Harvey Weinstein appeals LA rape conviction, weeks after NY verdict overturned

Weeks after Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction was overturned in New York, the disgraced movie mogul filed an appeal to overturn another rape and sexual assault conviction in California.

Weinstein filed a his appeal in the Los Angeles case before the 2nd District Court of Appeals Friday, according to court documents obtained by NBC News. He is requesting a retrial.

“Harvey Weinstein was brought to justice by a system that was bent on ‘getting’ him at any cost. This appeal highlights nearly a dozen areas of glaring legal missteps that violated his right to a fair trial,” Weinstein’s press secretary Juda Engelmayer said in a statement to NBC News on Thursday. “We know he has a strong chance here.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Weinstein’s lawyers argue in the appeal that Weinstein “was wrongfully convicted of sexually abusing Jane Doe 1.”

The former Hollywood producer was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault of a woman named Jane Doe 1 (referred to as JD1 in the appeals documents) in a Los Angeles trial in 2022. Weinstein is serving a 16-year prison sentence as a result of that conviction.

He was found not guilty of sexual assault by force of restraint against a woman known in court as Jane Doe 2. In the same case, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on three counts of sexual assault charged against Weinstein, involving two other women known as Jane Doe 3 and Jane Doe 4.

The LA conviction came nearly three years after his New York trial, in which he was found guilty of two crimes – third-degree rape and first-degree sexual assault – in 2020.

Those charges in New York were overturned in April after an appeals court found that the judge had prejudiced Weinstein by making improper decisions, including allowing women to testify and make allegations that were not part of the case. Weinstein served a 23-year sentence in a New York prison.

Weinstein, who is being held at Rikers Island in New York, could face a new trial in that state. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicated he is interested in retrial of the Weinstein case, but no official trial date has been set.

Weinstein’s lawyers claim in the California appeal that he was not given a “fair opportunity to defend himself against JD1’s allegations.” Given the close nature of the case, the jury would likely have acquitted him because “the prosecution’s case against JD1 was weak and based in part on evidence it knew to be false.”

“The jury was misled about JD1’s credibility and prevented from considering crucial evidence that pointed to the defendant’s innocence and contradicted the prosecution’s theory of guilt,” Weinstein’s lawyers wrote in the appeal.

The appeal rehashed the nature of the charges related to Jane Doe 1, who alleges that Weinstein showed up uninvited at her hotel room and “raped her for over an hour” while she was attending the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival in 2013, the document states.

Jane Doe 1 claimed at trial that the only person who knew where she was at the time was the event’s founder and host, who was a friend of hers, the appeal states.

The appeal states that prosecutors “theorized” that the founder “lured the defendant to his festival by offering her a dollar as sexual bait and then providing her with her hotel information.”

Weinstein’s lawyers say that story is “false.” Their “error,” they argue, is that Jane Doe 1 and the event founder were in fact romantically involved, so it would have been unlikely that the founder would have introduced her to Weinstein if they were “in the midst of their own passionate affair.”

Weinstein’s lawyers argue that prosecutors cannot explain why Weinstein targeted Jane Doe 1 or how he could have found her without the event manager’s help.

The appeal argues that Weinstein’s Sixth Amendment right to a defense was violated because the defense failed to present evidence of the two’s romantic relationship.

Additional evidence about Jane Doe 1’s whereabouts at the time she claimed Weinstein raped her was also withheld, the appeal says. Based on messages that could not be presented in court, Weinstein’s lawyers believe Jane Doe 1 was dating the festival founder at the time.

“When the court sanitized the news and gave the jury the false impression that JD1” and the founder “were simply ‘friends,’ it weakened the defendant’s defense, hindered his ability to prove his innocence, and enabled the prosecution to push a story that everyone in the courtroom except the jury knew to be false,” the appeal states.

NBC News has asked the founder for comment.

Among the other complaints listed in the appeal, Weinstein’s lawyers claim they were prohibited from questioning Jane Doe 1 about her financial situation, including the fact that she was afraid of eviction. The appeal says the jury “got another false impression about JD1, namely that she had no financial interest in the outcome of the case.” It said she stated she would not sue Weinstein, which she did a month later, according to the appeal.

The appeal states: “Three jurors who attended the defendant’s trial immediately regretted signing a verdict of guilty when they learned that they had been denied crucial evidence showing that ‘JD1’ and the event’s founder ‘had an ongoing romantic relationship and had lied to them,’ and that the jurors ‘stated that if they had had access to such evidence, it would have changed their assessment of whether rape had occurred.'”

“By undermining the defendant’s defense, the court deprived him of his constitutional right to defense and committed a miscarriage of justice,” the appeal states.

Weinstein’s lawyers also said jurors were told during selection that the mogul had previously been convicted of rape in New York, arguing that a “fair and impartial trial was doomed from the start.” In addition, they said, prosecutors were allowed to “present evidence of 12 uncharged sex offenses, some of which occurred decades ago,” which “did nothing to contribute to the jury’s consideration of whether the prosecution met its burden of proof on the charged charges.”

“The introduction of this excessive, cumulative and remote evidence of prior ‘sexual assault’ merely signaled to the jury that the defendant was a bad person who should be convicted of something regardless of whether the prosecution proved its case,” Weinstein’s lawyers wrote in the appeal.

Weinstein’s team said he was “entitled to a retrial in which his constitutional rights are upheld, in which he can present evidence of his innocence, and in which his conduct – not his character – is at the forefront.”