New York court overturns Harvey Weinstein 2020 sex crime conviction

New York’s highest court has overturned Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on sex crime charges.

Harvey Weinstein leaves the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York during his trial in 2020. Picture: AFP

New York’s highest court has overturned disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, a decision that upends one of the leading cases of the #MeToo movement.

The court, in a divided ruling, said on Thursday a trial judge made fundamental errors, including admitting testimony from unrelated Weinstein accusers that jurors should never have heard.

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

A Manhattan jury had found Weinstein guilty of third-degree rape for a 2013 encounter in which he allegedly had sex with aspiring actress Jessica Mann against her will. Jurors also found him guilty of a first-degree criminal sex act stemming from accusations that he forced oral sex on production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Though Thursday’s ruling sent shock waves, it won’t make Weinstein, 72, a free man. In a separate case, a California jury convicted Weinstein in 2022 of rape and other offences. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. That case remains on appeal.

The decision to overturn the New York conviction leaves Manhattan prosecutors in a conundrum as they try to salvage one of their most high-profile cases. A retrial could force some alleged victims to provide gut-wrenching testimony again about their experiences. Others won’t be allowed to testify at all, which will require prosecutors to resort to a different strategy.

“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and ­remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual ­assault,” a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s ­office said.

Weinstein maintains his innocence and will now get ready to defend against the charges again, his lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said. “The law was not applied fairly to Harvey Weinstein,” he said.

Weinstein, who has multiple health issues and is in an upstate New York prison, found out Thursday’s news when handed a slip of paper that “just said ‘Harvey Weinstein conviction reversed’,” his lawyer said.

“He called me actually three times,” Mr Aidala said. “He said ‘thank you’ more times than I can count.” The Oscar-winning producer’s empire crumbled when dozens of women, including Hollywood actresses, came forward to accuse him of sex crimes. The allegations ignited the #MeToo movement that put a spotlight on pervasive sexual harassment in many industries.

Writing for a four-three ­majority, judge Jenny Rivera said State Supreme Court judge James Burke improperly allowed testimony from women who spoke about alleged past acts by Weinstein that weren’t charged in the case. “Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality,” Judge Rivera wrote. She said that error was compounded because the trial judge ruled that if Weinstein testified in his own defence, prosecutors could cross-examine him about a host of alleged bad acts that were unrelated, from bullying to verbal abuse.

That “necessarily and impermissibly impacted the defendant’s decision whether to take the stand in his defence and thus undermined the fact-finding process in this case,” Judge Rivera wrote.

Weinstein chose not to testify, but his lawyers argued that ruling on what he could be asked on the stand prejudiced his decision-making.

Dissenting judges said the ruling endangered decades of progress in sex-crimes cases and would deprive jurors of context needed to help sift through the he-said, she-said nature of assault cases. “With today’s decision, this court continues to thwart the steady gains survivors of sexual violence have fought for in our criminal justice system,” judge Madeline Singas wrote.

Tarana Burke, a #MeToo movement leader, said on Thursday, “We are devastated to the survivors connected to this case and the survivors who found some catharsis from the original verdict.”

The Wall Street Journal