There are few high-profile legal defendants as unsympathetic as Harvey Weinstein, the erstwhile Hollywood mogul whose alleged sexual misconduct towards girls was so pervasive that it was reportedly an open secret in superstar circles. So the New York Court docket of Appeals’ determination yesterday overturning his intercourse crime convictions in that state could have appeared to characterize one thing deeper: backlash to the #MeToo motion, how highly effective males are held to a much less strong customary of justice, how we do not take survivors of sexual assault severely.
In actuality, it was about none of these issues. It was truly a couple of legal defendant receiving a good trial—an uncontroversial premise typically. This case admittedly is not like most instances. The premise ought to nonetheless be uncontroversial.
In February 2020, Weinstein was convicted of first-degree legal sexual assault and third-degree rape after three girls testified about nonconsensual encounters with him. However throughout his trial, the prosecution satisfied the choose to permit three further witnesses to testify about their experiences with Weinstein as effectively, regardless of that their testimony associated to alleged misconduct for which Weinstein wasn’t charged.
That was a deadly error, stated the New York Court docket of Appeals.
“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” wrote Choose Jenny Rivera for the 4–3 majority ruling. “The only evidence against defendant was the complainants’ testimony, and the result of the court’s rulings, on the one hand, was to bolster their credibility and diminish defendant’s character before the jury. On the other hand, the threat of a cross-examination highlighting these untested allegations undermined defendant’s right to testify. The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
On the coronary heart of that call is Folks v. Molineux, a landmark New York ruling that considerably hamstrings the federal government’s skill to introduce proof of uncharged conduct, because it may unfairly prejudice a jury towards the defendant. In response to that 1901 determination, the Molineux rule “is the product of that same humane and enlightened public spirit which, speaking through our common law, has decreed that every person charged with the commission of a crime shall be protected by the presumption of innocence until [they have] been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
There are methods to bounce round that rule, however they’re restricted. Most notably, Molineux begins with considerably of a litmus check: Does the testimony merely set up propensity for criminality? If the reply to that’s “yes,” then that testimony should be excluded. And in Weinstein’s case, the appeals court docket dominated, the reply to that query was “yes.”
The court docket’s determination doesn’t suggest Weinstein is harmless. It means he deserves a good continuing. And he’ll nonetheless await that new continuing behind bars, as he was additionally sentenced to 16 years in jail by a California court docket after a jury discovered him responsible of three intercourse crimes there.
In dissent, Choose Madeline Singas stated the testimony detailing uncharged conduct rose above mere propensity in that it helped rebut longstanding myths about rape victims that would have tainted a jury’s analysis. There are certainly many such myths, together with the notion that credible victims instantly report assaults and sever any relationship with their attackers.
“But justice for sexual assault victims is not incompatible with well-established rules of evidence designed to ensure that criminal convictions result only from the illegal conduct charged,” countered Rivera. “Indeed, just as rape myths may impact the trier of fact’s deliberative process, propensity evidence has a bias-inducing effect on jurors and tends to undermine the truth-seeking function of trials.”
The #MeToo motion was in some ways a needed corrective to years of unacceptable conduct by highly effective males, together with Weinstein, who, in some sense, had been genuinely above the legislation. The answer, nonetheless, is to not make them beneath it. “Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged,” wrote Rivera. “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.”
