An appellate court ruling has gone against the New York Times and press in general about the Harvey Weinstein hearing from a couple of weeks ago.
The judge in the case wouldn’t allow press at the hearing. The Times appealed to get the transcript, and lost.
At issue was whether the court would allow other alleged victims of Weinstein to testify at his trial. Some of those alleged victims spoke at the hearing, although their names are unknown. (One may be actress Annabelle Sciorra, who said last week she would testify if possible.)
But the appellate court ruling means no information will be released from that hearing.
The judges wrote:
“The subject matter of the Molineux/Sandoval hearing – allegations of prior uncharged sexual offenses by the defendant, the admissibility of which is disputed – was likely to be prejudicial and inflammatory. Further, some or all of the allegations may have been determined to be inadmissible at trial, or may not be offered at trial even if found potentially admissible. Contrary to petitioners’ suggestion, the People have
represented that some of the information has not yet been made public. Given the worldwide media scrutiny this case has
received, the motion court reasonably concluded that the sealing of documents relating to this single pretrial hearing was the
only way to prevent tainting the jury pool with such inadmissible, prejudicial information. We note that, to the extent information discussed at the hearing is determined to be admissible, such information will become public if and when it is introduced at trial.”
