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Harvey Weinstein rape conviction overturned by NY appeals court; California conviction remains

Jenny Jarvie, Richard Winton and Stephen Battaglio, Los Angeles Times on

Published in News & Features

The Miramax co-founder has been serving a 23-year sentence since he was convicted in 2020 of rape and a felony sex crime after allegedly assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haley and once-aspiring actress Jessica Mann.

Weinstein, who has denied all wrongdoing, appealed in 2021, citing a series of issues, including errors at trial.

In the 160-page appeal, Weinstein’s legal team once again attacked the credibility of the six women who testified at his 2020 trial in lower Manhattan. While most of the allegations were at least corroborated by the testimony of others whom the women told of the alleged assaults around the time they were alleged to have taken place, Weinstein’s legal team questioned why they stayed in contact with the mogul — or in some cases, continued having sex with him — after the alleged crimes.

In late 2022, a Los Angeles jury also convicted Weinstein of one count of sexual assault in connection with a 2013 attack on a woman inside a Beverly Hills hotel. Weinstein had been charged with sexual assault or misconduct against five women in that case, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, but jurors deadlocked or acquitted on the rest of the charges.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench sentenced Weinstein to 16 years in prison for that conviction, to be served concurrently with his New York sentence. After both trials, he was slated to be in prison until the 2050s.

Weinstein has also appealed his Los Angeles conviction, again taking aim at the use of testimony from so-called “prior bad acts witnesses,” who accused him of sexual misconduct that had not been criminally charged in Los Angeles.

 

David Ring, an attorney who represents Evgeniya Chernyshova, who was Jane Doe 1 in the criminal proceedings brought against Weinstein in Los Angeles, said his client was disappointed that Weinstein’s New York criminal conviction was overturned.

“However, both she and I are confident that Weinstein’s Los Angeles conviction for rape will be upheld,” he said. “As the only victim who has now obtained a criminal conviction against Weinstein, she will continue to stand tall and do whatever necessary to obtain justice not only for herself but for all victims.”

One of Weinstein’s defense attorneys in his Los Angeles case, Mark Werksman, celebrated the New York ruling as “a great outcome and the right result.”

“We faced the same fundamental unfairness in the Los Angeles case, where the judge let the jury hear about four uncharged allegations of sexual assault,” Werksman said. “Harvey was subjected to a firehose of uncharged and incredible allegations which destroyed his right to a fair trial on the charges in the indictment. The case here should be reversed for the same reasons the New York case was reversed.”

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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