Harvey Weinstein enters court on July 11, 2019 in New York.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images
Filmmaker Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers filed a lawsuit on Monday for his conviction for rape and another sex crime.
Weinstein, 69, was convicted in February 2020 after a trial in Manhattan’s Supreme Court.
He is serving a 23-year prison sentence in the case, which was handed down two years after Weinstein’s explosive allegations of sexual misconduct sparked the #MeToo movement that has continued to derail other men’s careers.
His lawyers, in a court of law, set out seven reasons for the conviction of the producer of films such as “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare in Love” and “Gangs of New York”.
These include the allegation that Weinstein was denied the right to be tried by an impartial jury when the trial judge rejected his challenge to ban a potential juror who wrote an autobiographical book on “the plunder of older men against older women.” young and about which he lied the substance of the book during the “selection of the jury.
Lawyers also argued that Weinstein was denied the right to a fair trial because defense experts were barred from testifying on certain issues and received “a harsh and excessive sentence.”
“I have submitted a 166-page summary, presenting several serious mistakes made during the trial,” Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said in a statement to CNBC.
“We are confident that the Appellate Division will find these issues serious enough to require a reversal of the sentence,” Aidala said.
Jurors convicted Weinstein of first-degree criminal sex by forcing 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.
– CNBC Kevin Breuninger contributed to this article.
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