New York appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction from landmark #MeToo trial
New York appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction from landmark #MeToo trial
New York's highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, ordering a new trial in the landmark #MeToo case.
For those of you who are wondering why Trump seems to get so much leeway, this is why. The prosecutors and judge have to be perfect in their process and their treatment of the defendant, otherwise a conviction can be thrown out like this.
And for those of you complaining about the two-tier justice system, you're 100% correct. Because if someone without the resources of Weinstein or Trump were in a similar situation, they probably wouldn't be able to appeal at all.
At least in Weinstein's case , he won't be released right away, since California has also convicted him. And this is, ironically, a good thing for Trump, also, because he now has something to talk about that won't run afoul of the gag order.
OJ gets out of it, Trump gets out of it, Cosby gets out of it, Weinstein gets out of it... the common thread here is wealth.
Yes, but not just wealth for it's own sake, wealth that can be used to buy the services of good defense lawyers, who know how to exercise every right available to the defense.
Or, in Trump's case, just kinda OK lawyers who get a lot of shit wrong, but know how to file all the paperwork, so that every now and then one of their motions sticks.
At least with OJ, he got locked up for a decade for theft and kidnapping. Not exactly life in prison but a decently long sentence. Cosby spent less than a year and a half in prison for raping dozens of women.
Weinstein still has 16 years for his California conviction.
Everyone needs to read and re-read this comment. This is precisely what is going on with Trump.
Trump has gotten leeway bcz he's a former president. If he was just a real estate developer/business person amd had these same criminal proceedings against him, he be in prison already. There are plenty of examples of people sharing state secrets, and working for/with foreign governments as agents on their behalf and they've ended up in prison with life sentences pretty damn quick.
Let's also be very clear that the court is made up of (usually white men) people. There are plenty of appeals cases where the court goes to great lengths to keep someone in prison even when the law is 100% on the side of the wrongfully convicted.
I have read a state supreme court say "yes that is the law (to exonerate them) but still we're going to find it's ok (to keep them locked up)". Like, that was almost verbatim the opinion delivered. Can they do that? Well - yeah. Sure the appellant could try for the SCOTUS but #1 they had no money and #2 they'd lose there too, now.
That is one of the other reasons the criminal clown has gotten away with so much for so long.
I mean it's not like Trump ever pays his bills anyway, but still, it's the principle of the thing.
Eh...
The reason is because NY voters are so progressive, the wealthy throw insane money at statewide primaries.
This is the person that appointed the head of the appealate court.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul
An "independent Democrat" that was Cuomo's running mate and won the election after he was kicked out.
The voters didn't want her, but because it's NY she still beat the Republican, but it was the closest governor race in 30 years for NY.
Neoliberals want to keep the current pro-wealrhy system just as much as republicans, because they have the same donors.
the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren’t part of the case.
Well, yeah, that's a pretty major problem. If they're bringing in allegations that aren't part of the case how is the defendant supposed to defend himself against that?
Everyone getting angry about this as a miscarriage of justice, I agree, but direct that anger at the judge and prosecutors who screwed it up so badly. Echoes of Cosby getting off due to a prosecutor making a stupid deal, or OJ getting off because the police apparently tried to frame a guilty man.
But the judge and prosecutors should know that this would happen right? I'm a tad above a layman but isn't it obvious that this would happen? It's so negligent I'm almost convinced that it was negligence. Or is it that they usually get away with this kind of thing?
This is correct. I know the tendency on the left lately (and especially on Lemmy) is that the ends always justify the means, but the rule of law is more important. Rights of the accused are crucial to maintaining democracy. If the state fucks up its case or breaks the rules, they need to be held to account even if it means pieces of shit sometimes get away with things. Reference the entire Miranda case the warnings are based on, for example.
I also believe karma is a bitch. OJ got off but he was held civilly liable and he went on to commit other crimes that eventually landed him in prison for a significant chunk of his life. (To that point, karma eventually caught up with Miranda also...)
Yeah. Lots of people parrot the phrase "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer," but then as soon as some specific guilty person goes free they go "no, wait, let me amend that..."
It does annoy me that the guilty men going free does tend to skew strongly towards rich guilty men, simply because they can afford to fight it out. But I'd rather everyone get the chance to fight it out rather than remove those opportunities. Maybe if everyone had the opportunity to fight for all their rights the police and prosecutors would start taking more care not to violate them.
As a consequentialist, this changes nothing and therefor is nothing, because he's still convicted in California. I guess a good lesson for future prosecutors.
This was definitely not a headline that I expected to see today given everything else that's going on. Fuck.