{"id":763729,"date":"2026-06-27T02:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/763729\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T02:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:05:12","slug":"california-appeals-court-upholds-weinsteins-rape-conviction-orders-resentencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/763729\/","title":{"rendered":"California appeals court upholds Weinstein’s rape conviction, orders resentencing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An appeals court on Friday upheld\u00a0Harvey Weinstein’s<\/a>\u00a02022\u00a0rape and sexual assault conviction<\/a>\u00a0in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him\u00a016 years in prison<\/a>\u00a0to resentence him.<\/p>\n

A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe reject his attempts to disturb the jury\u2019s guilty verdicts,\u201d the judges wrote in their opinion. <\/p>\n

In an email, Weinstein\u00a0spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said \u201cwe are disappointed by today\u2019s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal\u2019s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein\u2019s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.\u201d <\/p>\n

The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0would\u00a0not face a fourth trial there<\/a>, dropping the #MeToo-era case on Thursday after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.<\/p>\n

The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed. <\/p>\n

Weinstein, 74, still stands\u00a0convicted of another sexual felony<\/a>\u00a0in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.<\/p>\n

In California,\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as\u00a0Jane Doe 1.<\/a>\u00a0He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.<\/p>\n

After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0in civil court.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named. <\/p>\n

\"AWeinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday. (Steven Hirsch\/Pool\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

Chernyshova testified\u00a0that\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.<\/p>\n

Weinstein\u2019s defense argued that\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.<\/p>\n

The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein\u2019s defense,\u201d attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.<\/p>\n

But the appeals court said in its ruling that\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThus, there was no denial of Weinstein\u2019s constitutional right to present a defense,\u201d the panel wrote in its opinion.<\/p>\n

The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.<\/p>\n

And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0was not charged with was appropriate and allowed under state law.<\/p>\n

Before his sentencing,\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0told the judge that this was a \u201cmade-up story\u201d from a woman he had never met.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles jury acquitted\u00a0Weinstein\u00a0of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the end of the appellate process,\u201d Engelmayer said in his email Friday. \u201cWe intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.<\/p>\n

An email seeking comment from Chernyshova\u2019s attorney was not immediately answered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-763729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}