The highest court in New York has annulled this Thursday the rape conviction imposed on Harvey Weinstein in 2020, considering that the judge in the historic trial of the #MeToo movement harmed the former Hollywood producer with inappropriate decisions, including allowing women testify about accusations that were not part of the case. The court has ordered a new trial.
The ruling by the State Court of Appeals reopens a painful chapter in the United States' reckoning with sexual misconduct and impunity by powerful figures, an era that began in 2017 with a flood of accusations from actresses and other actresses. film industry against the all-powerful Weinstein, at the time owner of Miramax, one of the main production companies. In the new process, complainants could be forced to once again relive their traumas on the stand while the gap that the MeToo movement has opened in many areas of society – not all – could be closed.
In fact, the overturning of Weinstein's conviction is the second major MeToo setback in the last two years, after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court's decision to overturn the conviction. for sexual assault by Bill Cosby. The momentum of the MeToo movement made possible the arrest of pedophile magnate Jeffrey Epstein, whose suicide in a Manhattan jail prevented him from being tried for trafficking and child abuse.
Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison after being convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a television and film production assistant in 2006 and of third-degree rape in an attack. to an aspiring actress in 2013. He will remain in prison because in 2022 he was convicted in Los Angeles of another rape and sentenced to another 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles of charges related to one of the women who testified in New York.
Weinstein's now revoked conviction stood for more than four years, claimed by activists as a historic achievement against sexist impunity and a precedent for exemplary convictions, such as that of singer R. Kelly for the same charges, but dissected just as quickly by his lawyers and, later, by the Court of Appeals after hearing his defense arguments on the matter in February.
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