The New York State Supreme Court has overturned the sex crime conviction given to Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood super-film producer hit by dozens of harassment allegations.
From what we understand, the Court ruled that the judge who sentenced Weinstein to 23 years in prison in February 2020 made a mistake by calling to testify women whose accusations were not part of the indictments against 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 again.
The New York Court's decision was made - with four "votes" against three - by a panel of judges made up mostly of women.
In 2020, Lauren Young and two other women (Dawn Dunning and Tarale Wulff) testified about their encounters with Weinstein based on a state law that allows depositions about “prior wrongdoing” to demonstrate a pattern of bad behavior by the defendant.
Today, however, the Court established 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 in New York of the former Miramax boss has always been controversial and his lawyers' appeals, according to experts, had always had a chance of being accepted.
(Unioneonline/lf)
