For the past seven years, Harvey Weinstein has been the bogeyman of popular culture. His depravity seems to the public to be so established that other monstrous men’s misconduct is measured by his misdeeds: Well, sure, he might have done something wrong, but he’s not exactly Harvey Weinstein, is he? Yet while Weinstein’s guilt might be thoroughly determined in the eyes of the public, the eyes of the legal system are a different matter. On April 25, the New York State Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 2020 sex crime conviction.
Weinstein’s legal victory here hinges on a procedural issue, and an ironic one at that. Part of what convinced the public so thoroughly of Weinstein’s guilt was the sheer number of accusations against him. There were dozens upon dozens of them; at Vox, we kept a running tally that topped out around 80. Such an enormous flood of accusations seemed to suggest that at least some of them had to be accurate.
It was those very additional accusations, however, that got this trial overturned. When Weinstein originally came before the court in 2020, he was being tried for various sex crimes against three different women. Over the course of the trial, however, Judge James Burke allowed prosecutors to present testimony from three other Weinstein accusers, even though Weinstein wasn’t being prosecuted for attacking these women. Burke also said that if Weinstein chose to testify, prosecutors would be able to ask Weinstein about all the accusations against him during cross-examination, even the ones he hadn’t been charged for. (In the end, Weinstein did not testify.)
In the press, unprosecuted accusations against Weinstein went a long way toward establishing the pattern of behavior that convinced the public of his guilt. In the courts, however, New York state law holds that you can’t use an accusation of an uncharged crime as evidence against someone who you are currently prosecuting for a different crime.
“Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged,” said the Court of Appeals in their 4–3 decision. “It is our solemn duty to diligently guard these rights regardless of the crime charged, the reputation of the accused, or the pressure to convict.”
Currently, Weinstein is in a New York City hospital, where he’s receiving a variety of health tests. He remains in custody, serving out the 16-year term he was sentenced to in California after having been convicted there of rape in 2022. New York prosecutors have said they intend to recharge him, but it’s unclear if he’ll be transferred to California in the interim.
To understand exactly how the legal mechanisms at play here worked, I called up Eliza Orlins. Orlins is a public defender based in........