Former movie producer Harvey Weinstein ,showing in a Los Angeles courtroom in Oct. 2022.
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Etienne Laurent/Getty Images
Former movie producer Harvey Weinstein ,showing in a Los Angeles courtroom in Oct. 2022.
Etienne Laurent/Getty Images
Editor’s notice: This report consists of descriptions of sexual assault.
On Thursday morning, the very best court docket in New York state overturned the 2020 felony sex crime conviction of former film mogul Harvey Weinstein, and ordered a brand new trial. Weinstein has been serving a 23-year sentence in New York on the premise of that conviction. The Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace advised NPR it intends to retry the case.
The New York State Court of Appeals discovered in a 4-Three choice that Weinstein had not obtained a good trial, in half as a result of the trial decide allowed testimony from girls whose allegations weren’t a part of that case. (In all, greater than 100 girls made public allegations towards Weinstein.)
On behalf of the bulk, Judge Jenny Rivera wrote in half in the ruling: “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 only evidence against defendent [Weinstein] was the complainants’ testimony, and the result of the court’s rulings … was to bolster their credibility and diminish defendant’s character before the jury.”
It will now be as much as the Manhattan district legal professional, Alvin Bragg Jr., to launch a brand new trial towards Weinstein. Bragg is presently concerned in one other very high-profile case: the New York trial of former president Donald Trump, who has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data in the primary diploma. A spokesperson for the DA’s workplace advised NPR Thursday in a written assertion: “We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”
Despite the New York court docket’s choice, one other conviction towards Weinstein stands for now. In Feb. 2023, a decide in Los Angeles sentenced Weinstein to a 16-year prison term on a separate conviction of rape and sexual assault. That sentence is to be served consecutively after the New York jail time period. As of Thursday morning, Weinstein was being held in upstate New York, on the Mohawk Correctional Facility.
