s impossible to predict the outcome of future rulings, Germain doesn’t think this verdict will have wider implications for Weinstein. That said, he does believe it serves as an important reminder to ensure fair trials, no matter who’s facing charges. “Trial judges are not immune to political pressures, but the rule of law requires them to stand up to public pressure and assure that the defendant has a fair trial,” he said.
What are survivors saying?
Many of the women who accused Weinstein of abuse were stunned by Thursday’s verdict. Ashley Judd said the court’s decision was unfair to those who endured Weinstein’s abuse. “We still live in our truth,” Judd said in a statement to The New York Times. “And we know what happened.”
In case you need a quick reminder, Judd was the first actress to go on record with New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who wrote a 2017 bombshell article that kickstarted Weinstein’s downfall. Soon after, Gwyneth Paltrow and others came forward with similar allegations.
This also included Katherine Kendall, who similarly said the decision to overturn Weinstein’s verdict is “a terrible reminder that victims of sexual assault just don’t get justice.” Other survivors have spoken out, too — Caitlin Dulany told USA Today she was “absolutely devastated” by the ruling.
Meanwhile, attorney Douglas Wigdor, who represented eight of Weinstein’s victims in the New York trial, called the decision “a major step back in holding those accountable for acts of sexual violence.”
What about Weinstein’s retrial?
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. is expected to launch a new trial against Weinstein. This means his accusers could be expected to take the stand again to retell (and relive) what they went through.
It’s unclear when this will happen, though. Bragg has his hands full at the moment as he oversees former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, but his department has vowed justice for the women who came forward about the Hollywood producer.
“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” a spokesperson said in a public statement.
