Harvey Weinstein has launched an appeal against his Los Angeles rap conviction.
Harvey Weinstein has launched an appeal
Lawyers for the 72-year-old former film producer have claimed that he didn’t get a fair trial in his case in California in 2022, when he was convicted of rape and sexual assault.
Weinstein was handed a 16-year jail sentence, but he’s now requesting a new trial.
According to Weinstein’s lawyers, he “stands wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting Jane Doe 1”.
In documents seen by NBC, it’s also claimed that evidence was wrongly excluded from the trial and that the jury was unfairly prejudiced by testimony from other women about alleged sexual assaults that he was not charged with.
What’s more, Weinstein’s legal team argue that Superior Court Judge Lisa B Lench made a mistake in allowing jurors to know about Weinstein’s previous conviction in New York, which was subsequently overturned.
In April, Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals.
The court ruled with a majority 4-3 vote that the movie mogul did not receive a fair trial, after they found prosecutors were allowed to call witnesses whose accusations were not the focus of the case.
As a result, the ruling declared Weinstein – who will remain in prison for a separate 2022 rape conviction – had been tried on his past behaviour, not solely the crimes he had been charged with.
They stated that Justice James Burke, the judge in charge of the 2020 trial, “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes”.
The ruling added: “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
