Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein‘s 2020 rape conviction has been overturned by New York’s top court.
After an appeals process, the court found there to be “egregious errors” committed in the trial, according to the Associated Press, including allowing for the testimony of women speaking to “uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts” that were unrelated to the rape charge. It was a close one: Weinstein’s conviction was overturned by a 4-3 vote.
“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 majority decision said. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new 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 lodged against them,” the state’s Court of Appeals continued.
Of course, there is also the opinion of the three dissenting judges. Judge Madeline Singas believes her four prevailing fellow judges are “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” she wrote in her opinion. She believes it to be a continuation of a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence” at the court of appeals.
“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Singas wrote.
Weinstein is anything but a free man. He could face a retrial on the New York charges, but he’s also been sentenced to a 16-year prison sentence in Los Angeles on another rape.
Weinstein maintains his innocence on the charges.
More to come…
