NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) – Disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein requested a New York state appeals court docket to throw out his sexual-assault conviction and grant him a brand new trial.
“Weinstein sought no particular remedy right here, however he anticipated the trial court docket to guard his constitutional ensures,” his lawyer Barry Kamins informed 5 appeals court docket judges throughout a listening to on Wednesday (Dec 15).
“The trial court docket had a heightened accountability to make sure that Mr Weinstein acquired a good trial and that chance was destroyed.”
Legal professionals for the one-time Hollywood energy dealer, who’s serving a 23-year jail sentence, claimed his February 2020 conviction was based mostly on the rise of the #MeToo motion in opposition to sexual violence moderately than particular crimes.
They stated the trial choose made quite a few errors, together with permitting ladies to testify who didn’t seem within the indictment and blocking testimony from an professional who would have forged doubt on the case.
Mr Kamins additionally stated a biased juror “lied to the court docket” in regards to the nature of a novel she wrote about older males having relationships with youthful ladies. The lawyer stated the juror had an “financial curiosity” in staying on the panel.
“She needed to be on this jury,” Mr Kamins stated.
Some rulings by the trial choose additionally prevented Weinstein from taking the stand in his personal defence, his lawyer stated, together with a ruling that allowed three ladies to testify about prior misbehaviour by Weinstein that was not mirrored within the prices.
America authorities disputed Mr Kamin’s claims throughout the listening to.
Assistant District Legal professional Valerie Figueredo argued that the juror was “solely trustworthy and candid” about her novel, which Ms Figueredo known as a “coming of age story set within the Nineteen Eighties” and never a “e book about sexual relationships or predatory previous males”, and that it didn’t stop her from being truthful and neutral.
The panel appeared sceptical in regards to the determination to introduce proof of Weinstein’s prior dangerous behaviour, with one justice asking if that was not “overkill”.
Ms Figueredo argued that the proof helped to help the allegation that ladies had not agreed to have interaction in sexual exercise with Weinstein.
“Simply because ladies had been coming to him or looking for his skilled assist, they aren’t asking for extra,” she stated.
The appeals court docket judges didn’t say once they would rule on Weinstein’s request for a brand new trial.
Weinstein, 69, was discovered responsible of rape and a legal sexual act, greater than two years after allegations that he assaulted quite a few ladies over his many years within the film trade.
The allegations in opposition to him helped spark the #MeToo motion.
Weinstein’s conviction greater than a yr in the past adopted studies by the New York Occasions and the New Yorker in 2017 that dozens of girls had accused the highly effective producer of preying on them, unleashing related claims in opposition to leaders in leisure, media and different industries.
Weinstein was convicted of a first-degree legal sexual act for forcing oral intercourse on Mission Runway assistant Miriam Haley in his Soho loft in 2006 and third-degree rape for an assault on actress Jessica Mann in a midtown Manhattan resort in 2013.
He was cleared of predatory sexual assault, which carries a compulsory time period of life in jail, and first-degree rape. He’s nonetheless going through legal prices in Los Angeles in a case that would go to trial subsequent yr.