Harvey Weinstein enters the courthouse on July 11, 2019 in New York City.
Stephanie Keith | Getty images
Lawyers for film producer Harvey Weinstein appealed his conviction for rape and another sex crime on Monday.
Weinstein, 69, was convicted in February 2020 after a trial before the Manhattan Supreme Court.
He is serving a 23-year sentence on the case, which was tried two years after explosive allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein fueled the #MeToo movement that has continued to derail the careers of other high-profile men.
His lawyers brought seven grounds in a lawsuit to reverse the conviction of the producer of such films as “Pulp Fiction,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “Gangs of New York.”
They include the allegation that Weinstein was denied the right to be tried by an impartial jury when the judge denied his challenge to ban a prospective juror who had written an autobiographical book about “ the predation of older men against younger women , and who lied about the content of the book during “jury selection.
Lawyers also argued that Weinstein was denied the right to a fair trial because defense experts were not allowed to testify on certain cases, and that he received “a severe and excessive sentence.”
The appeal has been filed with the Appellate Division of the Manhattan Supreme Court.
“We submitted a 166-page briefing outlining several serious mistakes made during the trial,” Barry Kamins, Weinstein’s attorney, said in a statement to CNBC.
“We are confident the Appeals Division will find these issues so serious that the conviction should be reversed,” Kamins said.
Jurors convicted Weinstein of committing a first-degree criminal sex act by forcibly performing oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006. He was also found guilty of third-degree rape for assaulting aspiring actress Jessica Mann in a hotel room in Manhattan in 2013.
Another Weinstein attorney, Arthur Aidala, said, “With a year behind us and the emotions gone, the transcript of the case confirms what we always believed: that Mr. Weinstein has not received a fair trial.”
“We will argue that the judge in the trial ignored the generally accepted and fundamental principles of New York law and violated Mr. Weinstein’s constitutional rights. We have every confidence that the Division of Appeals will correct these errors and this case. will send it back to another judge, “Aidala said.
– CNBCs Kevin Breuninger contributed to this article.
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