A New York Appeals court has overturned the 2020 rape conviction of former movie producer Harvey Weinstein, ordering that a new trial must take place instead.
The former movie producer was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2020 after being convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape following a trial that included testimonies from Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann, as reported by CNN.
Weinstein became one of the most well-known people from the #MeToo movement in 2020 after he was accused by more than 80 women of sexual misconduct, per Fox News.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said that Weinstein is currently being held at Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York, according to CNN.
The appeals court voted on Thursday 4-3 to overturn the conviction from February 2020 after determining that the judge in the trial “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” according to the ruling.
“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 because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose,” wrote Judge Jenny Rivera in the decision.
“The court compounded that error when it ruled that defendant, who had no criminal history, could be cross-examined about those allegations as well as numerous allegations of misconduct that portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light.”
Rivera further wrote in the ruling that the only “remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” per AP.
Judge Madeline Singas dissented from the ruling and wrote that the state’s Court of Appeals was encouraging a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence,” as NBC News reported.
“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” she continued, per the Associated Press.
A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a written statement that the team is fully prepared to manage the new trial and maintains that the previous trial made the correct decision.
“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” wrote the spokeswoman, per ABC News.
Attorney Douglas H. Wigdor, who has represented multiple women in cases against Weinstein, said in a written statement that Thursday’s ruling was “a major step back in holding those accountable for acts of sexual violence,” ABC News reported.
“Courts routinely admit evidence of other uncharged acts where they assist juries in understanding issues concerning the intent, modus operandi or scheme of the defendant. The jury was instructed on the relevance of this testimony and overturning the verdict is tragic in that it will require the victims to endure yet another trial,” Wigdor wrote.
