Harvey Weinstein ‘s legal team is reportedly arguing that he did not get a fair trial when he was sentenced to 16 years behind bars in February 2023 after being found guilty of rape and sexual assault in Los Angeles.
According to multiple outlets, including the Associated Press, CNN and NBC News, lawyers for Weinstein, 72, filed an appeal on Friday, June 7, in California’s Second District Court of Appeal, requesting a new trial. The move comes less than two months after the disgraced media mogul’s separate 2020 convictions in New York State for rape and sexual assault were overturned.
Weinstein was found guilty in February 2020 of criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree in a New York City courtroom. Three years later, he was sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison after another guilty verdict in a Los Angeles court.
Now, per the AP, Weinstein’s lawyers are calling the L.A. conviction “a miscarriage of justice,” claiming that the judge denied him “his constitutional rights to present a defense.”
A spokesperson for Weinstein, and a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on Saturday.
The guilty verdict concerned a woman previously identified as Jane Doe #1, who NBC News reported claimed that Weinstein “raped her for over an hour” while she was in town for the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival in 2013.
At the time, Weinstein was acquitted of a sexual battery charge relating to a Jane Doe #2, and the jury was hung on charges relating to a Jane Doe #3 and Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
The new appeal claims that the judge excluded evidence that the individual Weinstein was convicted of raping reportedly had a relationship with the director of a film festival that brought them both to Los Angeles at the time. Weinstein is now requesting a new trial, according to NBC News.
“Harvey Weinstein was tried by a system devoted to ‘getting him’ at all costs. This appeal demonstrates nearly a dozen areas of brazen legal missteps that violated his right to a fair trial,” Weinstein’s publicist, Juda Engelmayer, told NBC News. “We know he has a solid case here.”
Weinstein’s lawyers argue in the new appeal that “the jury was misled about [Jane Doe 1’s] truthfulness and precluded from considering game-changing evidence that pointed to Defendant’s innocence and contradicted the prosecution’s theory of guilt,” per NBC News.
Dave Ring, a lawyer for Jane Doe #1 told the AP and CNN on Friday that “Weinstein’s appeal makes the same tired arguments that he previously made multiple times, without success, to the trial court.”
“We are of the strong opinion that the trial court vetted the evidence appropriately and made all the correct decisions in its evidentiary rulings,” he continued. “We are confident that Weinstein’s appeal will be denied and he will spend many years in prison.”
Weinstein’s crimes initially came to light at the height of the #MeToo Movement, when sexual assault victims began sharing their experiences on social media. During that time, several celebrities spoke out about Weinstein, including Lupita Nyong’o,Ryan Gosling and Salma Hayek. Per USA Today, 87 people have accused Weinstein of inappropriate behavior and/or assault.
Back in April, Rose McGowan shared her thoughts following the overthinking of Weinstein’s New York convictions — stating in an Instagram Reel that she was “proud of how far we’ve come” as she shared encouragement for those “out there fighting the good fight.” The 50-year-old actress first accused Weinstein of rape in October 2017.
“No matter what they overturn, they cannot take away who we are, what we know, what we’ve gone through and what we can achieve in this life,” continued the Jawbreaker star. “We are not victims. We are people that were injured by evil. And the evil sticks together, as witnessed and evidenced today, but we are better.”
“To everyone out there fighting the good fight against this evil, these entities, these dark beings: You are light. You are beautiful. You matter. I’m with you,” she concluded.
