As one in every 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 quick 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 one in every of many tense moments within the extremely publicized, weekslong trial of the previous Hollywood titan in 2020. Now, they might occur over again.
On Thursday, New York’s highest court docket dominated that the trial choose 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 in opposition to the producer. The appeals court docket ordered a brand new trial.
However the unique trial in 2020 in opposition to 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 making an attempt to show not solely that Mr. Weinstein was a sexual predator, but additionally that the justice system was each prepared and capable of maintain highly effective males accountable for his or her therapy of girls.
The brand new ruling could do little to vary the 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 in regards to 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 evening, Mr. Weinstein, whose well being has been poor, was transferred to the Bellevue Hospital Heart’s jail ward for testing, his lawyer and jail officers mentioned.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan district legal professional, Alvin Bragg, mentioned the workplace would do “every little thing in our energy” to retry Mr. Weinstein. However for a case that many authorized specialists mentioned was shaky from the beginning, it’s unclear what a brand new trial would seem like.
The preliminary prison indictment charged Mr. Weinstein with sexually assaulting two ladies. Nonetheless, three different ladies have been permitted to testify as Molineux witnesses, who’re known as on to point out a defendant’s sample of conduct. 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 mentioned, was a predator who used his energy within the movie business to prey on ladies.
But the district legal professional’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 one in every of them even had some consensual sexual encounters with him. Mr. Weinstein has mentioned that the entire encounters have been consensual.
Until new accusers — who could also be known 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, mentioned Mr. Weinstein raped her in a New York lodge room.
The ladies, if known as to testify throughout a second trial, must face one other spherical of grueling cross-examinations by Mr. Weinstein’s attorneys.
Ms. Haley mentioned throughout a information convention on Friday that she would contemplate testifying once more. However she mentioned making ready for the trial was exhausting, forcing her and the opposite ladies to relive their trauma time and again.
“I positively don’t truly wish to undergo that once more, however for the sake of maintaining going and doing the proper factor and since it’s what occurred, I’d contemplate it,” she mentioned. “It’s troublesome for me personally, however it’s important for the collective.”
Ms. Mann didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The district legal professional’s workplace didn’t immediately reply to questions on a brand new trial. However in a press release this week, a spokesperson mentioned that the workplace will “heart survivors’ experiences and well-being in each choice we make.”
Arthur Aidala, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, mentioned the contours of any new trial are “within the prosecutor’s palms.” He mentioned 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 legal professional’s workplace shouldn’t have difficulties beginning over so long as Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley are prepared to maneuver ahead with a brand new trial, mentioned Michelle Madden Dempsey, a legislation professor at Villanova College who was a home violence prosecutor in Illinois.
She mentioned 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 communicate to the defendant’s sample of conduct, Ms. Dempsey mentioned.
Jane Manning, the director of Girls’s Equal Justice, an advocacy group, and a former intercourse crimes prosecutor, mentioned the district legal professional’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 lodge employee testified that he was fearful about Ms. Mann’s security when he noticed her with Mr. Weinstein within the foyer. He mentioned he left a be aware for safety to examine 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.
The usage of these witnesses could be contentious and it may be troublesome to get a New York court docket 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 conduct in opposition to the potential to prejudice the jury in opposition to the defendant.
Prosecutors had known as on three such witnesses, all of whom have been aspiring actresses who mentioned 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 expenses, 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 unhealthy acts’ actually helped to prop up the credibility of the proof,” mentioned 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 chance of convicting him once more tougher,” he added.
However Mr. Shapiro mentioned prosecutors’ use of such witnesses was “overkill” and that they performed a job in Mr. Weinstein’s conviction being overturned.
Mr. Weinstein didn’t testify throughout the unique trial. His attorneys instructed The New York Instances that if he had, the choose would have allowed the prosecution to query him about different allegations associated to bodily assaults, threats and different violent conduct.
Mr. Weinstein needs to testify in a brand new trial, Mr. Aidala mentioned, although he known as it a “game-time choice.” 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 mentioned.
On Wednesday, Mr. Weinstein will seem at a listening to in the identical courthouse the place he was tried and convicted. It is going to be step one within the course of towards a brand new trial, ought to the district legal professional resolve to retry him.
As a result of the appeals court docket cited authorized errors in overturning the conviction — however didn’t exonerate Mr. Weinstein — the ruling may additionally impress victims to “wish to battle tougher,” mentioned Scott Berkowitz, the president of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest Nationwide Community, a nonprofit.
But when prosecutors drop the case, he mentioned, it could have “a very deflating and miserable impact.”
