There were two "egregious errors" made by the judge in the Harvey Weinstein trial, according to the majority of judges on the panel, whose decision erased the conviction of the Hollywood mogul in the state of New York and his 23-year criminal sentence.
Harvey Weinstein is "thrilled" that the New York Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned his 2020 rape conviction, his publicist Juda Engelmayer tells Inside Edition Digital.
In a narrow victory for the convicted rapist, four of the judges on the panel agreed with the defense team's argument that the judge's decision to allow three women who alleged they were victims of Weinstein to testify at the trial along with the three female complainants in the case prevented Weinstein from getting a fair trial.
The panel said the case must be tried again in a court of law. It is unclear if New York City prosecutors or the three complainants in the case will go through this legal process for a second time.
There were two "egregious errors" made by the trial judge, according to the majority.
First, the judge "erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes," said the opinion.
The panel said that three of the women prosecutors called to the stand - Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff, and Lauren Young - should not have been allowed to testify against Weinstein at trial. The panel had no issue though with production assistant Mimi Haley, hairdresser Jessica Mann and actress Annabella Sciorra providing testimony at the trial because the charges related directly to incidents that allegedly involved those three women and Weinstein.
Second, "the trial court abused its discretion when it ruled that defendant, who had no criminal history, could be cross-examined about prior, uncharged alleged bad acts and despicable behavior which was immaterial to his in-court credibility, and which served no purpose other than to display for the jury defendant’s loathsome character. The ruling necessarily and impermissibly impacted defendant’s decision whether to take the stand in his defense and thus undermined the fact-finding process in this case, which turned on the credibility of the parties," said Judge Jenny Rivera, writing for the majority.
A judge sentenced Weinstein to 23 years in prison back in February 2020 after a jury convicted the mogul of criminal sexual assault in the first degree and rape in the third degree. Those were two of the five criminal charges that a grand jury in New York City voted to indict Weinstein on in 2018 after hearing the testimony of multiple witnesses and District Attorney Cy Vance.
A five-judge panel from the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department upheld that verdict in June 2022.
After that verdict, Weinstein headed to Los Angeles for his second criminal hearing, which ended with convictions on three of the 11 counts: rape, forced oral copulation and third-degree sexual misconduct.
For those offenses, Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison, to be served after he completed his sentence for the New York offenses. On Thursday, Weinstein's publicist said that his client is now focused on overturning the verdict in his Los Angeles case.
Weinstein is also facing a potential criminal trial in London, having been charged by Scotland Yard with two counts of indecent assault against a woman. The disgraced movie producer, 72, has not yet entered a plea or appeared in court on those two charges.
Weinstein shot to fame in the late 90s when he took over Miramax Pictures with his brother Bob Weinstein. The fall from grace for the Hollywood mogul started in October 2017 with the publication of exposes in The New York Times and New Yorker.
Among the actresses who have accused the “Pulp Fiction” producer of offenses ranging from sexual misconduct to sexual assault to sexual violence are Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan and Julia Ormond.
Weinstein's second wife, Georgina Chapman, filed for divorce after the release of those exposes.
Further allegations about Weinstein then began to appear in other news outlets as well as the Ronan Farrow book, “Catch and Kill."
Related Stories
