Dear Gossips,
I was going to write about Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger being a couple of basic ass bitches after they demolished a notable mid-century modern home by architect Craig Ellwood to make way for a modern farmhouse by basic bitch architect to the stars, Ken Ungar. But then, well. Harvey Weinstein’s conviction in New York was overturned.
In the last 24 hours, I have been through a full range of emotions, from fury to a sort of demoralized acceptance that whatever gains were made following the revelations of #MeToo and Weinstein’s sexual assault scandals, they are gone. Legally, culturally, I don’t think we’re any better off than we were in 2017 before the Weinstein scandal broke. Women in the US are actually worse off, since Roe v Wade was struck down, ending any semblance of bodily autonomy.
The ruling came from the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, in a 4-3 vote that overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction. The majority opinion cited “egregious” decisions that biased the jury, particularly including testimony from women who were not part of the charges being prosecuted, and cross-examining Weinstein on these “unrelated” accusations. The New York District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has not yet stated if they will re-try Weinstein. In the meantime, it is expected that Weinstein will be remanded to California for incarceration, as he is still convicted there on separate charges, but now his conviction there may be in jeopardy, too. Like, there is an actual, real chance Harvey Weinstein could be freed at the end of all this.
Lawyers of LaineyGossip sound off, because I thought you could include non-related witnesses at trial to establish modus operandi and patterns of behavior. Like I get that if someone is on trial for murder, you can’t call a witness to talk about the time the defendant committed arson, because that’s completely unrelated. But if the defendant did another murder, you could call someone to talk about that, to establish this is a person who does murders. So why can’t the New York prosecutors call women who have experienced Weinstein’s, I guess now alleged, harassment and assault, even if they’re not part of the charges? They’re establishing his pattern of behavior!
The dissenting opinion gets at the crux of the issue: “This erosion of precedent, born from a refusal to accept that crimes of sexual violence are far more nuanced and complex than other crimes, comes at the expense and safety of women.”
The US justice system is far from perfect, and one consistent pattern I see in my true crime studies is that serial killers and sexual predators fall through the cracks in the same exact ways. Early red flags are ignored as “quirky” behavior, survivors are often minimized if not outright dismissed, and by the time the system catches up, huge amounts of damage have been done. Cases of intimate violence face the additional hurdle of preconceptions about sex, consent, and “he said/she said” defenses. They’re notoriously difficult to prosecute, case in point: Bill Cosby and now Harvey Weinstein, both of whom had actual decades of allegations and myriad survivors behind them, have both had convictions overturned on technicalities.
I’m not saying we need to get rid of the technicalities. Our system is bent enough. But we HAVE to figure out how to effectively prosecute sexual predators, because like serial killers, they’re not run of the mill offenders. And we HAVE to acknowledge that bias is a multi-lane highway. Sure, juries can be biased. But so can judges. And some of these rulings feel like deliberate, direct repudiations of women’s rights and protections.
I’m sad, and frustrated, and angry, and I don’t have any answers, but six and a half years after the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo, it feels like nothing has changed. Or things have only changed for the worse, because all this stuff came out into the open, and everyone has basically shrugged it off. Our justice system still fails women and survivors of intimate violence in the worst ways, and we can’t even count on the worst and most obvious predators being brought to justice. It makes me wonder what the point of it all was. It felt like we had a real chance to create positive, effective change, to make the world a little bit safer for women, and instead we just decided to go back to how everything was before. People keep saying some variation of “at least Weinstein is still convicted in California”. But will he remain so? Do you really believe that? I don’t.
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
