In a 4 to 3 ruling on April 25, New York’s highest court overturned former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction — a landmark in the #MeToo movement. A New York appeals court noted that Justice James Burke, the trial judge presiding over the Manhattan sex crimes case, made a critical error by allowing several women to testify against the former movie mogul about allegations not included in the indictment. Case record.
“We conclude that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainant of the underlying crimes,” the court said. “The solution to these egregious errors is a new trial,” it emphasized.
However, Weinstein remains in prison after being convicted by a California jury in 2022 of raping a woman at a Beverly Hills hotel. He had to serve 16 years after his New York conviction.
On April 28, he was hospitalized after returning to New York to undergo several medical tests. “The NYC Department of Corrections has determined that Weinstein is in need of immediate medical attention,” his attorney, Arthur L. Aidala, said in a statement to US media.
Read the judgment here.
Allegations and trial history
In October 2017, The New York Times published investigative footage detailing Weinstein’s history of sexually harassing women for nearly three decades — many of them younger employees trying to make it in the television and film industries, where he was a force to be reckoned with. This led to hundreds of people opening up about their own experiences, eventually leading to what became known as the #MeToo movement, a worldwide rejection of sexual misconduct by powerful men.
Weinstein was eventually indicted by Manhattan prosecutors in May 2018 and charged with sex crimes. His trial began in January 2020, mainly on allegations by two women — Miriam Haley, who said Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006, and Jessica Mann, who said he raped her in 2013. On February 18, 2020, he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and sentenced by a New York court to 23 years in prison. In June 2022, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a 2020 conviction upholding the use of additional victims’ voices in sex crimes trials.
A majority judgment
Four years after Weinstein’s conviction, an appeals court, along with Justice Burke, said prosecutors had violated a cardinal principle of criminal law that defendants must be tried only on the charges against them. The Court of Appeals is New York’s highest court and receives final say in cases before seeking review at the US Supreme Court. The controversial judgment was delivered by Chief Justice Rowan Wilson and six Associate Justices.
Central to last week’s decision was the presence of “Molineux witnesses”, also known as “prior bad act” witnesses. It refers to trial witnesses who are allowed to testify about criminal acts for which the defendant has not been formally charged. In an effort to convince jurors that Weinstein had a long history of using his power to lure and sexually assault young women, prosecutors called several women to the stand. However, the disgraced former Hollywood producer has not been charged with assaulting the women.
Writing for the majority, Judge Jenni Rivera said that allowing such testimony would cause the “defendant’s role before the jury” to diminish. The appeals court said such error was compounded when Justice Burke said he would allow prosecutors to question Weinstein about a wide range of unsavory behavior, including bullying and fits of rage against associates.
According to Weinstein’s counsel, he could not take the stand even if he wanted to testify in his defense. Accepting this argument, Judge Rivera wrote that “the threat of cross-examination highlighting these untested allegations undermined the defendant’s right to testify.”
Reliance was placed on the 1991 judgment of the Court People v. Molyneux, The term “Molineux witnesses” arose to assert that prior evidence of a defendant’s bad behavior could not be used for the sole purpose of establishing his “criminal propensity.”
Strong disagreement
The three judges — Madeline Singas, Anthony Cannataro and Michael J. Garcia wrote scathing dissents accusing the majority of facilitating a “disturbing trend of overturning guilty verdicts by juries in cases involving sexual violence.” He emphasized that the Molineux witnesses had successfully established that Weinstein had a history of coercion and manipulation.
Highlighting the verdict’s impact on future sexual assault cases, Judge Singas said – “Men who serially exploit their power over women – especially the most vulnerable groups in society – will take advantage of today’s decision”.
“Under the majority’s reasoning, instances of a trafficker repeatedly leveraging the undocumented status of workers to force them to have sex, or a restaurant manager withholding tips from his employees unless they perform sexual acts, are personal “credibility contests” and unrelated “misunderstandings”.” After today’s holding, the jury will remain in the dark and defendants will be dissociated from past criminal acts, even if intent is put into dispute by claiming consent. Finally, the path to holding perpetrators of sexual assault accountable has become significantly more difficult.Judge Madeline SingasDissenting judgment
Judge Cannataro said the additional witnesses relied on by the prosecution helped dispel the myth that sexual assault “must involve a stereotypical stranger in a dark alley who isolates his victim or waits for her to be alone before launching a violent attack.” “This ruling represents an unfortunate step back from recent advances in our understanding of how sex crimes occur and why victims react in sometimes seemingly contradictory ways,” the majority opinion said.
However, responding to these observations, Judge Rivera said, “We do not turn a blind eye to the continuing impact of rape culture on notions of consent and intent … On the contrary, consistent with our judicial role, our analysis is grounded in the underlying principles of evidence and the defendant’s constitutional right to innocence and a fair trial.”
Impact on the #MeToo movement
Commenting on the verdict’s impact on the #MeToo movement, its founder Tarana Burke called the women who spoke out against Weinstein “heroes” and said such campaigns for justice and equality will continue to bring progress in society. “This is not a blow to the movement. It is a clarion call and we are ready to answer that call,” he said BBC.
In 2017, actress Ashley Judd was the first to make allegations against the former Hollywood producer. The New York Times The verdict was “unfair to the survivors,” he said. “We’re still living in our truth. And we know what happened,” he said.
When the news agency asked Dawn Dunning, one of the Molyneux witnesses who testified against Weinstein, if she had any regrets, she said in a statement, “My answer is no.” Weinstein’s survivors confronted him publicly. I am confident that the culture has changed and will not go back,” he said.
She and others were joined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg was originally named after Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is encouraged to retry the case he tried.
What happens next?
Even if the conviction is overturned, Weinstein is not a free man. He still faces a 16-year sentence in California, where a jury in 2022 convicted him of three other counts — rape, forced oral sex and sexual penetration — involving an Italian actress who testified he assaulted her in a hotel room in 2013. Even in that case, the prosecution was allowed to use witnesses who accused Weinstein of sex crimes he wasn’t charged with.
Jennifer Bonjean, Weinstein’s lawyer in California, said she expected last week’s ruling to help him when he appeals the California sentence on May 20. The judge was “overwhelmed by this evidence of bad character, which was not lawful, which tainted the entire trial in California. In our view”, the The New York Times Quoting her.
However, according to Jane Manning, director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project and a former sex crimes prosecutor, California laws surrounding witnesses differ from those in New York. “California law expressly permits prosecutors to show that a defendant’s sexually predatory behavior was part of a pattern. They expressly permit admissions of similar offenses in sexual assault cases because they understand how relevant this evidence is,” he said. Associated Press.
The overturning of Weinstein’s conviction is not the first setback for the #MeToo movement in recent times. In 2021, a Pennsylvania court overturned Bill Cosby’s conviction on sexual assault charges and released him from prison. The following year, the US Supreme Court refused to reinstate the conviction.