Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction of felony sex crime charges has been overturned, meaning a new trial has been ordered. Weinstein will still remain in prison as he was given an additional 16-year sentence in 2022 after being convicted of rape.
According to Deadline, the New York Court of Appeals announced in a 4-3 ruling that Weinstein’s 2020 conviction had been overturned. The New York Court of Appeals stated the trial’s judge “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.”
Why was Weinsten’s 2020 conviction overturned?
“[The] defendant was convicted by a jury for various sexual crimes against three named complainants and, on appeal, claims that he was judged, not on the conduct for which he was indicted, but on irrelevant, prejudicial, and untested allegations of prior bad acts,” Judge Jenny Rivera wrote in the Appeals Court ruling.
The 2020 trial resulted in a 23-year prison sentence on charges of criminal sex acts “for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013,” according to AP News.
New York Supreme Court Judge James Burke, who was not reappointed to his position in 2022 and is no longer a judge, oversaw the 2020 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 because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose,” Rivera added. “The court compounded that error when it ruled that defendant, who had no criminal history, could be cross examined about those allegations as well as numerous allegations of misconduct that portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light. The synergistic effect of these errors was not harmless.”
“We’re cautiously excited,” Weinstein’s spokesperson Juda Engelmayer told Deadline. “He still has a long road ahead of him because of the [2022] Los Angeles case. We are studying the ramifications of the appeal right now.”
More than 80 women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape against Weinstein in 2017, which then sparked the #MeToo movement. Weinstein was arrested in 2018 and is currently incarcerated in New York.
