Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned by New York’s top court

Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned by New York’s top court
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Harvey Weinstein leaves a Manhattan courthouse after closing arguments in his rape trial in New York on Feb. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/File)
Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned by New York’s top court
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Harvey Weinstein arrives at the courthouse during jury deliberations in his rape trial on Feb. 24, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/File)
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Updated 26 April 2024
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Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned by New York’s top court

Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned by New York’s top court
  • The court found the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren’t part of the case
  • The 72-year-old ex-movie mogul, however, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape

NEW YORK: New York’s highest court on Thursday threw out Harvey Weinstein ‘s 2020 rape conviction with a ruling that shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the #MeToo era and left those who testified in the case bracing for a retrial against the ex-movie mogul.
The court found the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.
Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. But the New York ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein.
#MeToo advocates noted that Thursday’s ruling was based on legal technicalities and not an exoneration of Weinstein’s behavior, saying the original trial irrevocably moved the cultural needle on attitudes about sexual assault.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it intends to retry Weinstein, and at least one of his accusers said through her lawyer that she would testify again.




Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, California, on October 4, 2022. (Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)

The state Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, saying “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts” and permitted questions about Weinstein’s “bad behavior” if he had testified. It called this “highly prejudicial” and “an abuse of judicial discretion.”
In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” She said the ruling came at “the expense and safety of women.”
In another dissent, Judge Anthony Cannataro wrote that the decision was “endangering decades of progress in this incredibly complex and nuanced area of law” regarding sex crimes after centuries of “deeply patriarchal and misogynistic legal tradition.”
The reversal of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years. The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction.
Weinstein has been in a New York prison since his conviction for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. He was acquitted on the most serious charges — two counts of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in the Los Angeles case.




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Weinstein’s lawyers expect Thursday’s ruling to have a major impact on the appeal of his Los Angeles rape conviction. Their arguments are due May 20.
Jennifer Bonjean, a Weinstein attorney, said the California prosecution also relied on evidence of uncharged conduct alleged against him.
“A jury was told in California that he was convicted in another state for rape,” Bonjean said. “Turns out he shouldn’t have been convicted and it wasn’t a fair conviction. … It interfered with his presumption of innocence in a significant way in California.”
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala called the Court of Appeals ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”
Attorney Douglas H. Wigdor, who has represented eight Harvey Weinstein accusers including two witnesses at the New York criminal trial, called it “a major step back” and contrary to routine rulings by judges allowing evidence of uncharged acts to help jurors understand the intent or patterns of a defendant’s criminal behavior.
Debra Katz, a prominent civil rights and #MeToo attorney who represented several Weinstein accusers, said her clients are “feeling gutted” by the ruling, but she believes — and is telling them — that their testimony had changed the world.
“People continue to come forward, people continue to support other victims who’ve reported sexual assault and violence, and I truly believe there’s no going back from that,” Katz said. She predicted Weinstein will be convicted at a retrial and said accusers like her client Dawn Dunning feel great comfort knowing he will remain behind bars.
Dunning, a former actor who was a supporting witness at the New York trial, said in remarks to The Associated Press conveyed through Katz that she was “shocked” by the ruling and dealing with a range of emotions, including asking herself, “Was it all for naught?”
“It took two years of my life,” Dunning said. “I had to live through it every day. But would I do it again? Yes.”
She said that in confronting Weinstein, she faced her worst fear and realized he had no power over her.
Weinstein’s conviction in 2020 was heralded by activists and advocates as a milestone achievement, but dissected just as quickly by his lawyers and, later, the Court of Appeals when it heard arguments on the matter in February.
Allegations against Weinstein, the once powerful and feared studio boss behind such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” ushered in the #MeToo movement.
Dozens of women came forward to accuse Weinstein, including stars such as Ashley Judd and Uma Thurman. His New York trial drew intense publicity, with protesters chanting “rapist” outside the courthouse.
“This is what it’s like to be a woman in America, living with male entitlement to our bodies,” Judd said Thursday.
Weinstein, incarcerated at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany, maintains his innocence. He contends any sexual activity was consensual.




