Thursday’s ruling overturned Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction in New York.
New York:
Thursday’s ruling overturning Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction in New York gives the former movie mogul a chance at a new trial and raises questions about what evidence prosecutors can use in future sex crime cases.
Here’s a look at what happened with the case, what helped define the #MeToo movement, and what might happen next.
WHY WAS WEINSTEIN’S CONVICTION OVERRIDED?
Weinstein, 72, was found guilty of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another woman after both testified in court.
But a 4-3 majority of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled that the judge should not have allowed three other women to testify that Weinstein also assaulted them because their allegations were not part of criminal prosecution. against him.
Such testimony about “previous bad acts” is generally excluded by New York’s so-called Molineux Rule, named after a landmark 1901 court case. The majority of the court ruled that the three women’s testimony violated the rule and made the process unfair.
WHY ARE THE OTHER WOMEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN THE FIRST PLACE?
The Molineux rule is not absolute. It states that prosecutors cannot use such testimony to prove that the suspect has a “propensity” to commit a crime, but they can use it as evidence of motive or intent.
In Weinstein’s case, prosecutors convinced the judge that the producer’s alleged prior sexual assaults showed he knew his accusers were not consenting to his advances, but that he intended to coerce them into sex anyway.
Prosecutors believed the evidence would help disprove Weinstein’s claim that the encounters were consensual.
However, the Court of Appeals ruled that the testimony was simply evidence that he had a propensity to commit rape and sexual assault, and not because of his motive or intent.
WHAT DOES THE RULING MEAN FOR WEINSTEIN’S CASE IN CALIFORNIA?
Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison following a separate rape conviction in California in 2022, which he is expected to appeal, and the New York ruling has no immediate impact on that case.
In fact, California law specifically allows testimony about prior bad acts in sex crime cases as evidence that a suspect has a propensity to commit sex crimes. Such evidence was used in the Weinstein trial in California, and state law will make it more difficult for his lawyers to challenge on appeal than in New York.
WHAT DOES THE RULING MEAN FOR FUTURE CASES IN NEW YORK?
According to the majority of the court, very little. Judge Jenny Rivera wrote in the majority opinion that the decision was based on established New York law, and said it was similar to another 1996 Court of Appeals decision, People v. Vargas, which upheld a conviction for rape was lifted because witnesses were allowed to testify about previous alleged rapes by the suspect.
Dissenting judges said in Thursday’s ruling that the ruling would make it more difficult to prosecute sex crimes committed by people who know their victims and may have long-term relationships with them, as in Weinstein’s case.
Judge Anthony Cannataro, who was among the dissenters, called it “an unfortunate step back from recent advances in our understanding of how sex crimes are committed.”
Another dissenting judge, Madeline Singas, said the decision would effectively end the use of witnesses to previous bad actions in such cases and make it difficult to prove intent.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
