Harvey Weinstein's conviction, for alleged "rape", has been overturned by an appeals court. The case will now be retried. The reason the judges decided the case should be retried is because during the trial evidence was presented about Weinstein's alleged prior sexual misconduct, which the judges have now decided was not directly relevant to the specific rape charges Weinstein was on trial for. This actually gets at the heart of what the whole case was about (in my opinion). In the New York trial, Weinstein was criminally charged with rape of two women in separate instances. The jury decided to find Weinstein guilty of two criminal counts relating to the sexual assault of one of the women (the rape allegedly having occurred in Los Angeles, California). However, some suspect that the women who came forward accusing Weinstein (there were a long list of them) may have been lying and/or greatly exaggerating about how Weinstein sexually took advantage of them, because the states of New York and California (where the rapes are alleged to have occurred) allow victims to seek very large monetary "damages" from the men being accused of committing sexual abuse. Because there is no real direct "evidence" for the crimes, other than the individual women saying that it happened, the evidence for any one of the rapes seems to rely entirely on other women accusing Weinstein of having done the same thing to them. And some women who only accused him of committing sexual misconduct, which would be "supporting evidence". The appeals court judges seem to have expressed skepticism at this legal logic, and are greatly cutting back on the amount of accusations the jury can hear from other women, who were not accusing Weinstein of the specific crime he was convicted of. This is going to turn the retrial into a case of one woman accusing a man of sexual assault, without additional accusations that he did it to other women. (Or something closer to that) A 5 judge appeals court initially rejected Weinstein's appeal against his sentence. (June 2, 2022) But a 7 judge panel of the New York Court of Appeals has now overturned the convictions, in a 4 to 3 vote. (April 25, 2024) related thread: Was Harvey Weinstein really guilty? (Law & Justice, Apr 30, 2023 )
