Harvey Weinstein enters the court on July 11, 2019 in New York City.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images
Lawyers for film producer Harvey Weinstein on Monday filed an appeal for his conviction for rape and another sex crime.
Weinstein, 69, was convicted in February 2020 after a trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court.
He is serving a 23-year prison sentence in the case, which was tried two years after Weinstein’s explosive allegations of sexual misconduct sparked the #MeToo movement, which continued to derail the careers of other important men.
His lawyers in a lawsuit put forward seven pleas to overturn the conviction of the film producer such as “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare In Love” and “Gangs of New York”.
They include the claim that Weinstein was denied his right to be tried by an impartial jury when the judge denied his challenge to stop a potential juror who had written an autobiographical book about “the predations of older men against younger women, and who lied about the content of the book during the “selection of the jury.
The lawyers also argued that Weinstein was denied his right to a fair trial because defense experts were prevented from testifying on certain matters, and that he received “a sentence that was harsh and excessive”.
“We filed a 166-page petition, describing several serious mistakes made during the trial,” Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said in a statement to CNBC.
“We are confident that the Appeals Division will consider these issues serious enough to demand a reversal of the conviction,” said Aidala.
Jurors convicted Weinstein of committing a first-degree criminal sex act by forcibly performing oral sex with production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006. He was also found guilty of third-degree rape for attacking aspiring actress Jessica Mann in a room. hotel in Manhattan in 2013.
– CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this article.
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