This was decided by the Los Angeles court acquit the producer of the film Harvey Weinstein of three of the seven allegations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse he was facing in the trial taking place in that California city, where last month he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for rape.

As reported by the specialized site Varietythe cases that both the judges and the prosecution dropped involved two women and had been the subject of disagreement among jurors who attended the trial, who, while not reaching unanimous agreement, cast votes indicating their willingness to convict him.

At a hearing on Tuesday, March 14, one of the alleged victims showed up with her attorney to ask Judge Lisa B. Lench to review the decision: “I think Weinstein should be punished for any crime, although he has been convicted in New York and Los Angeles for his crimes against women. I wanted him to take responsibility for what he did to me.”

as they will remember

“He will always be remembered not as a great producer, but as a a convicted felon and a sexual predator“Added the young woman, who told the magistrate she believed that trying him again on those charges would set a precedent for these cases of gender-based violence and would allow more victims to believe in the justice system.

Something that in the trials of the powerful makes the victims wary of justice.

For her part, the second woman whose case was dismissed sent a letter that was read by prosecutor Marlene Martinez, in which she explained how her life had been profoundly affected after being abused by Harvey Weinstein, and that since then she has suffered from anxiety, lack of confidence and problems with her relationships.

painful testimony

“He tried to ruin my life and that of many other women. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,” the complainant added before the judges.

In any case, the lead prosecutor on the case, Paul Thompson, has noticed the founder of the Miramax manufacturing company is serving a combined 39-year sentence -adding the convictions received in New York-, and that he had made the “difficult decision” not to proceed with the request to carry out a new trial on those accusations, even if not because he did not believe that every victim deserves the search for justice.

In this sense, he held that after a retrial, if there was a conviction connected to those complaints, the accused would at most add one more year to the total time he will spend in prison.

On the eve of the trial in Los Angeles, Weinstein was extradited to the West Coast and was committed to the county jail, but once the hearings are over, he will return to New York in the next few days to complete the 23-year sentence that remains from those who were pleaded guilty in 2020.

Harvey Weinstein signed that sentence to 23 years in prison.

The court rejected the Oscar-winning producer’s claims that the judge in his historic #MeToo trial prejudged him by allowing women to testify on charges that were not part of the criminal case.

The ruling by a panel of five judges in the state’s intermediate appellate court, confirmed one of the most influential verdicts to this day in the showdown of sexual misconduct by powerful figures, an era that began with a series of allegations against Weinstein.