Harvey Weinstein enters 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 in 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 ignited the #MeToo movement that has continued to derail the careers of other high-profile men.
His lawyers in a court case set out seven grounds for overturning the conviction of the producer of films such as “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare in Love” and “Gangs of New York”.
They include the claim that Weinstein was denied the right to be tried by an impartial jury when the trial judge denied his challenge to ban a jury that had written an autobiographical book on “the depredations of old men against younger women the substance of the book during the “selection of the jury.
Lawyers also argued that Weinstein was denied the right to a fair trial because defense experts had no right to testify on certain matters and that he received “a harsh and excessive sentence.”
The appeal is filed in the Appellate Division of the Manhattan Supreme Court.
“We filed a 166-page brief, which explained several serious errors committed during the course of the trial,” Weinstein’s attorney general, Barry Kamins, said in a statement to CNBC.
“We are confident that the appellate division will find these issues serious enough to require a reversal of the sentence,” Kamins said.
Jurors convicted Weinstein of first-degree criminal sexual assault by force of oral sex with production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006. He was also found guilty of third-degree rape for assaulting aspiring actress Jessica Mann in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
– CNBC Kevin Breuninger contributed to this article.
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