Nolte: Appeals Court Rightly Overturns Harvey Weinstein NY Conviction Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein enjoyed a huge legal victory Thursday after New York's highest court overturned his 2020 conviction of two felony sexual assaults.

The 71-year-old Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years and currently resides in a Rome, New York, prison.

The far-left New York Times reports that by a 4-3 vote, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge should not have allowed “prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.”

The appeals court identified additional errors and decided that Weinstein had not received a fair trial— which is true.  This should've been a 7-0 decision to overturn.

At this point, Manhattan's district attorney, Trump persecutor Alvin L. Bragg, can choose to retry Weinstein or give up and ship the infamous, Oscar-winning producer to California. In 2022, Weinstein was found guilty of raping a woman in Beverly Hills and sentenced to 16 years.

This whole fiasco strikes me as a classic case of framing a guilty man. It is beyond outrageous that the prosecutor was allowed to parade a series of women before the jury to make unproven claims of sexual misconduct against Weinstein. That goes beyond prejudicial and directly to rigging a trial. At the time, I was shocked the judge allowed this, but in the witch hunt fever of #MeToo, there was a lot more concern about appeasing the mob than honoring the U.S. Constitution or a basic sense of fairness.

Harvey Weinstein is a pig. No question. But even a pig deserves a fair trial, and the moment we stop giving pigs fair trials, the line between rigged trials and fair trials moves all that much closer to non-pigs like you and me.

First off, that “series of women” who told the jury Weinstein had victimized them had never proven their allegations in court. That alone should have stopped the judge from allowing their testimony.

Secondly, even if Weinstein had been convicted of assaulting those witnesses, the state must prove Weinstein is guilty of the charges in question and do so without prejudicing the jury with past acts.

I don't defend the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, or Bill Maher because I like them. I don't. I defend their rights as a means to defend myself. I want the worst people in the world (Weinstein, Baldwin) and the people I disagree with most (Allen, Maher) to enjoy the full expression of their God-given rights, both in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. Why? Because if their rights are safe, my rights are safe, and looking the other way or piling on while their rights are violated only hurts my rights, because then that line moves closer to me.

Weinstein won't be set free anytime soon. If the fascist election-meddler Bragg decides to retry him, Weinstein will likely have to remain in prison until the new trial. If not, Weinstein still has a sentence to serve in California.

John Nolte's first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover on Kindle and Audiobook. 

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