Harvey Weinsteins Conviction Was Fragile From the Start

The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York sex crimes conviction on Thursday morning may feel like a shocking reversal, but the criminal case against him has been fragile since the day it was filed.Prosecutors moved it forward with risky, boundary-pushing bets.

New York’s top judges, many of them female, have held rounds of pained debates over whether his conviction was clean.Outside the justice system, evidence of Mr.Weinstein’s sexual misconduct is overwhelming.

After The New York Times revealed allegations of abuse by the producer in 2017, nearly 100 women came forward with accounts of pressure and manipulation by Mr.Weinstein.

Their stories sparked the global #MeToo reckoning.But while Mr.Weinstein’s alleged victims could fill an entire courtroom, few of them could stand at the center of a New York criminal trial.

Many of the horror stories were about sexual harassment, which is a civil violation, not a criminal one.Others fell beyond the statute of limitations.

One of the original accusers was dropped from the trial because of allegations of police misconduct.Manhattan prosecutors, under pressure for not pursuing charges earlier, made a series of gambles.First, they proceeded with a trial based on only two victims, who accused him of sexually assaulting them but also admitted to having consensual sex with him at other times — a combination that many experts say is too messy to win convictions.To prove their case against Mr.

Weinstein, who denies all allegations of non-consensual sex, the prosecutors had little concrete evidence.So to persuade the jury, the lawyers turned to a controversial strategy that would ultimately lead to the conviction’s undoing.They put additional women with accounts of abuse by Mr.

Weinstein — so-called Molineux witnesses — on the stand to establish a pattern of predation.The decision seemed apt for the moment: In a legal echo of the #MeToo movement, Mr.

Weinstein was forced to face a chorus of testimony fro...