UK prosecutors toss Weinstein case

Film mogul off the hook due to no 'realistic prospect of conviction'

LONDON:

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in June 2022 said it had authorised police to charge the disgraced 72-year-old film producer with two counts of indecent assault. But the CPS, which handles prosecutions in England and Wales, said it had now decided to "discontinue criminal proceedings" against him.

The offences against a woman now in her fifties were alleged to have taken place in London in 1996. "Following a review of the evidence in this case, the CPS has decided to discontinue criminal proceedings against Harvey Weinstein," said Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS special crime and counter-terrorism division. "The CPS has a duty to keep all cases under continuous review and we have decided that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction."

Weinstein was convicted in New York in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of former actress Jessica Mann in 2013, and of forcibly performing oral sex on former production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

But in April New York's highest court overturned Weinstein's conviction on sex crime charges in a shock reversal in one of the defining cases of the #MeToo movement. The Court of Appeals found the trial judge erred in admitting the testimony of additional women who were allegedly abused by Weinstein but who were not named in the charges brought against him and ordered a new trial. He could face a retrial as early as November.

In July, prosecutors in New York also announced that authorities were investigating "additional violent sexual assaults" allegedly carried out by Weinstein that were not subject to a statute of limitations.