In a dramatic reversal of the nation’s landmark #MeToo trial, a New York appeals court on Thursday overturned the sex assault conviction of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, citing errors by the trial judge.

The state appeals court found, in a 4-3 decision, that the judge who presided over Weinstein’s 2020 trial prejudiced the disgraced Hollywood movie mogul’s case by allowing four women who said Weinstein had assaulted them to serve as witnesses even though their allegations were not part of the case.

The trial judge also made a mistake, the court ruled, in permitting prosecutors to question Weinstein about uncharged and decades-old allegations if he decided to testify.

“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them,” Judge Jenny Rivera wrote for the majority.

The predominantly female panel of judges ordered a new trial, arguing that the “synergistic effect of these errors was not harmless.”

“The only evidence against defendant was the complainants’ testimony, and the result of the court’s rulings, on the one hand, was to bolster their credibility and diminish defendant’s character before the jury,” the court added.

The overturning of Weinstein’s conviction received pushback from the other judges.

“This Court has continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence,” Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Singas argued that the court had whitewashed the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative, ignored evidence of Weinstein’s manipulation and premeditation, and failed to recognize that the jury was entitled to consider the defendant’s previous assaults.

Weinstein was also convicted of rape in California, so the New York ruling will have no practical effect on his imprisonment.

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