US Court Overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 R*pe Conviction

News coming in is that, US court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 r*pe conviction.

A New York appellate court has ordered a new trial in the landmark case that sparked the #MeToo movement. The majority opinion claimed that the judge made serious errors and influenced jurors by admitting invalid testimony.

On Thursday, a New York appeals court overturned former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 s*x crime charges and ordered a new trial.

The court said in a 4-3 decision that it found flaws in the landmark trial that fuelled the #MeToo movement. This included admitting the testimony of women who were not charged in the case against the disgraced former film mogul.

What Was Harvey Weinstein Convicted Of?

Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison after being convicted of criminal s*x act for sexually assaulting a production assistant in 2006 and third-degree r*pe for attacking an aspiring actress in 2013.

The conviction had stood for over four years. The film producer was also convicted in another r*pe case in Los Angeles in 2022 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, ensuring that he will remain in prison even if the New York ruling is overturned.

Weinstein’s trials occurred after dozens of allegations against him surfaced in 2017, sparking a global reckoning about s*xual misconduct and abuse in the film industry.

Why The Verdict Was Overturned?

The New York Court of Appeals argued that the previous ruling had made serious errors by admitting invalid testimony.

“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior s*xual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” according to the majority opinion of the court.

“The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” the judge said.

“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 judge stated.

Weinstein’s attorneys contended in their appeal that the trial was biased by Judge James Burke’s admission of three women as witnesses who had no connection to the case.

The majority, according to dissenting judge Madeline Singas, is “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative.”

This, according to her, was part of a “disturbing trend of overturning guilty verdicts in cases involving s*xual violence” by juries.

“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of s*xual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” she said.

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