As considered one of Harvey Weinstein’s key accusers took the witness stand throughout his trial in New York, she broke down in tears, sobbing uncontrollably. After a short break, she nonetheless couldn’t compose herself. The trial was adjourned for the day. Hyperventilating, the girl was ushered out and her piercing screams bellowed out from a again room.
The episode was considered one of many tense moments within the extremely publicized, weekslong trial of the previous Hollywood titan in 2020. Now, they might occur once more.
On Thursday, New York’s highest courtroom dominated that the trial decide who presided over the intercourse crimes case in Manhattan erred when he let a number of ladies testify that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, although their accusations weren’t a part of the fees introduced towards the producer. The appeals courtroom ordered a brand new trial.
However the authentic trial in 2020 towards Mr. Weinstein was about a lot a couple of man’s guilt. It had morphed into one thing extra, as his accusers sparked the worldwide #MeToo motion: Prosecutors have been attempting to show not solely that Mr. Weinstein was a sexual predator, but additionally that the justice system was each prepared and in a position to maintain highly effective males accountable for his or her therapy of ladies.
The brand new ruling might do little to vary the general public’s notion of Mr. Weinstein, who remains to be infamous and behind bars and was sentenced to 16 years in jail for intercourse crimes in California.
For some, nevertheless, it raised new doubts concerning the authorized system’s capacity to carry influential individuals like him accountable.
Mr. Weinstein had been serving his sentence in an upstate New York jail when his conviction was overturned. He was transferred on Friday to the Rikers Island jail complicated to await a brand new trial. On Friday night time, Mr. Weinstein, whose well being has been poor, was transferred to the Bellevue Hospital Middle’s jail ward for testing, his lawyer and jail officers stated.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan district lawyer, Alvin Bragg, stated the workplace would do “every thing in our energy” to retry Mr. Weinstein. However for a case that many authorized specialists stated was shaky from the beginning, it’s unclear what a brand new trial would appear to be.
The preliminary legal indictment charged Mr. Weinstein with sexually assaulting two ladies. Nonetheless, three different ladies have been permitted to testify as Molineux witnesses, who’re referred to as on to indicate a defendant’s sample of habits. The case turned solely on whether or not a jury would imagine the ladies’s testimony. Prosecutors didn’t have any bodily proof to help the ladies’s accounts. Mr. Weinstein, prosecutors stated, was a predator who used his energy within the movie trade to prey on ladies.
But the district lawyer’s workplace had to assist jurors perceive the complicated relationships that typically exist between sufferer and abuser: The 2 primary accusers had maintained friendships with Mr. Weinstein after the alleged assaults, and considered one of them even had some consensual sexual encounters with him. Mr. Weinstein has stated that the entire encounters have been consensual.
Until new accusers — who could also be referred to as as witnesses on the second trial — come ahead, prosecutors must depend on the testimony of 1 or each of the ladies Mr. Weinstein was initially convicted of assaulting.
One of many ladies, Miriam Haley, a former manufacturing assistant on the tv present “Venture Runway,” accused Mr. Weinstein of forcing oral intercourse on her in 2006 at his loft in Decrease Manhattan. The opposite, Jessica Mann, then an aspiring actress, stated Mr. Weinstein raped her in a New York resort room.
The ladies, if referred to as to testify throughout a second trial, must face one other spherical of grueling cross-examinations by Mr. Weinstein’s legal professionals.
Ms. Haley stated throughout a information convention on Friday that she would contemplate testifying once more. However she stated making ready for the trial was exhausting, forcing her and the opposite ladies to relive their trauma again and again.
“I undoubtedly don’t truly wish to undergo that once more, however for the sake of maintaining going and doing the fitting factor and since it’s what occurred, I might contemplate it,” she stated. “It’s troublesome for me personally, however it will be significant for the collective.”
Ms. Mann didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The district lawyer’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to questions on a brand new trial. However in an announcement this week, a spokesperson stated that the workplace will “heart survivors’ experiences and well-being in each resolution we make.”
Arthur Aidala, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, stated the contours of any new trial are “within the prosecutor’s palms.” He stated that his group would object to any plans from the prosecution to name on Ms. Mann as a result of they imagine Mr. Weinstein “has already served the utmost he might serve in her case.”
However the district lawyer’s workplace mustn’t have difficulties beginning over so long as Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley are prepared to maneuver ahead with a brand new trial, stated Michelle Madden Dempsey, a legislation professor at Villanova College who was a home violence prosecutor in Illinois.
She stated prosecutors have been reluctant to carry sexual assault circumstances if they’re constructed across the experiences of victims alone, with out including different witnesses who can converse to the defendant’s sample of habits, Ms. Dempsey stated.
Jane Manning, the director of Girls’s Equal Justice, an advocacy group, and a former intercourse crimes prosecutor, stated the district lawyer’s workplace might make use of “outcry witnesses” — individuals whom the accusers confided in about their assaults — and different witnesses who might corroborate the accusers’ testimony.
For instance, throughout the 2020 trial, a resort employee testified that he was apprehensive about Ms. Mann’s security when he noticed her with Mr. Weinstein within the foyer. He stated he left a word for safety to test on her in Mr. Weinstein’s room.
It could be tougher for prosecutors to win a conviction in a brand new trial with out the Molineux witnesses, in accordance with authorized specialists.
Using these witnesses might be contentious and it may be troublesome to get a New York courtroom to confess their testimony right into a trial. Judges are tasked with weighing whether or not the testimony may help show {that a} crime was a part of a sample of habits towards the potential to prejudice the jury towards the defendant.
Prosecutors had referred to as on three such witnesses, all of whom have been aspiring actresses who stated Mr. Weinstein sexually assaulted them after luring them into non-public conferences to debate their careers. Additionally they added a fourth witness, the actress Annabella Sciorra, whose testimony was supposed to help predatory sexual assault fees, although her alleged encounter with Mr. Weinstein occurred too way back to be charged individually as rape. (The jury didn’t convict Mr. Weinstein of predatory sexual assault.)
“These ‘prior dangerous acts’ actually helped to prop up the credibility of the proof,” stated David Shapiro, a former prosecutor in Essex County, N.J., and a lecturer at John Jay Faculty of Prison Justice.
“That is actually going to make the probability of convicting him once more harder,” he added.
However Mr. Shapiro stated prosecutors’ use of such witnesses was “overkill” and that they performed a task in Mr. Weinstein’s conviction being overturned.
Mr. Weinstein didn’t testify throughout the authentic trial. His legal professionals informed The New York Occasions that if he had, the decide would have allowed the prosecution to query him about different allegations associated to bodily assaults, threats and different violent habits.
Mr. Weinstein needs to testify in a brand new trial, Mr. Aidala stated, although he referred to as it a “game-time resolution.” A second trial might open Mr. Weinstein as much as a brutal cross-examination by prosecutors.
“He has proclaimed his innocence, unequivocally and repeatedly,” Mr. Aidala stated.
On Wednesday, Mr. Weinstein will seem at a listening to in the identical courthouse the place he was tried and convicted. Will probably be step one within the course of towards a brand new trial, ought to the district lawyer determine to retry him.
As a result of the appeals courtroom cited authorized errors in overturning the conviction — however didn’t exonerate Mr. Weinstein — the ruling can also provoke victims to “wish to struggle tougher,” stated Scott Berkowitz, the president of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest Nationwide Community, a nonprofit.
But when prosecutors drop the case, he stated, it might have “a very deflating and miserable impact.”