Court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction and orders new trial
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Etienne Laurent-Pool/Getty Images / Alexander Koerner/Getty Images
New York’s highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction.
Weinstein was arrested in May 2018 and charged with rape and other offences after over 80 women came forward to accuse him of non-consensual acts over the course of his film career.
Despite denying any accusations of ‘non-consensual sex’, he was sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment in March 2020.
He was also sentenced to an additional 16 years after being convicted in Los Angeles of two counts of sexual assault and one count of rape.
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However, the New York Court of Appeals has overturned Weinstein's 2020 conviction on the basis that he did not receive a fair trial.
It was found that prosecutors were allowed to call witnesses whose accusations were not part of the trial.
The ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein, triggering the #MeToo movement.
The court has ordered a new trial, meaning his accusers could once again be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.
However, Weinstein will remain imprisoned because of his 2022 conviction, so will continue to serve that 16 year sentence.
Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.
Weinstein’s lawyers argued Judge James Burke’s rulings in favour of the prosecution turned the trial into '1-800-GET-HARVEY'.
The reversal of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years, after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction.
Weinstein’s conviction stood for more than four years, heralded by activists and advocates as a milestone achievement, but it was dissected just as quickly by his lawyers and, later, the Court of Appeals when it heard arguments on the matter in February.
It comes after a joke Nathan Lane made about Harvey Weinstein at an Academy Awards ceremony in 2022 recently resurfaced.
The clip has been doing the rounds on social media, and shows the moment Lane made a joke about the disgraced film mogul while reading out the nominations.
Presenting the award was comedian Lane, who said on stage: “Gosh, up until now I thought Monsters Incorporated was a documentary on the Weinstein's.”
After some muffled and awkward laughter from the audience, he continued: “Oh, we kid the rich and powerful because we love them.”