A New York appeals court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for rape and other sex crimes yesterday and ordered a new trial.
It may feel like a “shocking reversal”, writes the New York Times’s Jodi Kantor, but the criminal case against the Hollywood producer has been “fragile since the day it was filed”.
Kantor, alongside Megan Twohey, first reported abuse allegations against Weinstein in 2017, starting the global #MeToo movement.
Nearly 100 women came forward with allegations of Weinstein’s misconduct, and Manhattan prosecutors included witnesses in the trial whose allegations did not feature in the charges.
That was its undoing: the appeals court found 4-3 that Weinstein did not receive a fair trial. Weinstein, 72, is separately serving 16 years for a rape conviction in California and will reportedly be moved to prison there.
The actress Ashley Judd, the first person to go public with allegations against Weinstein, said: “We still live in our truth. And we know what happened.”
aLSO, in the sensemaker
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