A general view of Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York, where Harvey Weinstein is currently being held. (REUTERS)

His lawyers argued on appeal that the trial overseen by Judge James Burke was unfair because testimony was allowed from three women whose claims of unwanted sexual encounters with Weinstein were not part of the charges. Burke’s term expired at the end of 2022, and he is no longer a judge.
They also appealed the judge’s ruling that prosecutors could confront Weinstein over his long history of brutish behavior, including allegations of punching his movie producer brother at a business meeting, snapping at waiters, hiding a woman’s clothes and threatening to cut off a colleague’s genitals with gardening shears.
As a result, Weinstein, who wanted to testify, did not take the stand, Aidala said.
The appeals court labeled the allegations “appalling, shameful, repulsive conduct” but warned that “destroying a defendant’s character under the guise of prosecutorial need” did not justify some trial evidence and testimony.
In a majority opinion written by Judge Jenny Rivera, the Court of Appeals said defendants have a right to be held accountable “only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality.”
The Court of Appeals agreed last year to take Weinstein’s case after an intermediate appeals court upheld his conviction. Prior to their ruling, judges on the lower appellate court at oral arguments had raised doubts about Burke’s conduct. One observed that Burke let prosecutors pile on with “incredibly prejudicial testimony” from additional witnesses.
At a news conference, Aidala predicted that the lasting effect of the reversal would be that more defendants will testify at their trials, including Weinstein, who “will be able to tell his side of the story.”
He said that when he spoke to Weinstein on Thursday, his client told him: “I’ve been here for years in prison for something I didn’t do. You got to fix this.”
 


Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
Updated 28 sec ago
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Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
  • He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny

DAKAR: Senegal’s former leader Macky Sall, who earlier this year sparked one of the worst crises in decades by delaying the presidential election, is seeking a controversial comeback in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections.
Sall left office in April after 12 years in power, handing over the reins to his successor Bassirou Diomaye Faye and departing Senegal for Morocco.
The ex-president is now leading a newly formed opposition coalition from abroad, raising questions over the motives behind his return to the political fray and what it could mean for the West African country.
Sall’s longtime political foe, current Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, has repeatedly suggested that members of the former administration, including Sall, could be brought before the courts.
He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny.
Political science professor Maurice Soudieck Dione sees Sall’s return as an attempt “to get a grip on the political game in order to protect his own interests” in the event of any “political recriminations.”
There is also a “personal dimension around him not having had his fill of power,” Dione suggested, pointing out that Sall had for a time toyed with the idea of running for a third presidential term.
Well respected on the international stage, Sall’s final years in power were marred by a political standoff with Sonko that led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
His last-minute decision to postpone the presidential election in February then sparked one of Senegal’s worst crises in decades.
The thirst for change among a hard-pressed population saw Sall’s hand-picked successor, Amadou Ba, crushed at the ballot box by Sonko’s former deputy Faye.
Faye and Sonko had been released from prison just ten days before the vote.
Faye dissolved the opposition-dominated parliament in September, paving the way for legislative elections.

In returning to politics so soon, Sall has broken with the restraint normally adopted by former presidents in Senegal.
As the lead candidate for the Takku Wallu Senegal coalition, Sall justified his comeback in a five-page letter, citing the need to defend the “achievements” of his time in power.
He warned of the looming political and economic “dangers” faced by Senegal after months of “calamitous governance” by the new administration.
Presidential spokesman Ousseynou Ly decried Sall’s “indecency” on social media, blaming the former head of state for years of what he described as deadly unrest, debt and corruption.
As the election approaches, Sonko is traveling the length and breadth of Senegal promising economic transformation to excited crowds, while Sall addresses less rowdy audiences via speakerphone.
The former president can, officially, return to the country whenever he chooses.
“If he were to return to the country, we would ensure his safety because he is a citizen and former President of the Republic,” government spokesman Amadou Moustapha Ndieck Sarre told the Senegalese radio station RFM.
“But if he returns and the courts decide to arrest him, neither the prime minister nor the head of state can do anything about it,” he said.
Sonko has recently spoken of “high treason” in relation to what he termed the “catastrophic” state of public finances left by Sall’s administration.
High treason is the only case in which a president can be charged.
Legally, this would be “very complicated,” said El Hadji Mamadou Mbaye, a political science lecturer and researcher at the University of Saint-Louis.
Sall is returning to politics because “in reality he never wanted to leave power,” Mbaye said. “He feels indispensable.”
But “I don’t think the Senegalese are ready to forgive,” he added.
“If he had returned, the campaign would have been much more eventful, bordering on violent,” said political science professor Dionne.
“He had to carry out a very harsh crackdown on the opposition,” he added, referring to the years of turmoil.
“The wounds have not healed.”
 

