Harvey Weinstein is appealing his rape conviction — and he is blaming the judge.
Weinstein’s lawyers said that Manhattan Judge James Burke swayed the trial’s outcome with repeated rulings beneficial to prosecutors — including a decision allowing additional accusers to testify about allegations that never led to criminal charges.
“Mr. Weinstein had a right to a fair trial by an impartial jury,” lawyers Barry Kamins, John Leventhal and Diana Fabi-Samson wrote in the brief.
“The trial court should have exercised the utmost vigilance in protecting this most important right of the defendant,” they wrote. “Instead, the trial court was cavalier in its obligation to safeguard this right and the consequences for Mr. Weinstein were disastrous.”
‘SURVIVING EPSTEIN’ TRAILER
Weinstein was convicted in February 2020 of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.
He was acquitted of first-degree rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault.