Harvey Weinstein triumphs. The verdict that convicted him of rape was overturned

, an American film producer who allegedly committed numerous abuses, sexual harassment and rapes against his subordinates, but was innocent? The Court of Appeals in New York overturned the judgment issued in 2020, stating that the entrepreneur was not guaranteed a fair trial and that there were numerous errors during the proceedings.

2020 verdict in the Harvey Weinstein case overturned

As reported by, among others, BBC and CNN, the Court of Appeal by a vote of 4:3 found that Weinstein’s trial was not fair. During the trial, women who were not formally related to the case being tried were allowed to testify – the producer allegedly committed abuse, harassment and rape on three women, while more of them testified in court. This was intended to make the jury aware that the case being heard in New York is not a double “case”, but a much larger pattern, although it concerns “only” three women who decided to accuse Weinstein. The Court of Appeal found that this had led to the gradual building of prejudices against the accused, which was why he did not decide to testify in his own defense – he could be afraid of questions related to behavior not related to this specific case, overtly “contemptuous” and negative. Judge Jenny Rivera ordered the entire proceedings to be restarted.

This does not particularly affect Weinstein’s current situation for now. . For now, because there have already been signals that the New York judgment will be fuel for overturning the judgment in Los Angeles as well.

Weinstein learned about the new court decision in prison. According to his lawyer, he “couldn’t stop thanking him.”

Harvey Weinstein Photo REUTERS/Pool

The jury judge defends the 2020 verdict

The overturning of the 2020 verdict is a “slap in the face” to all Weinstein’s victims, the American media observing the trial wrote on Friday. One of the 12 jurors who delivered the guilty verdict four years ago also spoke. In a letter to him, he claims that the trial was as fair as possible:

We all took this matter very seriously. We argued that Weinstein, like every other U.S. citizen, is entitled to a fair trial. We all had to find the will to find him innocent and then face the world after the verdict if we released him. As I looked at him in the courtroom, I asked myself: What if this was my brother or father, how would I want him to be treated? I had to remember this during six weeks of brutal testimony from women whom Weinstain first ingratiated, then mobbed, and finally raped (…).

We convicted Weinstein not on the basis of additional testimony from other women – not for touching one of them under her skirt or masturbating in front of two others. He was convicted of sex crimes against Annabella Sciorra, Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley. We convicted him of crimes against two of the three of them. Looking at how we worked as jurors during the proceedings, it is impossible to say that Weinstein was not guaranteed a fair trial. We didn’t argue for five days to send an innocent man to prison, says Amanda Brainerd, who was a member of the jury in the Weinstein trial.

The Weinstein case and #MeToo

Accusations against Harvey Weinstein began surfacing in 2017. After the publications of “The New York Times” and “The New Yorker”, the real cesspool that was hidden under the banner of the production company Miramax, and later The Weinstein Company, spilled out. Weinstein allegedly regularly used his position to obtain sexual favors from aspiring (and not only) actresses. Because he produced dozens of hit films with Miramax in the 1990s and 2000s, dozens, if not hundreds, of women approached Weinstein with requests for even minor roles. After 2017, some of them dared to speak out loud about it. This triggered a wave of entries from anonymous and well-known women who experienced sexual violence in the workplace (not only in the film industry). The so-called The “#MeToo movement” was an impulse to change consciousness around the world.