A former prosecutor who has spent 30 years in the Manhattan DA's office said she wasn't surprised that the New York Court of Appeals overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 conviction, reports POLITICO. “A number of us were expecting that it probably would be reversed if there was some sort of intellectual honesty, because you don’t want to make bad law for bad defendants,” Catherine Christian said.
The court ordered a retrial, concluding that Weinstein had not received a fair trial because it included testimony from victims who accused him of sexual harassment and abuse that weren't part of the criminal charges. But Christian is optimistic that Weinstein can be retried successfully. "Harvey Weinstein has been convicted in Los Angeles, so he’s not going anywhere," Christian said. "They’ll retry it and this time, they’ll do it the way the Court of Appeals says it should be done." Christian said the Court of Appeals decision doesn't mean Weinstein is suddenly innocent. Rather, it just means that some of the introduced evidence in the original trial was "prejudicial," so it was more of a misstep in technicality.