Surprising Decision Overturns Harvey Weinstein’s Sex Crime Conviction in New York

Harvey Weinstein, a former Hollywood producer, was hospitalized in New York on Saturday after the highest court in the city overturned his 2020 conviction on sex crime charges. The surprising decision, with a vote of 4 to 3, overturned a critical case of the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein will still serve a separate 16-year sentence for rape in California. According to his lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, the New York Department of Corrections determined that Weinstein needed immediate medical attention and is currently undergoing tests and observation at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

The accusations against Weinstein emerged in 2017 and sparked the #MeToo movement that empowered women to speak out against sexual violence in the workplace. In 2020, Weinstein was convicted in a New York court of rape and sexual assault of Jessica Mann in 2013, as well as forcibly performing oral sex on a former production assistant in 2006. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. However, the appeals court ruled that the trial judge was wrong to admit testimony from other women who had allegedly suffered abuse by Weinstein but were not named in the charges against him. This decision led to the ordering of a new trial.