{"id":206168,"date":"2026-04-22T16:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206168\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T16:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:44:21","slug":"this-debacle-should-not-be-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206168\/","title":{"rendered":"This debacle should not be happening."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Executive Dysfunction<\/a>, a weekly newsletter that surfaces under-the-radar stories about what Trump is doing to the law\u2014and how the law is pushing back.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, prosecutors began their case against Harvey Weinstein, who is on trial in Manhattan for rape\u2014for the third time<\/a>. This third trial is only happening because Weinstein\u2019s previous rape conviction in New York was overturned due to outdated rules of evidence. The start of Weinstein\u2019s latest trial is, among other things, a clarifying moment about how things should change in the world of legal procedure to bring powerful abusers to justice: New York and other states must change their rules of evidence to make sure serial rapists like Weinstein aren\u2019t shielded from accountability.<\/p>\n

In May 2025<\/a>, actress Jessica Mann sat in front of a Manhattan jury and told them, through tears, exactly how Harvey Weinstein raped her. Some jurors had doubts\u2014the rape charge ended in a hung jury. (Weinstein was convicted on a lesser charge relating to a different victim.) But Mann should never have been in court in May 2025, much less preparing to face her rapist again in April 2026. In February 2020, Mann told the same story to a different Manhattan jury. They believed her, and Weinstein was convicted of rape and sentenced to 23 years in prison. What went wrong?<\/p>\n

Just four years after that conviction, New York\u2019s highest court overturned<\/a> Weinstein\u2019s rape conviction, claiming he didn\u2019t have a fair trial because other victims of his were allowed to testify at the 2020 trial despite prosecutors not charging Weinstein with those other rapes and sexual assaults. The jury in 2020 believed Mann because her testimony was bolstered by the harrowing stories of so many other women describing how Weinstein abused them in similar ways. The jury might not have been willing to believe one woman. But they did believe women.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical to understand that in the federal system<\/a> and 16 states, the rules of evidence allow the \u201cmistake\u201d New York prosecutors made in 2020. In those jurisdictions, additional victims can testify to establish a defendant\u2019s propensity to commit rape and sexual assault. There\u2019s a good reason to allow this. Each additional victim testifying lends credibility to all the others. Juries might have reasonable doubt in a \u201che said, she said\u201d case. That doubt usually vanishes once it becomes a \u201che said, they said\u201d case. While the rate of false accusations of sexual assault is already low<\/a>, it\u2019s rarer still for multiple women to coordinate a conspiracy of false accusations. If someone is credibly accused by multiple women of similar sexual assaults, there is unlikely to be reasonable doubt about who is telling the truth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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Trials are about discovering the truth, and a jury should know if a defendant has been accused of rape or sexual assault in the past. Yet most states, including New York, don\u2019t adopt the modern federal rule allowing this. Instead, they choose to put a thumb on the scales of justice in favor of serial rapists like Weinstein. The justification is that it wouldn\u2019t be fair if juries heard that a defendant had raped other victims because the case at hand isn\u2019t about those other victims\u2014a defendant might have raped a dozen women in the past but still be innocent of the particular rape charge before the jury.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that we don\u2019t want juries convicting simply because they don\u2019t like the defendant. That\u2019s a good argument against admitting evidence that a rape defendant cheated in school, kicked a dog, or got a DUI. Maintaining rules against some forms of so-called \u201ccharacter\u201d or \u201cpropensity\u201d evidence makes sense when the evidence doesn\u2019t say much about the likelihood the defendant committed the crime at hand. But what doesn\u2019t make sense is shielding serial rapists from accountability by preventing some of the most useful and probative evidence from being heard at trial. Rape defendants, like Weinstein, should be free to cross-examine other victims who testify, but they shouldn\u2019t be able to silence them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court Just Twisted Its Cop Immunity Doctrine in an Even More Violent Direction
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Allowing other victims\u2019 testimony does not create a flood of false convictions or unfairness\u2014the federal system has allowed such testimony since 1995 without ill effect, and 16 states have followed suit. We should also ask why lawmakers are so concerned about serial rapists being falsely convicted when less than 5 percent<\/a> of sexual assaults lead to a conviction and false accusations are relatively rare<\/a>. After Weinstein\u2019s conviction was overturned, some New York legislators proposed a bill<\/a> that would adopt the modern rule and allow such testimony, but it failed to pass. New York lawmakers seem overly concerned with outdated, and often sexist, assumptions about the likelihood of victims lying and not nearly concerned enough about holding abusers to account. They should rethink those assumptions and pass the bill.<\/p>\n

Jessica Mann shouldn\u2019t be forced to stand alone to tell her story in court for the third time. She should be joined by dozens of other victims who can testify to Weinstein\u2019s undeniable propensity to commit sexual assault. With that other testimony, it wouldn\u2019t be hard for the jury to convict Weinstein again, like they did in 2020. It\u2019s time for lawmakers to stop shielding rapists like Weinstein and make it easier for juries to believe victims like Mann.<\/p>\n

Delivered every Thursday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that surfaces under-the-radar stories about what Trump is doing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6431,10054,81747,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-206168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-harvey-weinstein","9":"tag-judiciary","10":"tag-jurisprudence","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}