 


Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general
Updated 13 November 2024
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Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

CARACAS: Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab defended the state’s crackdown on opposition supporters after disputed July elections, telling AFP the authorities’ actions helped avert a “civil war.”
The proclamation of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election triggered widespread protests.
The opposition, which had been tipped by polls for an easy win, had published detailed polling-station-level results which showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
Twenty-eight people, including two police officers, were killed and 200 injured in the unrest, during which around 2,400 people were arrested.
Saab claimed the violence that marred the protests had been “premeditated.”
“There was an attempt to trigger a civil war,” he said.
“The plan consisting in claiming there was fraud in order to generate a terrorist act. If we had not acted as we did at that moment Venezuela would have been gripped by civil war,” he told AFP in an interview Monday at his office in Caracas.
He denied the security forces had any responsibility for the deaths of demonstrators.
A September 4 report into the killings by Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed the finger at Venezuelan security forces and pro-government militias known as “colectivos” in some of the deaths.
One of the victims was a 15-year-old boy, Isaias Jacob Fuenmayor Gonzalez, who sustained a gunshot to the neck while taking part in a protest in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-biggest city, according to HRW.
Saab, whose office walls are lined with portraits of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, late Venezuelan socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, his late Cuban ally Fidel Castro and Maduro, denied allegations his office was under Maduro’s thumb.
Appointed attorney general in 2017, he was re-elected to the position earlier this month by a parliament stacked with Maduro loyalists.
He cited among his achievements increased investment in community policing and 600 convictions handed down to police officers for human rights violations.
He also pointed to nearly 22,000 convictions for corruption under his watch and claimed to have dismantled “34 corruption systems” at graft-ridden state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela.
Five of the last eight oil ministers are in prison or fled the country.
Saab claimed that during the post-election violence “around 500” buildings, including schools, clinics and town halls were damaged by protesters.
He denied that those detained were political prisoners, accusing them of “trying to burn” and “shooting at” demonstrators, without providing any evidence of his claim.
“A political prisoner is someone who has been detained because of his political ideas and who uses peaceful tactics... These people took weapons to (try to) overthrow a legitimately constituted government,” he accused.
The opposition says many of those arrested were arbitrarily arrested.
Venezuela’s Foro Penal rights NGO says some 1,800 people remain behind bars over two months later, including 69 teenagers.
Saab denied that children were being held, but said that the law allowed for the arrest of minors aged between 14 and 17.
He refused to be drawn on how many protesters were still in custody, saying only that “many have been freed.”
And he denied claims by the families of some of the prisoners that their loved ones had been tortured.
Only a handful of countries, including Russia, have recognized Maduro’s claim to have won a third six-year term.
But opposition protests have largely petered out since September, when Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Saab said the 75-year-old former diplomat would be “automatically detained” if he returned to Venezuela.
Saab also said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since the election, was under investigation but refused to say whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest.


US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages
Updated 13 November 2024
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US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

PORT-AU-PRINCE: The United States on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after a jetliner was shot at on approach to the capital and as a new prime minister took the reins of a nation ravaged by poverty and gang violence.
The US Federal Aviation Administration’s move came after a Spirit Airlines jetliner arriving from Florida in Port-au-Prince was hit by gunfire and had to reroute to the Dominican Republic.
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in on Monday, replacing outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the country’s unelected transitional council.
On Tuesday, Haiti remained cut off from the rest of the world, with its main airport closed and bursts of gunfire ringing out in several neighborhoods of the capital.
Many stores and schools were shuttered as people feared more attacks by the powerful and well-armed gangs that control 80 percent of the city, even though a Kenyan-led international force has been deployed to help the outgunned Haitian police restore order.
Violent crime in the capital city remains high, with gang members routinely targeting civilians and robberies, rapes and kidnappings are rampant.
The attack on the Spirit Airlines aircraft saw one flight attendant suffer minor injuries. Images posted online appeared to show several bullet holes inside the plane.
The transitional council, aiming to put Haiti on a path to voting in 2026, had been tasked with stabilizing a country that has no president or parliament and last held elections in 2016.
The United States on Tuesday called on Haiti’s leaders to put personal interests aside and concentrate on getting the country back on its feet.
“The acute and immediate needs of the Haitian people mandate that the transitional government prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021.
The Caribbean nation has long struggled with political instability, poverty, natural disasters and gang violence.
But conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Despite the arrival of the Kenyan-led support mission in June, violence has continued to soar.
A recent United Nations report said more than 1,200 people were killed in Haiti from July through September, with persistent kidnappings and sexual violence against women and girls.
The report said the gangs were digging trenches, using drones and stockpiling weapons as they change tactics to confront the Kenyan-led police force.
Gang leaders have strengthened defenses for the zones they control and placed gas cylinders and Molotov cocktail bombs ready to use against police operations.


Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief

Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief
Updated 13 November 2024
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Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief

Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief
  • International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power

BAKU: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tuesday that atomic power should also be allowed to tap into climate change funds.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power.

“It should. Already at COP28 in Dubai the international community — not just nuclear countries — agreed that nuclear energy needs to be accelerated.
We need to give ourselves the means to make things happen.
The dialogue with international financial institutions has started in a very positive way. I was at the World Bank this summer, and tomorrow we will meet with the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), as well as the Development Bank of Latin America.
Various financing bodies are beginning to see that markets are pushing in this direction.
We are obviously not a commercial lobby (but) a regulatory agency for everything related to nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation. We are here to provide assurances and to oversee projects.”

“There are cultural, political and ideological barriers. We are coming out of decades of a negative narrative about nuclear, but it has to happen. I am the first to want to see results straight away.”

“That would be a very good thing. There are many countries — such as Ghana, Kenya and Morocco — that are interested in small modular reactors, for example, and they approach us saying, ‘For us, this would be a good solution.’
Others, like those in Eastern Europe, could benefit from European funding and for whom energy security is crucial in reducing dependency on certain suppliers. So it depends on the model. In Asia, we have Malaysia, the Philippines... countries that genuinely need this.”

“Obviously, the agency does not endorse or promote programs or projects that lack the institutional and technological fabric needed.
We have development models. The United Arab Emirates is a very, very interesting case. It’s a country with financial resources but that initially had absolutely no infrastructure, nuclear regulations etc.
We have established programs for newcomers to guide them step-by-step, through 19 chapters, until they establish nuclear capability.”
That’s what we have done. We are not going crazy, in an irresponsible race toward civil nuclear power. But there are a lot of things we can do.”
 

 


Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in US prison

Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in US prison
Updated 54 min 49 sec ago
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Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in US prison

Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in US prison
  • Prosecutors, though, countered that Teixeira does not suffer from an intellectual disability that prevents him from knowing right from wrong

BOSTON: Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years in prison for leaking online highly classified US military documents, including some related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and apologized in court for his actions. Teixeira, 22, was sentenced by US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston after pleading guilty in March to perpetrating what federal prosecutors have called “one of the most significant and consequential violations” of US anti-espionage law ever committed.
“I’m sorry for all of the harm that I’ve wrought and that I’ve caused,” Teixeira, dressed in an orange jail uniform, told Talwani during his sentencing hearing.
The judge said Teixeira leaked top-secret information after receiving extensive training on the need to protect classified information from disclosure and warnings about the penalties he could face for failing to do so.

An undated picture shows Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air National Guard, who was arrested by the FBI, over his alleged involvement in leaks online of classified documents, posing for a selfie at an unidentified location. (Social Media Website/via Reuters)

“Despite that, you posted on the Internet, on Discord, hundreds of documents over a period of a year,” Talwani told Teixeira. “The fact that others did not do more to stop you is truly unfortunate.” Teixeira, who has remained in custody since his arrest in April 2023, pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense over a leak last year of a trove of classified records to a group of gamers on the Discord messaging app. Ahead of his sentencing, Teixeira also entered into a written agreement to resolve separate military charges brought by the Air Force that he obstructed justice and failed to obey a lawful order, defense lawyer Michael Bachrach said in court. Teixeira had been set to face a court-martial in March.
Before his arrest, Teixeira had been an airman 1st class at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where he worked as a cyber defense operations journeyman, or information technology support specialist.
Despite being a low-level airman, Teixeira held a top-secret security clearance, and starting in January 2022 began accessing hundreds of classified documents related to topics including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to prosecutors.
Teixeira shared classified information on Discord in private servers while bragging that he had access to “stuff for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and China,” according to prosecutors.
He did so even though his superiors admonished him twice in 2022 about his handling of classified information and warned him against conducting deep dives into intelligence information, prosecutors said. His leaks included information concerning the US provision of equipment to Ukraine and how it would be used, following Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Teixeira’s lawyers in court papers had urged Talwani to impose only an 11-year term. They said Teixeira was autistic and isolated, and that his intent was never to harm the United States but to educate friends he made online about world events, including the Ukraine war.
“I wanted to know as much about it as possible because I thought it was probably the most — probably the biggest event or thing that happened in my generation’s history,” Teixeira said in February during a debriefing session with the intelligence community, according to court papers.