Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat Harvey Weinstein's Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump's Trial
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-harvey-weinsteins-overturned-conviction-means-for-donald-trumps-trialNo paywall link
https://archive.li/p6YHE
On Thursday morning, a divided New York State Court of Appeals overturned Harvey Weinsteins 2020 conviction for sex crimes and ordered a new trial. The 43 ruling turned largely on the original judges decision to let into court evidence of alleged crimes other than the ones for which jurors had been asked to assess Weinsteins guilt or innocence. The court had permitted women to testify about allegations of sexual assault that were separate from the three for which he was charged. It had also ruled that Weinstein, should he testify, could be questioned about his wider history of alleged misconduct.
Harvey Weinstein has been accused by more than a hundred women of various forms of sexual harassment and assault, with many of their stories reported in The New Yorker, and detailed in my subsequent book and podcast, Catch and Kill. Thursdays news was greeted with anguish by activists and by Weinsteins alleged victims. This is an on-going failure of the justice systemand the courtsto take survivors seriously and to protect our interests, Ambra Gutierrez, one of Weinsteins early accusers, said, in a statement.
But Thursdays ruling was, to many legal spectators, unsurprising. The idea that juries should consider only the crimes charged in a given case, and that evidence of other bad acts should be excluded, is a foundational principle of criminal law, designed to protect defendants from the unfair presumption of guilt. In New York, the precept is embodied in the Molineux rule, named for a 1901 case in which an appeals court overturned a verdict that found a chemist named Roland Molineux guilty of murder by cyanide poisoning. The appeals court held that the trial courts admission of allegations related to an earlier, unrelated killing had invited jurors to consider the defendants general propensity for crime, rather than the facts at hand. This principle of fairness is simple. The intricacies of how it should be implemented are, as Thursdays decision underscores, complicated. There are vast exceptions to the general prohibition of evidence of uncharged acts: the federal rules of evidence contain an exception for sex crimes, where, the logic goes, criminal conduct often hews to a pattern. In New York, which has not adopted that federal exception, case law has generally followed the Molineux holding, which allowed jurors to consider evidence of other, uncharged crimes if it tends to establish (1) motive; (2) intent; (3) the absence of mistake or accident; (4) a common scheme or plan embracing the commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to establish the others; (5) the identity of the person charged with the commission of the crime on trial. But William Werner, the judge who wrote the Molineux decision, acknowledged with some prescience that the exceptions to the rule cannot be stated with categorical precision.
Thursdays decision reveals a court struggling to parse those exceptions. Writing for the majority, Judge Jenny Rivera argued that testimony from women with allegations other than the ones Weinstein was charged with served no material non-propensity purpose, and that allowing prosecutors to cross-examine Weinstein about unrelated acts undermined his right to testify. In a potent dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote, The majority appears oblivious to, or unconcerned with, the distressing implications of its holding. Men who serially sexually exploit their power over womenespecially the most vulnerable groups in societywill reap the benefit of todays decision. Under the majoritys logic, instances in which a trafficker repeatedly leverages workers undocumented status to coerce them into sex, or a restaurant manager withholds tips from his employees unless they perform sexual acts becomes a series of individual credibility contests and unrelated misunderstandings. After todays holding, juries will remain in the dark about, and defendants will be insulated from, past criminal acts, even after putting intent at issue by claiming consent. Ultimately, the road to holding defendants accountable for sexual assault has become significantly more difficult.
*snip*
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
0 replies, 427 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (6)
ReplyReply to this post