On May 1, 2024, Harvey Weinstein – former and bankrupt Hollywood producer – will be retried in New York, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office statement on Wednesday. The week before, on April 25th, the New York Court of Appeals voted in a 4-3 decision to erase Weinstein’s conviction to serve 23 years in prison. The convicted sex offender is currently serving his 16-year sentence in a prison located in upstate Rome, New York, but remained silent after his overturned trial, with his lawyer, Arthur Aidala, maintaining his innocence. Over 80 women have come forward to accuse Weinstein, but not all the accusations made it into his case.
The state’s highest court said the trial judge made a “critical mistake by letting women testify that Weinstein assaulted them even though they were not part of the charges he faced.” James Burke, the judge who presided over the first case, will be exchanged with another New York Judge. Statements confirm the new trial will occur after Labor Day, Sep. 2, but no definitive court date has been established.
Aidala told CNN that Weinstein is “very grateful” for the overturning of his conviction and that the witnesses “were there just to make Harvey Weinstein look bad.” Former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. made a statement: “The judicial system, in my opinion, has let them down today and did not advance justice.” The attorney representing at least 8 witnesses, Douglas H. Wigdor, also stated that “overturning the verdict is tragic in that it will require the victims to endure yet another trial.”
At least one accuser said through her lawyer that she would testify again, despite how “traumatizing” it was to be on the stand. In a dissent to the Court of Appeals decision to overturn Weinstein’s case, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” She said the ruling came at “the expense and safety of women.” (AP News) The ruling has since left women who had previously celebrated the 2020 conviction disillusioned, as a historic milestone in the #MeToo movement, in which women came forward about their sexual abuse to hold their abusers accountable has now been overturned.
