April 25, 2024, 2:38 PM
April 25, 2024, 2:38 PM
A New York court on Thursday annulled a rape conviction imposed in 2020 on former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, considering that he did not receive a fair trial.
According to the appeals court ruling, in the process prosecutors were allowed to call witnesses whose allegations were not part of the charges against Weinstein.
This meant, according to the ruling, that the former film producer was not only tried for the crimes he was accused of, but also for his previous conduct.
Despite this decision, Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison for a second conviction for rape imposed by a California court.
Failure
The appeals court issued the annulment ruling this Thursday with 4 votes in favor and 3 against.
In this it is said that in the Weinstein trial “testimonies of alleged previous sexual acts, without accusation, against people other than those reporting the crimes” that were being tried, were “erroneously admitted,” according to the ruling.
This also considers that the trial judge compounded the error by allowing Weinstein to be questioned in a way in which he was portrayed in a “highly prejudicial” light.
“The remedy for these terrible errors is a new trial“, sentence.
For his part, one of the dissenting judges opined that, with the decision, “this court continues to frustrate the constant progress that survivors of sexual violence have fought for in our criminal justice system.”
The accusations against Weinstein began in 2017 and sparked the #MeToo movementwhich exposed sexual abuse at the highest levels of the Hollywood film industry and beyond.
The two sentences against Weinstein
The former producer faced two trials: this one in New York, where he was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2020 for raping two women, and another in California, where last year he was sentenced to another 16 years in prison for raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel.
The California conviction is not affected by the new New York sentence.
Weinstein He is currently detained in a prison in New York, and was previously extradited to Los Angeles for the second trial.
The decision on whether to retry Weinstein in the first trial now rests with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose predecessor, Cyrus Vance, brought the case.
Bragg’s office is also working, separately, on a criminal trial against former President Donald Trump in the case of alleged payment in exchange for silence to the pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels.
“Today’s decision is a huge step backwards in holding those who have committed acts of sexual violence accountable,” said Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who represented eight women who accused Weinstein.
And he regretted that “the victims will have to endure yet another trial.”
Weinstein co-founded the Miramax film studio, whose successes included films such as Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fictionamong others.
His own film studio, of the same name, filed for bankruptcy in March 2018.
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