Harvey Weinstein’s legal team saw some hope on the horizon when Bill Cosby’s molestation conviction was overturned three years ago by Pennsylvania’s highest court.
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has demonstrated, once again, that no matter who the accused is or what the nature of the alleged crime is, the courts can be counted on to follow the law and make the right decision,” he said. Juda Engelmayer, a spokesperson for Weinstein, said in 2021 after Cosby was released from prison after serving three years of a 10-year sentence.
“This decision also reaffirms our confidence that the New York Appellate Division will reach an equally correct decision in Harvey Weinstein’s appeal, given the abundance of issues that call for a reversal.”
On Thursday, Engelmayer’s words proved prophetic.
A New York appeals court overturned Weinstein’s rape conviction in 2020, paving the way for a retrial for the disgraced former Hollywood heavyweight.
Unlike Cosby, who was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 for drugging and assaulting a woman in 2004, the ruling does not get Weinstein out of prison.
Weinstein remains behind bars as he was also convicted of rape in 2022 by a Los Angeles court and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
But Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said that “whether rich or poor,” all Americans have the right to due process. And he said people outraged that another convicted predator won an appeal should, in essence, get over it.
“The public needs to assuage their personal feelings about Mr. Cosby and Mr. Weinstein and examine the lack of facts, evidence and evidence, without trying to ‘distort’ a person’s constitutional rights, because it “This is an injustice to all American citizens and a disgrace to our democracy,” Wyatt said in a statement.
Duncan Levin, one of Weinstein’s criminal lawyers in New York, acknowledged that there are similarities to the Cosby case.
“It is the Court of Appeal that takes a position on due process and sends the signal that due process really is about doing the right thing, even if it is obviously a decision difficult for the court to take”, especially in relation to a “very unpopular accused”. “, Levin said. “And they send the signal that due process means doing the right thing in every case for everyone.”
Weinstein, 72, is serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison after being convicted of criminal sexual acts for forcibly performing oral sex on a television and film production assistant in 2006 and for rape in third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor. in 2013.
In a 4-3 decision, the New York appeals court ruled Thursday that the judge in the landmark #MeToo trial made several inappropriate rulings that influenced the trial against Weinstein, including the decision to let three women testify about allegations that were not part of the case.
Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern University and a former Manhattan assistant district attorney who specializes in domestic violence prosecutions, said the close decision reflected how divided the justices were on whether the trial court had made a mistake. She said the judge allowed witnesses to testify about Weinstein’s alleged actions to show there was a pattern in his predatory behavior.
“In these sexist crimes, the question of trends comes up a lot, and so these are very controversial questions,” she said.
In Weinstein’s successful appeal, Tuerkheimer said: “What is clear is that the court was very concerned about fairness, and they determined that by allowing these witnesses it was prejudicial and that this evidence should not have been admitted, and that probably changed the outcome. » of the case.”
Michelle Madden Dempsey, a law professor at Villanova University and a former domestic violence prosecutor, called the New York appeals court’s reasoning “shocking and absurd.”
“The majority opinion reads like an attempt at enlightenment,” Madden Dempsey said. “Prosecutors routinely tell victims that their case cannot be prosecuted because the sex is nuanced and involves blurred lines – and therefore, they argue, juries will not convict, even if they believe in the testimony of the victim. »
“Yet here, when a case finally reaches a jury and the jury convicts, the highest court in the land steps in and overturns the conviction because the facts are supposed to be ‘unequivocal,’” Madden Dempsey said.
In a statement, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it would “do everything in its power to retry this case.”
Tuerkheimer said that regardless of what happened in New York, Weinstein’s 2022 conviction in Los Angeles still stands.
Weinstein filed a notice of appeal in this case and hired the same lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, who represented Cosby in his successful appeal.
Bonjean said in a statement that the overturning of Weinstein’s New York conviction was linked to California because the outcome of his Manhattan trial had “tainted” the Los Angeles jury.
“The jurors in Mr. Weinstein’s Los Angeles case worked under the assumption that he had been fairly convicted of rape in New York, an assumption that we now know to be false, but which surely had an impact on their assessment of the evidence in the Los Angeles case,” Bonjean said. .
But the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office disagrees and said in a statement that the legal issues identified by the New York appeals court “are not present in the L.A. County case Angeles” because California law allows evidence that testifies to the character of a defendant. in cases of sexual assault “subject to the discretion of the judge.”
Yet Weinstein’s legal victory, coming three years after Cosby’s conviction was overturned, shows how difficult it is to keep prosecutions going in high-profile cases involving well-heeled men.
“It’s really hard to look at this latest case and say this is where the system failed the victims,” Tuerkheimer said. “I think the problem is much more widespread and affects all parts of the criminal justice system. Until this problem is resolved, the system will continue to provide imperfect justice to victims.
Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor at Fordham School of Law, said that in the Weinstein and Cosby cases, it is important to note that the credibility of the accusers is not the reason the convictions were canceled.
“This feels like a major blow to the #MeToo movement, and I think this decision will retraumatize victims, but I hope victims will view the court’s decision in a limited way,” Bader said.
In hindsight, Bader said prosecutors could have tried a more limited case against Weinstein without the testimony of additional witnesses who “could turn against Weinstein on appeal.”
“Hopefully this won’t deter victims from coming forward,” she said.
