Harvey Weinstein N.Y. Trial Juror Slams Conviction Reversal: “Our Justice System Failed Us”
One of the 12 jurors who heard Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 sexual assault trial and voted for his conviction, which was overturned on Thursday by New York’s Court of Appeals, has written an op-ed for U.S. News and World Report in which she calls the reversal a gut-punch that should not have happened, as the jury’s decision was not influenced by the so-called Molineux witnesses whose testimony in 2020, in part, led to the decision to overturn the conviction.
“The decision is a punch in the gut to Weinstein’s victims — and to all rape victims, where so often the only evidence is a woman’s word,” Amanda Brainerd, who was juror 11, wrote in her piece. She went on to add, “Our justice system failed us today.”
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The 72-year-old convicted rapist and former Miramax movie mogul was found guilty at his 2020 New York County trial 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.
The reversal of his conviction comes from what the seven-judge Court of Appeals panel, in a 4-3 decision, saw as two wrong moves by Judge James Burke in Weinstein’s New York trial: first, his decision to allow three women whose accusations against Weinstein were not in the purview of the case to testify about “prior bad acts” as so-called Molineux witnesses. Burke also said he would allow the prosecution to confront the defendant on the stand about past behavior that was also not related to the cases of the two women accusing him of sexual assault. Weinstein, who maintains his innocence, opted not to defend his actions as consensual encounters to avoid being questioned about two dozen-plus alleged acts of misbehavior, which Weinstein’s attorney said went back four decades.
In her op-ed, Brainerd refutes the notion that the Molineux witnesses had any influence on the jury’s decision, saying that “the ‘prior bad acts’ witnesses rarely came up in our deliberations, as they were not part of the accusations.” She also details some of the methods the jury adopted over the five-day deliberation, sharing that they divided conversations into three parts that corresponded to each of the three accusing witnesses and went through each of the relevant counts in order.
“It’s profoundly disappointing that our verdict was overturned over additional testimony that had so little influence on our deliberations,” Brainerd wrote. “Based on what happened in that jury room, it’s simply incorrect that Weinstein did not receive a fair trial. We didn’t deliberate for five days to wrongfully send a fellow human being to jail.”
What Brainerd does not mention in her piece is the defense’s argument that Weinstein wanted to testify in his New York trial, but was unwilling to do so if, because of Judge Burke’s shepherding of the trial, it involved a grilling from prosecutors on incidents that took place decades ago.
Brainerd is a New York-based real estate professional and mother of three children. She also released Age of Consent, her debut novel, in 2020. The book follows a group of friends coming of age in a world of wealth, recreational drugs, dysfunctional parenting — and a subplot involving a predatory older man.
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