Harvey Weinstein’s attorney Arthur Aidala made optimistic remarks at the first press conference after the former Hollywood mogul’s rape conviction was overturned in New York.
“This is a great day for America and the world,” the lawyer in the appellate case said of Thursday’s legal update, with TheWrap present outside the courthouse.
The New York State Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges after finding that the trial judge who oversaw Weinstein’s case “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts” — meaning information presented to the jury didn’t apply to the specific charges against Weinstein.
“The world is watching,” Aidala added. “I got a call from my cousins in Bolognetta, Sicily — a town with 3,000 people in it — that it’s on the news in Bolognetta, Sicily. That’s how important this case is that America will uphold the laws of this land for everyone. No one’s above the law, but no one’s beneath the law either.”
At the age of 72 years old, Weinstein had made it through four years of his original 23-year sentence in prison in upstate Rome, New York.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will make the decision to retry the case or not. Bragg is currently trying former President Donald Trump in the hush money case with Stormy Daniels.
Weinstein was also convicted in 2022 for the 2013 sexual assault and rape of an Italian model in a Beverly Hills hotel room. He was sentenced to 16 years in California prison. He was acquitted in the Los Angeles trial on charges involving former model Lauren Young, who testified in New York.
Judge Madeline Singas wrote a dissent to the majority decision, arguing that the court failed to make sense of the nuances of the sexual assault case.
“Fundamental misunderstandings of sexual violence perpetrated by men known to, and with significant power over, the women they victimize are on full display in the majority’s opinion,” she wrote. “By whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative, by ignoring evidence of defendant’s manipulation and premeditation, which clouded issues of intent, and by failing to recognize that the jury was entitled to consider defendant’s previous assaults. This court has continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
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