LONDON: British prosecutors stated on Thursday (Sep 5) they’d discontinued indecent assault costs in opposition to former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein after concluding there was no reasonable likelihood of securing a conviction.
When it authorised costs in opposition to Weinstein two years in the past, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service stated the alleged assault had taken place in August 1996 in London, with police including the accusation had concerned a lady now aged in her 50s.
“Following a evaluate of the proof on this case, the CPS has determined to discontinue legal proceedings in opposition to Harvey Weinstein,” stated Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS’ Particular Crime and Counter Terrorism Division.
“The CPS has an obligation to maintain all instances underneath steady evaluate and we’ve determined that there isn’t any longer a practical prospect of conviction.”
Ferguson stated the CPS had defined the choice to all of the events concerned.
Weinstein, 72, was discovered responsible of rape allegations and jailed for 23 years in the US in 2020 in a milestone for the #MeToo motion, by which ladies accused a whole bunch of males in leisure, media, politics and different fields of sexual misconduct.
Nevertheless, the New York Court docket of Appeals threw out the Manhattan conviction in April, discovering the Miramax movie studio co-founder didn’t get a good trial as a result of a decide improperly allowed testimony by accusers he was not formally charged with assaulting. He faces a attainable retrial in November.
A courtroom in Los Angeles in 2022 additionally convicted him of raping an actress within the metropolis, and he was sentenced to 16 years in jail. That conviction was not affected by the New York courtroom’s determination, and he has not begun serving the California sentence. Weinstein has denied wrongdoing and has denied having non-consensual sexual encounters with anybody.
