NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly four years after Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and sent to prison, New York’s highest court appeared torn at oral arguments Wednesday about potentially overturning the landmark #MeToo-era verdict.
— Nearly four years after Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and sent to prison, New York’s highest court appeared torn at oral arguments Wednesday about potentially overturning the landmark #MeToo-era verdict.
Weinstein’s lawyers urged the state’s Court of Appeals to dismiss the disgraced movie mogul’s 2020 conviction, arguing that the trial judge, James Burke, trampled his right to a fair trial with pro-prosecution rulings that turned the trial into “1-800-GET-HARVEY.”
“It was his character that was on trial. It wasn’t the evidence that was on trial,” Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala told the seven-member Court of Appeals in Albany.
Weinstein, 71, was convicted of a criminal sex act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Last year, he was convicted in Los Angeles of another rape and sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison.
A lawyer for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Weinstein’s New York case, told the appeals court that Burke’s rulings were proper and that the conviction should stand.
Weinstein’s lawyers want a new trial, but only for the criminal sexual act charge. They argue the rape charge can’t be retried because it involves alleged conduct outside the statute of limitations. Reversing the verdict would reopened a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures. The court is not likely to rule immediately.
If the Court of Appeals were to rule in Weinstein’s favor, he would remain locked up because of his California conviction. Weinstein, 71, did not attend the arguments but was said to be monitoring a livestream from the state prison where he is incarcerated, Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany.
