Jodi Kantor has been reporting on Harvey Weinstein since 2017, when she and Megan Twohey revealed decades of abuse allegations against him. The overtu

Harvey Weinstein’s Conviction Was Fragile From the Start

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2024-04-26 02:30:03

Jodi Kantor has been reporting on Harvey Weinstein since 2017, when she and Megan Twohey revealed decades of abuse allegations against him.

The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York sex crimes conviction on Thursday morning may feel like a shocking reversal, but the criminal case against him has been fragile since the day it was filed. Prosecutors moved it forward with risky, boundary-pushing bets. New York’s top judges, many of them female, have held rounds of pained debates over whether his conviction was clean.

“I’m not shocked,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan prosecutor who is now a law professor at Northwestern, in an interview. The issue of whether Mr. Weinstein’s trial was fair “is a really close question that could have gone either way.”

Outside the justice system, evidence of Mr. Weinstein’s sexual misconduct is overwhelming. After The New York Times revealed allegations of abuse by the producer in 2017, nearly 100 women came forward with accounts of pressure and manipulation by Mr. Weinstein. Their stories sparked the global #MeToo reckoning.