NEW YORK — In a dramatic turn of events, Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction was overturned Thursday by the state Court of Appeals in New York, setting the stage for a potential retrial in one of the most prominent cases of the #MeToo era.
The court ruled that the judge in the landmark trial prejudiced Weinstein, the disgraced former film mogul, with improper rulings, notably by allowing testimony about allegations that were not part of the case.
“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose,” the court stated in a narrow 4-3 decision.
The decision highlighted the court’s concern over the prejudicial nature of allowing such testimony, particularly against a defendant with no prior criminal history. Judge Jenny Rivera described the errors as “egregious” and emphasized that the remedy is a new trial.
Weinstein, who has been serving a 23-year sentence since his conviction, may now face the prospect of another trial, where his accusers could be called upon to testify once again if prosecutors opt to pursue the case.
The overturning of Weinstein’s conviction marks a significant development in a legal saga that has served as a focal point in the global #MeToo movement.
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From the CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 3, 2018 at 9:35 pm:
How can anyone in America anywhere today doubt, after being exposed to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, people like Hillary Clinton, for example, or the cloistered elite society in the upscale communities such as very affluent and powerful McLean, VA just outside of Washington DC, or Bethesda, Maryland, surrounding the pestilential swamp of Washington, D.C., a place where men and women out in the countryside outside of Washington DC, see all the vices of princely courts: ambition with idleness, baseness with pride, the thirst of riches without labor, flattery, treason, perfidy, but above all the perpetual ridicule of virtue, that there are indeed grand canyons that now separate different sectors of American society and these canyons are harder and harder to cross, to the point of it now being impossible?
Consider the New York Times story above here, “Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich” by Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin on 3 September 2016, for example, where we have as follows:
At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”
“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and HARVEY WEINSTEIN and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.
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“I stand between you and the apocalypse,”” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to Harvey Weinstein, who was just the subject of a CNN article entitled “16-year-old added to list of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers” by Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, updated November 1, 2018, where we were told as follows:
Amid a report that the case against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein may be unraveling, lawyers have added a woman to a class-action lawsuit who alleges the producer sexually assaulted her when she was 16.
Weinstein allegedly then went on to harass the woman for the next nine years, promising her movie roles and other opportunities that never materialized after she rebuffed his advances, according to the suit, which was updated Wednesday.
Identified only as Jane Doe, a onetime model and aspiring actor, she joins a class of named women who say they suffered similar treatment during what they thought were professional meetings with Weinstein.
The women allege they were assaulted or that they refused his demands for sexual favors, and afterward, promises for roles or picture deals were never kept, says the lawsuit, which also targets heavy hitters in the entertainment industry who the suit alleges abetted Weinstein’s behavior.
“This claim is preposterous,” Weinstein attorney Ben Brafman said.
“Like so many other women in this case who have already been exposed as liars, this latest completely uncorroborated allegation that is almost 20 years old will also be shown to be patently false.”
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There, people, is the “apocalypse” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared she could shield Harvey Weinstein from back in 2016, so how do those of us who really don’t like either Harvey Weinstein or Hillary Clinton bridge that gap, when we are told in a Daily Mail article entitled “Harvey Weinstein may have targeted nearly 1,000 women, says lawyer leading class action suit against the disgraced movie mogul” by Megan Sheets For Dailymail.com updated 3 November 2018, as follows:
• Elizabeth Fegan said 150 women have already come forward with allegations.
• She added that she thinks the actual number of Weinstein victims is much higher.
• Fegan told Sky News: ‘This was every day behavior.”
“He was a bully and he was a predator.”
• He also faces five criminal charges related to rape and predatory assault.
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There is more of the “apocalypse” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared she could shield Harvey Weinstein from back in 2016, which makes that grand canyon even wider, while at the same time making this recently concluded Blasey Ford circus even more bizarre and surreal, where the Democrats were going after Brett Kavanaugh for conduct they were tolerating in Harvey Weinstein, which is rank hypocrisy on their part.
And it wasn’t just Hillary who was tight with accused sex molester Harvey Weinstein, the Obamas were as well, as we see from this USA TODAY article “Malia Obama is a video star, makes her debut in indie band’s music video” by Maria Puente on 29 September 2018, as follows:
Malia Obama, the elder daughter of the former president, is supposed to be interested in a Hollywood career once she leaves Harvard, but now she’s made a slight detour: She’s appearing in a music video.
Malia has been entertainment-world oriented for some time, despite attempting to stay out of its spotlight since she left high school.
During her gap year after high school and before Harvard, where both her parents attended law school, she worked as an intern on HBO’s “Girls,” and at movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s film company (now closed, bankrupt and sold in the wake of sex-crime charges against him).
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This is like an American version of that BBC program, “Upstairs, Downstairs,” except this version isn’t fiction made for TV, which takes us back to the take of David Brooks on the cultural divide, as follows:
College-educated suburban women really don’t like Republicans.
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So, okay!
But why then would they like Democrats who have been shielding accused sex offender Harvey Weinstein from the apocalypse?
What sense does that make, I wonder, which takes us back to more revelations from David Brooks, as follows:
The one word that the two electorates have in common is “unraveling.”
Both groups have a sense that America is unraveling.
In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes.
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I would say as a rural person that there, David Brooks is right on the money, which takes us back to his article as follows:
If anything, the blue sense of unraveling is more comprehensive.
Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class.
As polls show, those Democrats are losing faith in capitalism itself, in the American dream itself.
White liberals describe racism as a bigger problem precluding black advancement than do African-Americans.
As Emma Green noted in The Atlantic, for many, progressivism isn’t just a set of political beliefs; it’s a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched.
Politics is no longer mainly about disagreeing on issues.
It’s about being in entirely separate conversations.
The Venn diagram is dead.
There’s no overlapping area.
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And there we have it, people, another view of the cultural gap that now divides America.