New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 felony sex crime charges, reversing a decision in the case that catalyzed the #MeToo movement. New York's Court of Appeals determined that the judge who oversaw the disgraced Hollywood producer's previous trial allowed testimony from witnesses whose allegations were not part of the charges brought against Weinstein, and permitted prosecutors to question the producer about uncharged allegations, as noted by the New York Times.
This "reversible error" by the trial judge serves as the grounds for the overturning, as noted by MSNBC's Katie Phang on X/Twitter. Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis cited in a tweet how "prior bad acts were allowed into evidence that were not charged and that evidence of prior sexual crimes served no material non-propensity purpose."
“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 said in a 4-3 decision, per the Associated Press. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
Weinstein, who was also convicted of sex crimes in California, will not be released. Instead, he will be processed through New York's justice system before being sent to California to continue his sentence.
The court's majority argued that “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.”
Judge Madeline Singas wrote in her dissent that the “majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability."
Commenting on the decision to flip Weinstein's rape conviction, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance tweeted, "Not entirely unexpected after oral argument but still quite a shock."
Jodi Kantor, one of the two NYT journalists who broke the bombshell Weinstein story, wrote in an update for the outlet that she spoke to actor Ashley Judd, who was victimized by the former movie mogul. "I just telephoned Ashley Judd, the first actress to come forward with allegations against Mr. Weinstein, and shared the news from the court," Kantor wrote in the update. “'That is unfair to survivors,' she said. 'We still live in our truth. And we know what happened.'”
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