Shortly before Donald Trump’s trial resumed in New York on Thursday morning, a low murmur of surprise swept through the courtroom where members of the public and media had gathered.
A New York appeals court had overturned the 2020 conviction of Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood producer and power player who was serving 23 years after being convicted of rape and sexual assault. He remains in jail, having been separately convicted of rape in Los Angeles. Everybody, from Weinstein’s legal team to the many women who forsook their anonymity to testify against him, was caught unawares by both the timing and outcome of the New York ruling.
“An act of institutional betrayal” was the summary of Ashley Judd, the actor who was among the first to come forward with claims against Weinstein. Even as the former president, lawyers and jurors broke for lunch in the trial on the 15th floor of the Manhattan criminal court, Weinstein’s lawyer stood for a hastily arranged media briefing on the steps of the same building. In the snippets of his lengthy address that made the network news bulletins, Arthur Aidala sounds exuberant as he hails the appeal as “a great day for America”, which came across as strange given the appalling violent details that received mass coverage during the trial four years ago.
But Aidala’s message was nuanced, and he was speaking about the legal significance of the ruling. “It may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not,” he said, to qualify his praise. “Because it instils in us a faith that there’s a justice system.”
Aidala said he and his legal team were adamant from the beginning that Weinstein did not receive a fair trial. He quoted the observation of Judith Kaye, the first woman to serve as chief judge of New York, that while there are people who are unpopular in society, “we still have to apply the law fairly to them”.
It was an extraordinary confluence of legal circumstance: that the current trial of a former president and the past (and potentially future) trial of a man now remembered as one of Hollywood’s most notorious figures arrived at the steps of the same Manhattan courthouse on the same day.
Seven years have passed since a New York Times investigation detailed allegations of decades of sexual misconduct against Weinstein. Shortly afterwards, the New Yorker published a story about 13 women who disclosed their experiences with the producer, ranging from harassment to allegations of rape. He was quickly dismissed by the company that bore his name, and was treated as a pariah as the film industry came to terms with its internal culture of silent acceptance of the behaviour disclosed. Many of the women who came forward had told agents and insiders about their experiences and were uniformly advised to say nothing.
The prospect of having to go through the public ordeal of a new trial and of having to to face Weinstein in court again will be harrowing for the women whose decision to go public initiated the #MeToo movement
At the trial, Judge James Burke had granted the prosecution’s request to allow women, in relation to whom the defendant faced no charges, come to court and testify as to their encounters with him. Furthermore, the prosecution would be permitted to question Weinstein about those wider allegations, if he chose to testify. The judge’s decision abandoned the century-old Molineux rule, which limited testimony to complainants directly involved in the case. The appeals court found that the threat posed to Weinstein of a cross-examination highlighting untested allegations undermined his right to testify in his defence.
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Now Weinstein’s legal team is looking forward to a new trial, with a new judge and prosecutor. “If there is a trial here in New York, Mr Weinstein’s insistence on... innocence will come forward and he will be acquitted, yes,” Aidala predicted.
The prospect of having to go through the public ordeal of a new trial and to face Weinstein in court again will be harrowing for the women whose decision to go public initiated the #MeToo movement. Judge Madeline Singas, one of the dissenting judges in the appeals court’s 4-3 ruling, argued that a fundamental misunderstanding of sexual violence perpetrated by men was “on full display” in the court’s decision.
“The majority appears oblivious to, or unconcerned with, the distressing implications of its holding. Men who serially sexually exploit their power over women – especially the most vulnerable groups in society – will reap the benefit of today’s decision.”
The appeal court’s decision drew immediate parallels with the ongoing Trump trial, in which the Molineux ruling also comes into play. The judge, Juan Merchan, has permitted the jury to hear evidence of uncharged activity, as the prosecution seeks to establish a pattern of deliberate conspiracy to affect the outcome of the 2016 election through illegal payments to suppress information that could have been damaging to Trump’s campaign.