What Does Weinstein Reversal Mean for #MeToo?

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at the decision overturning Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on sex crime charges. We’ll also find out about an illegal cannabis dispensary that got a legal license.

Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on felony sex crime charges was overturned by New York’s top court — a stunning reversal in the fundamental case of the #MeToo era. I asked Jan Ransom, a Metro reporter who covered Weinstein’s trial in 2020, to explain the decision.

How much of a surprise was the decision from the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals?

The case against Harvey Weinstein was a shaky one to begin with.

We saw evidence of cracks in the case long before it made its way to trial. A detective had failed to turn over important evidence to Manhattan prosecutors. A judge ended up dismissing part of the indictment, and evidence emerged undermining the allegation of one of the accusers at the time. All were circumstances that seemed to force the prosecutors to get creative, and I think led to an overreliance on witnesses who said Weinstein had assaulted them, but whose accusations were not the basis for any of the charges against him.

But also, the district attorney’s office had hoped that when the charges against Weinstein were announced, there would be a flood of new complaints. That did not happen.

What about reactions to the decision?

After the decision came down, I called Donna Rotunno, Weinstein’s lead lawyer in the New York case, and seconds into the call, she said, “Vindication.” She and the rest of the defense team had said that Weinstein did not get a fair trial, and the state’s highest court agreed with them.

But for the general public, the court’s decision was a huge shock. For many people, when they think of Weinstein, they think of the number of women who came forward and accused him of sexual assault and abuse. More than 90 women is what people remember.

That number did not translate to the number of complainants in his criminal case because many of the alleged crimes either did not happen in Manhattan or were not within the statute of limitations.

What will the decision mean for #MeToo?

For the survivors who saw Weinstein’s conviction as a win — as validation that when you are brave and you come forward and reveal to the world in a courtroom before a room full of strangers that something awful had happened to you and that you are seeking justice — this is certainly a blow.

But many people have said that #MeToo is not be defined or limited by the outcome of a single case.

In a lot of ways #MeToo is much bigger than Weinstein. The movement started because of his case, but it was about survivors of assault coming forward and exposing their abusers, who often were powerful men in powerful spaces.

The concern for some survivors and advocates of victims of sexual assault is that this could have an effect on whether prosecutors continue to pursue cases like these. It is hard to know that just yet.

“I hope women don’t lose hope in this,” Jane Manning, the director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project, told me. “We have a fight on our hands to create a justice system that meets the realities of women’s and survivors’ lives.”

But wasn’t this decision really about legal technicalities, not #MeToo?

Exactly. The Court of Appeals found that the judge who presided over Weinstein’s trial four years ago made a significant error when he allowed prosecutors to call to the stand a number of women who said he had sexually assaulted them — even though their accusations were not part of the charges against him.

The Court of Appeals decision overturning his conviction did not mention #MeToo at all. The decision focused solely on the issue the defense sought to have the court review: whether or not Weinstein was afforded his right to a fair trial.

Why did the prosecutors feel they needed testimony of the additional witnesses they called?

The thinking was that the testimony would bolster the case. The strategy seemed to be even more necessary after one of the charges connected to a complaining witness was tossed out.

This was also a case with no physical evidence, so it turned solely on whether the jury believed his accusers. The prosecutors wanted to show that there was a pattern of abuse by Weinstein.

Will this decision make women who’ve endured abuse more reluctant to come forward than they already were?

As a reporter who has written about criminal justice issues for more than a decade, including specifically about sexual assault cases, I can say that many survivors of assault do not report sexual abuse to law enforcement because of the ways in which they have been treated by law enforcement when they have.

So it is hard to know what the effect of the decision will be or whether fewer survivors will now come forward about abuse. The system, sadly, has never made it easy for them to do so in the first place.

What happens to Weinstein? He’s been in prison upstate. Will he now be released?

Weinstein has been held in semi-protective custody at Mohawk Correctional Facility — in Rome, N.Y., some 250 miles from New York City. His spokesman said he has spent his days reading and studying the law.

The court’s decision means that Weinstein can no longer be held in a New York prison, but he also cannot be freed. He is still a felon because he was found guilty in a separate case in California, and the current Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has said his office will retry the case that was just reversed.

Until that happens, Weinstein will probably be sent to Rikers Island, New York City’s jail complex, where he will join more than 6,000 detainees who are all awaiting trials.

Weather

Enjoy a sunny day peaking in the high 50s. At night it should be mostly clear, with temperatures in the mid-40s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Monday (Passover).

The latest New York news

The illegal dispensary that got a license

Was it a bureaucratic slip-up?

New York State said when it legalized marijuana for recreational use that it would crack down on illegal weed shops.

But last month it issued a retail license to one of them, a dispensary in Queens called Budega.

My colleague Ashley Southall says the situation points to lapses in the state’s vetting process. The license for Budega, the first confirmed instance of an illicit shop receiving a permit, undercut state officials’ assurances that they would not reward stores that jumped the line to cash in on cannabis over those that followed the rules.

The Budega situation surfaced as the state Office of Cannabis Management is under pressure from Gov. Kathy Hochul and the industry to accelerate the pace of licensing and expand the legal market. The agency has only about 30 people assigned to review 7,000 applications, and lacks the capacity to stop some bad actors from gaming the system.

Haydee Velez Keeby, a Long Island woman who identified herself in city paperwork as Budega’s owner, said she and her co-owners had been “following all the rules and regulations.”

But there is abundant evidence suggesting otherwise. The store has had a presence on social media; online reviews posted as recently as February gushed about its selection of California weed, which is illegal to sell in New York.

Chris Alexander, the executive director of the state Office of Cannabis Management, said in a statement that the agency was investigating whether the owners had misled the agency. If so, he said, “we will exhaust all available options” — including revoking the license.

METROPOLITAN diary