A judicial earthquake went off in the Harvey Weinstein, a well-known movie producer case. An appeals court in New York decided to overturn his 2020 conviction for rape, which means he will have a new trial.
Back in 2020, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of two serious crimes. He was convicted for forcing a TV and film production assistant named Mimi Haley to engage in unwanted sexual acts in 2006, and for the third-degree rape of a hairstylist named Jessica Mann in 2013. For these crimes, he was sentenced to spend 23 years in prison.
However, he was not found guilty of the most serious charges brought by actor Annabella Sciorra, who said he raped her in the 1990s. Harvey Weinstein has always said that he never had non-consensual sex with anyone.
The reason the appeals court decided to overturn his conviction has to do with how his trial was handled. The court, with a close vote of 4-3, believed that the judge in the original trial made a mistake by letting other women testify about their accusations against Weinstein, even though those accusations were not directly related to the charges he was being tried for.
Weinstein’s lawyer said that this decision shows the importance of fair trials and following the rules, no matter how people feel about the case.
“Justice was served. I believe this decision is larger than Harvey Weinstein,” Donna Rotunno, Weinstein’s defense lawyer said in a statement. “Courts cannot operate on emotion and lack of due process. The world is off-balance, and when the justice system does not work, nothing does. This decision restores faith in the foundation of our system.”
Meanwhile, Ashley Judd, an actress who was one of the first to speak against Weinstein, also gave her thoughts on this new development during a press conference.
“I went on the record telling [my] story because when survivors tell their stories, they are exercising a powerful form of leadership that sparks others to join in shared action that catalyzes change,” she told reporters.
“This today is an act of institutional betrayal,” Judd explained. “And our institutions betray survivors of male sexual violence. And we need to work within and without the systems to start having what is known as institutional courage. I stand shoulder to shoulder with women who have bloody knees because male sexual violence may knock us down, but we get right back up and together we are in the struggle for freedom from male entitlement to our bodies.”
