New York appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction from landmark #MeToo trial

NEW YORK — New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, saying the judge in the landmark #MeToo trial biased the ex-movie mogul with inappropriate statements, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that were not part of the case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of accusations against Weinstein. The court ordered a new trial. His accusers could be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.

Weinstein, 72, is serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of 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 an aspiring actress in 2013.

He remains imprisoned because he was convicted of another rape in Los Angeles in 2022 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges leveled by one of the women who testified in New York.

Weinstein’s lawyers argued that Judge James Burke’s ruling in favor of the plaintiff turned the trial into a “1-800-GET-HARVEY.”

The overturning of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the past two years, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s sex abuse conviction explain.

Weinstein’s conviction lasted more than four years, was heralded as a landmark case by activists and advocates, but was just as quickly dissected by his lawyers and later by the Court of Appeals when it heard arguments on the case in February.