Harvey Weinstein‘s 2020 rape conviction has been overturned by a New York appeals court.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that New York’s highest court found the judge in Weinstein’s trial, which was a landmark moment in the #MeToo moment, had shown prejudice by allowing women to testify about allegations that were not part of the case.
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The decision is available here. Weinstein can be retried on at least one of the charges.
https://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2024/Apr24/April24.htmlReport
It’s kinda like the OJ Trial.
What’s the most important thing?
If it’s Weinstein’s (obvious) guilt, then this is an outrageous decision.
If it’s the perfidy of the prosecution, then this is the right call and your personal disappointment is about as relevant as someone else’s being glad about it.
I suppose it’s disappointing that only really rich people can afford to chase down process errors but life is disappointing.Report
Defendants represented by public defenders manage to get convictions overturned for procedural errors about as much as anyone else. This was a clean legal issue that didn’t require much in the way of resources to fight. Just about any sentient trial lawyer would have made and preserved an objection to the uncharged bad acts evidence here and just about any half-way competent appellate lawyer — of which there are many available to impecunious defendants — would have been able to handle the appeal. Expensive, first-class lawyers probably would do better, but the difference would likely be in style points rather than outcomes.Report
I suppose we should be pleased that it took 4 years.
Or disappointed.
One of those.Report
What do you think is the normal timeline for such things? And is that based on anything or do you just need something — anything — to gripe about?Report
What do you think would be an appropriate amount of time for justice to be delayed?
Is four years just about right, do you think?Report
Weinstein filed his appeal with the Appellate Division (first-level appeals court) in April 2021. The App. Div. affirmed the conviction in June, 2022, a little more than a year later. This is in line with normal practice. I don’t know when Weinstein filed and perfected his appeal to the Court of Appeals, but that could easily take several months, possibly well into 2023, before the parties have things teed up for the Court of Appeals even to be in a position to hear the case. Then the Court has to review the record and briefs, hold oral argument, deliberate, decide, and write.
While this decision didn’t break any speed records, it came well within normal standards, so it is “justice delayed” only in South Utopia. And given the jury verdict, the Appellate Division decision, and the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, all of which gave good reason to think that “justice” had been satisfied already, Weinstein has no complaint about delay, and, to his (or his lawyers’) credit, didn’t make one.Report
I just checked with South Utopia and they said that they don’t have anybody accused of the crimes that Weinstein was accused of.Report
So how long do appeals through two levels of courts take in South Utopia? And does the speed of decisions depend on the nature of the offense? Probably not.Report
Guilt is, apparently, less common there.Report
So the caseloads are lower? That’s the only thing I can think of that might change the speed of decisions. Getting comparable results in West Reality would take a commitment to judicial and related resources that we as a society are unwilling to make. Fast, cheap, right: pick two.Report
There’s a lot less crime in South Utopia in the first place.
I’m not sure that it’s an apples to apples comparison.Report
So it’s caseloads?Report
That, and they get it right the first time.
Sadly, the lack of people accused of crimes similar to Weinstein’s makes questions like “well, would he have stayed in prison had they determined the bad acts testimony unfairly swayed the jury?” something that even Southern Utopians argue over.
Because some Utopians say that the important thing is the guilt.
And others say that the important thing is the process.Report
If you have any sort of method for getting it right the first time, thus making appeals irrelevant, please enlighten us.Report
You’ll have to ask the inhabitants of South Utopia.Report
Took a while to establish that you’ve got nothing, but it was bound to happen.Report
Well, I’ll just go back to what I said in the first place.
Report
It actually took more like three, since no one can decide an appeal before it has been filed. If you have something substantive to say about the time involved here — I was about to say I’d be interested, but it would be more accurate to say I’d be surprised.Report
Eh, my most substantive thing was contained in my very first comment:
I find myself in a place where I’m thinking “it’s too bad that the guy got out on a technicality but maybe they’ll hold a new trial”.
I wonder if they’ll hold a new trial.
I wonder what it means if they don’t.
