#MeToo: NY State Court Revokes Weinstein’s Conviction

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The New York State Supreme Court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s sex crime conviction. The Court ruled that the judge who sentenced Weinstein to 23 years in prison in February 2020 erred in calling to the stand women whose allegations were not part of the indictments once morest the former producer. Weinstein was later convicted of rape in 2022 and served an additional 16 years in prison in Los Angeles. It is now up to New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg to decide whether to put the former Miramax boss on trial once more. The New York Court’s decision was made four to three by a panel of judges made up of a majority of women.

In 2020, Lauren Young and two other women, Dawn Dunning and Tarale Wulff, testified regarding their encounters with Weinstein under a state law that allows depositions regarding “prior wrongdoing” to demonstrate a pattern of bad behavior by the defendant. Today the Court ruled that “in our justice system the accused has the right to answer only for the crime for which he has been indicted.” Over one hundred women accused Weinstein of sexual crimes in 2018, and their collective stories were the cornerstone on which the #MeToo movement was founded. In legal terms, however, the conviction of the former Miramax boss in New York has always been controversial and his lawyers’ appeals, according to experts, had always had a chance.

The story

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the judge in the disgraced movie mogul’s historic #MeToo trial prejudiced him with improper rulings, including the decision to allow women to testify regarding allegations that were not part of the case.

Weinstein, 72, is serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on criminal sexual act charges for performing forcible oral sex on a television and film production assistant in 2006 and third degree rape for an assault. An aspiring actress in 2013.

He will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles of charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.