Staff Reports
Hollywood big shot Harvey Weinstein got some good news Thursday when New York’s top court threw out his 2020 conviction for two sex attacks. You see, he’s serving a 16-year sentence in an upstate New York slammer, but now that looks very wobbly because of how he’s been treated.
Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction overturned | LIVE updates from his legal team https://t.co/fUP4p8jw7S
— FOX 5 NY (@fox5ny) April 25, 2024
According to the far-left New York Times, the Court of Appeals in New York said the trial judge messed up by letting “prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.” The appeals court found other mistakes as well and said Weinstein did not have a fair trial. And that’s true because this case should have been a 7-0 decision to overturn.
Now, New York’s district attorney, Trump hater Alvin L. Bragg, can choose to throw Weinstein back in trial or ship him off to California. In 2022, Weinstein was found guilty of raping a woman in Beverly Hills and sentenced to 16 years.
This whole thing seems like a classic case of trying to make a bad man look even worse. It’s insane that the prosecutor was allowed to bring a bunch of women before the jury to make claims of sexual misconduct against Weinstein that could not be proven. The judge should have put a stop to that, but in the hysteria of the #MeToo movement, nobody was focused on fairness or the law, just pleasing the mob.
Harvey Weinstein is a scoundrel. No doubt about it. But even a scoundrel deserves a fair trial. When we stop giving the worst people fair trials, the line between fair and crooked trials moves closer to ordinary folks like you and me.
Those “series of women” who testified against Weinstein never proved their accusations in court. The judge should have known that was a problem.
Even if Weinstein had been found guilty of attacking those witnesses, the state still had to prove Weinstein was guilty of the charges without biasing the jury with past behavior.
I don’t defend people like Harvey Weinstein, Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, or Bill Maher because I like them. I don’t. I defend their rights to protect my own rights. I want even the most awful people and those I disagree with most to have their full rights, both in court and in public opinion. Why? Because if their rights are safe, my rights are too. Piling on when their rights are violated only hurts my rights, because then that line moves closer to me.
Weinstein won’t be getting out anytime soon. If the district attorney decides to retry him, Weinstein will likely stay in prison until the new trial. If not, Weinstein still has to serve a sentence in California.
