The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York intercourse crimes conviction on Thursday morning would possibly really feel like a surprising reversal, however the felony case in opposition to him has been fragile for the reason that day it used to be filed. Prosecutors moved it ahead with dangerous, boundary-pushing bets. New York’s most sensible judges, lots of them feminine, have held rounds of pained debates over whether or not his conviction used to be blank.
“I’m not shocked,” mentioned Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan prosecutor who’s now a regulation professor at Northwestern, in an interview. The factor of whether or not Mr. Weinstein’s trial used to be truthful “is a really close question that could have gone either way.”
Outside the justice device, proof of Mr. Weinstein’s sexual misconduct is overwhelming. After The New York Times published allegations of abuse via the manufacturer in 2017, just about 100 ladies got here ahead with accounts of power and manipulation via Mr. Weinstein. Their tales sparked the worldwide #MeToo reckoning.
But whilst Mr. Weinstein’s alleged sufferers may fill a complete court docket, few of them may stand on the middle of a New York felony trial. Many of the horror tales have been about sexual harassment, which is a civil violation, no longer a felony one. Others fell past the statute of barriers. One of the unique accusers used to be dropped from the trial on account of allegations of police misconduct.
Manhattan prosecutors, beneath power for no longer pursuing fees previous, made a sequence of gambles.
First, they proceeded with a tribulation according to handiest two sufferers, who accused him of sexually assaulting them but additionally admitted to having consensual intercourse with him at different occasions — a mix that many mavens say is simply too messy to win convictions. To end up their case in opposition to Mr. Weinstein, who denies all allegations of non-consensual intercourse, the prosecutors had little concrete proof.
So to influence the jury, the attorneys became to a debatable technique that will in the long run result in the conviction’s undoing. They put further ladies with accounts of abuse via Mr. Weinstein — so-called Molineux witnesses — at the stand to ascertain a trend of predation. The determination gave the impression apt for the instant: In a prison echo of the #MeToo motion, Mr. Weinstein used to be compelled to stand a refrain of testimony from a couple of ladies.
The ladies’s testimony used to be searing, and when Mr. Weinstein used to be convicted in 2020, after which sentenced to 23 years in jail, it seemed like the prosecutors had expanded the chances for containing intercourse offenders responsible.
“I did it for all of us,” Dawn Dunning, who served as a supporting witness within the trial, mentioned in an interview in a while. “I did it for the women who couldn’t testify. I couldn’t not do it.”
But the transfer additionally risked violating a cardinal rule of felony trials: Defendants will have to be judged handiest at the acts they’re being charged with.
That was the principle foundation for Mr. Weinstein’s repeated appeals of his conviction. For years, his attorneys have argued that his trial used to be basically unfair, as it integrated witnesses who fell out of doors the scope of the costs. In addition to the alleged sexual attack sufferers, prosecutors introduced in personality witnesses who portrayed Mr. Weinstein as a capricious, merciless determine.
In 2022, a New York appeals courtroom pushed aside the ones issues and upheld his conviction, after a energetic debate via the judges. They wrote that the testimony from the extra witnesses were instrumental in appearing that the manufacturer didn’t see his sufferers as “romantic partners or friends,” however that “his goal at all times was to position the women in such a way that he could have sex with them, and that whether the women consented or not was irrelevant to him.”
This February, when New York’s best courtroom heard the manufacturer’s newest and ultimate attraction, the court cases didn’t garner much attention. But they felt quietly dramatic: Seven of the state’s best judges, 4 of them ladies, have been debating whether or not the person whose alleged offenses shaped the cornerstone of the #MeToo motion were handled quite in courtroom.
Today the courtroom determined, with a majority that integrated 3 feminine judges, to throw out the conviction and order a brand new trial. Mr. Weinstein stays convicted in California and will probably be moved to jail there.
“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the judges wrote of their determination on Thursday.
“No person accused of illegality may be judged on proof of uncharged crimes that serve only to establish the accused’s propensity for criminal behavior,” the opinion persevered.
But the verdict landed via the slimmest of majorities: 4 to a few, with stinging dissents. “Fundamental misunderstandings of sexual violence perpetrated by men known to, and with significant power over, the women they victimize are on full display in the majority’s opinion,” Judge Madeline Singas wrote.
Reached via telephone a couple of mins after the courtroom shared its determination, Ashley Judd, the primary actress to return ahead with allegations in opposition to Mr. Weinstein, used to be unwavering in her personal judgment. “That is unfair to survivors,” she mentioned of the ruling.
“We still live in our truth,” she mentioned. “And we know what happened.”