There are a lot of reasons to not hold a new trial.Report
I will accept your self-evaluation that that is the most nearly substantive thing you had to say. It went downhill quickly from there. Repetition won’t change things.Report
Jaybird, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s a reason this particular dude is very upset about the New York Attorney General’s Office getting beat like a gong on appeals.Report
The New York AG has nothing to do with the Weinstein prosecution or the appeal.Report
Who is in charge of deciding whether they’re going to retry Weinstein?Report
The office that prosecuted him, the Manhattan District Attorney. I don’t know the chain of command there, but I would hazard a guess that this one would go all the way to the D.A. himself.
The NY AG has nothing to do with it.Report
Lemme google… that’s… Alvin Bragg.
And it looks like Weinstein was prosecuted by Bragg’s predecessor.Report
Was there any question about who the current Manhattan DA and his predecessor are?Report
It was info that I didn’t have at the forefront of my brain.
The questions tie into the whole “Who is in charge of deciding whether they’re going to retry Weinstein?” thing.
And whether the same person will be making the decision this time around.Report
You’ve mentioned Bragg several times before, which covers the Jewish Space DAs Square on my Jaybird Bingo Card. In any event, the answer to the question, prompted by DD’s displayed ignorance of what officials do what, was, properly, an institution rather than a person. It wasn’t that Tish James has nothing to do with the Weinstein case but that the Attorney General, whoever it is, has nothing to do with it. and that the Manhattan DA, whoever it is decides.
No one can blame you for having a brain fart and forgetting who the Manhattan DA is; but all you had to do was Google and remind yourself. The rest of us didn’t need to follow your journey.Report
Do you think that there will be a second trial?
Do you think that there *SHOULD* be a second trial?Report
Weinstein is still in confinement because of his California conviction, which may be similarly vulnerable. He also seems to have serious health issues. In the ordinary case, I’d say there would and should be a pretrial, but I could be persuaded otherwise if his health is as bad as it seems to be. From what I’ve heard, the DA’s office is planning to re-try him but is not definitively committed yet, possibly because of the health issuesReport
Last time I saw him, he was using a walker.
If that’s not evidence of serious health issues, I don’t know what would be.Report
There’s an entire industry of highly trained professionals who can run a bunch of tests that will tell us a lot more than what laymen can figure out from watching TV.Report
Oh, and make them public? That’d be a violation of something or other. Hippo.
It’d be better to have a lawyer argue to a judge that he has tests from a doctor that has definitely *NOT* been paid off that show how bad off his incredibly well-connected, wealthy, and powerful client happens to be.Report
Case in point: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi
Terrorist let for for “health reasons, he only has 3 months to live”. In Libya he got a hero’s welcome and survived until the civil war… which might have disrupted his cancer treatments.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abdelbaset-Ali-Mohmed-al-Megrahi
Although it’s been suggested Britain’s cancer treatments were so bad because of Universal HC that Libya’s was an improvement.
So maybe that “3 months to live” was actually true if he’d stayed in Britain.Report
Who. besides you, said anything about making the details of his medical condition public? If Weinstein decides to put his medical condition in issue as a reason to avoid re-trial, he will have to bring the receipts. But the gory details can be submitted under seal, and if it comes to that, the judge can grant or deny any application without spreading Weinstein’s medical details on the public record.Report
I guess I didn’t understand who the “us” was in the “There’s an entire industry of highly trained professionals who can run a bunch of tests that will tell us a lot more than what laymen can figure out from watching TV” sentence.Report
But for a little while he was guilty, and I think that in the end that’s all the #metoo people wanted. They didn’t want the nail taken out of their head, they wanted an acknowledgement that the nail was there and it really hurt.Report
And you know this how?Report
I am not totally surprised. I read commentary at the time (I believe from the NY defense attorney Scott Greenfield) that the ‘bad acts’ testimony allowed in was highly unusual.Report
That was always going to be the big issue on appeal, and it was a tough one. The lineup of judges on each side was 9 in favor of admitting (trial judge, five App. Div. judges, and 3 Court of Appeals judges) and four against. Because the four happened to be the majority of the Court of Appeals, their view prevailed.Report