Fresh off a second rape conviction, Harvey Weinstein asked New York’s highest court on Tuesday to overturn his first, arguing that the judge in his 2020 case betrayed his right to a fair trial by “succumbing to pressure ” of the #MeToo movement.
Weinstein’s attorneys are asking the state appeals court to overturn the movie mogul’s rape conviction and order a new trial on a single count of a criminal sex act. The rape charge, they said, involves alleged conduct outside the statute of limitations and cannot be retried.
Weinstein, 70, was convicted in a Manhattan courthouse in February 2020 of a criminal sexual act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006, and third-degree rape for an assault on a female aspiring the actress in 2013. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Last month, a Los Angeles jury convicted Weinstein of raping and sexually assaulting an Italian actor and model, who he said appeared uninvited outside his hotel room during a film festival there in 2013. case on February 23. .
The appeals court agreed to hear Weinstein’s appeal last summer after a mid-level appeals court upheld his conviction. Weinstein’s legal team, led by veteran defense attorney Arthur Aidala and former judge Barry Kamins, repeated some of the same arguments in their testimony on Tuesday.
They again took aim at trial judge James Burke, arguing that he influenced the outcome of the historic trial with repeated rulings favorable to prosecutors – including his ruling allowing additional accusers to testify on allegations that never led to criminal charges.
They also disputed Burke’s refusal to remove a juror who had written a novel involving predatory older men, as well as his decision to allow prosecutors to have an expert on victim behavior and rape myths testify while rejecting expert testimony for the defense. about similar subjects.
Weinstein’s lawyers said Burke gave in to a “relentless deluge of publicity, special interest groups and a morally outraged public”, creating a carnivalesque atmosphere that deprived Weinstein of the “judicial serenity and calm to which he was entitled”.
Prosecutors have until March 1 to respond. Burke is no longer on the bench.
Allegations against Weinstein, the once powerful and feared studio head behind Academy Award winners such as Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love, sparked the #MeToo movement – a cultural acknowledgment of sexual misconduct in entertainment, news and other industries.
Weinstein’s trial in New York attracted intense publicity, with reporters crowding the courtroom and cameras lining up outside to capture footage of the former studio head walking in and out of the courtroom. Protesters chanted “rapist” outside the courthouse.
“To be blunt, the court of public opinion has become the court of law in this case,” Weinstein’s lawyers wrote.
Weinstein maintains his innocence and claims that any sexual activity was consensual.
He was acquitted in the New York first-degree rape trial and two counts of predatory sexual assault stemming from actress Annabella Sciorra’s allegations of a rape in the mid-1990s – testimony that his lawyers argue is so old it should never have been. allowed.
The judge’s decision to allow the testimony of three women whose allegations did not result in indictments in the New York case “burdened” the trial with “excessive, haphazard, and highly dubious prior evidence.”
A five-judge panel in the state’s intermediate appeals court heard Weinstein’s initial appeal. Some of the judges were critical of Burke and prosecutors, suggesting at a December 2021 hearing that they were open to overturning Weinstein’s conviction and ordering a new trial.
In their appeal to the appeals court, Weinstein’s lawyers said the material – belonging to 28 alleged acts of gross behavior over 30 years – would have served “only to make the jury hate Weinstein” and that giving prosecutors those arrows in his quiver deprived him of his right to testify in his own defense.
Aidala said she wants the appeals court to remind state courts “that a defendant cannot be tried on the basis of his character – but must be tried on the basis of the conduct for which he was accused.”
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