After the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ends his trial with Donald Trump, he will have to turn Harvey Weinstein.
The disgraced former Hollywood mogul saw his 2020 conviction on sex crime charges overturned by the New York Supreme Court on Thursday in a 4-3 decision that shocked the public.
But Catherine A. Christian, a former prosecutor who spent more than three decades in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, was not surprised.
“A number of us expected that if there was any kind of intellectual honesty, it would probably be the other way around, because you don’t want to make bad law for bad defendants,” Christian told POLITICO Magazine.
The state appeals court ruled that Weinstein ultimately did not receive a fair trial because it included testimony from witnesses who accused him of sexual abuse and harassment but who were not part of the criminal prosecution directly at issue.
Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence in an upstate New York prison for a conviction that helped fuel the #MeToo movement and a societal reckoning over sexual misconduct. But he has no plans to be released. Not only has New York’s highest court ordered a new trial, but he also faces up to 16 years in prison after being convicted by a California jury in 2022 of raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel.
The New York court’s decision was rejected by victims’ advocates, who worry it could chill future cases of sexual assault. But Christian said the case — which was initially led by Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr. – can be successfully retried. And she gave some advice on how to do that.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The court’s decision to overturn Harvey Weinstein’s conviction came as a major shock to the public. Are you surprised by the ruling?
What I think the four judges said: I know this was a very high-profile case, this may be a despicable man, but the law is the law. And in this case, we should follow the law, not how we feel about how despicable this particular defendant is.
I’m not surprised. That they destroyed it shows that they simply stuck to the facts and the law and not to the celebrity, and not to how they find him personally offensive. They looked at that transcript and then followed what they thought was the correct view of the law.
At the time of the original trial, did you think it was a mistake to have other women testify in this case as witnesses to Weinstein’s misconduct, but who were otherwise not part of the criminal prosecution?
The law, if it is not too prejudicial, in certain cases allows you to uncover prior, uncharged crimes if this is in accordance with the intent, common plan or plan. So there are a number of exceptions.
It’s a legitimate decision that prosecutors made. Yeah, now that it’s been reversed, you know, hindsight is 20/20. And let me say this: I know the two prosecutors who tried it, and they are excellent. It was still on [lower court] judge, the judge could have said no. And the judge said, “You can do this,” and the Court of Appeal said, “Actually, you shouldn’t have done that.”
I wouldn’t be too critical of the prosecutors. There were many legal minds in the office concerned with prosecuting this case. You always hope that if you, as a prosecutor, get a conviction, it will stand. But in a case like this, there were strategic decisions that now appear to be a mistake according to the Court of Appeal.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has already agreed to retry the case. Do you think there was any hesitation? Are there any risks involved?
For me, you should try again, assuming all witnesses are available. Harvey Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles, so he’s not going anywhere.
They will try again and this time they will do it as the Court of Appeal says it should be done.
The negative of trying again means that these women have to come back and do it all over again, and be cross-examined again. So that is the negative of a new trial for the prosecutor.
How will this shape the future of sexual assault cases? What about the trajectory of the #MeToo movement?
First of all, the Court of Appeal did not say that he cannot be tried again because it is so clear that he is in fact innocent. That’s not what this decision was. I don’t even want to call it a technical aspect.
There were indications that should not have been allowed, or should not have been allowed, because it was too harmful. That’s really the essence. I don’t think this should be spread to all cases of sexual violence. It is limited to the facts of this specific case, and how this specific case was tried.
It will affect the law, not just in sexual assault cases, but in all criminal cases in New York, about what a prosecutor can introduce as evidence, what uncharged crimes they can present their immediate case for, what prior, brutal , immoral about criminal offenses they can cross-examine the suspect. That is in all cases.
But I don’t think this will stop prosecutors from going after people accused of sexual assault if they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t think, and I hope, that it won’t deter victims from reporting, especially against well-known men, because this case happened to be overturned.
Bill Cosby’s case in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court – his conviction was overturned due to an error made by the prosecutor. It wasn’t like saying one of these guys didn’t do it. That is usually not what the appellate courts do. They only determine whether what was done during the trial was legally correct.
DA Alvin Bragg is currently focusing on the Trump trial in Manhattan. Could that have any impact on a new trial against Weinstein? If not legal, then political?
No, because remember: the Manhattan DA’s office is huge. The Trump trial is being tried by the Investigative Division.
The Harvey Weinstein case will be handled by the Special Victims Unit, their sex crimes unit. It’s very, very different. Different assistants, something completely different. I always say about this Trump trial, there are aides in that office who have their own processes that have nothing to do with this Trump trial.
They probably anticipated the decision and it could have gone either way. They have probably prepared themselves: if the conviction is overturned, what will our reaction be? I don’t think it was shocking to them.
