Add to end of “Evidence Rules and #MeToo” on page 132
In 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed Cosby’s conviction on other grounds, while hinting at problems in the admission of the uncharged acts. New York’s highest court reversed Weinstein’s conviction in 2024 because “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose.”
The dissenting judges in People v. Weinstein sharply criticized the majority,
Fundamental misunderstandings of sexual violence perpetrated by men known to, and with significant power over, the women they victimize are on full display in the majority’s opinion. By … failing to recognize that the jury was entitled to consider defendant’s previous assaults, this Court has continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence … and perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability.
The majority responded,
We take no “step backwards from recent advances in our understanding of how sex crimes are perpetrated and why victims sometimes respond in seemingly counterintuitive ways” and we do not “shut our eyes to the enduring effect of rape culture on notions of consent, and intent,” as the respective dissents assert. On the contrary, consistent with our judicial role, our analysis is grounded on bedrock principles of evidence and the defendant’s constitutional right to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial. Judge Singas would ignore these principles because, in her view, they fail to account for how rape myths distort jurors’ perceptions of victims, and corrupt the deliberative process. But justice for sexual assault victims is not incompatible with well-established rules of evidence designed to ensure that criminal convictions result only from the illegal conduct charged. Indeed, just as rape myths may impact the trier of fact’s deliberative process, propensity evidence has a bias-inducing effect on jurors and tends to undermine the truth-seeking function of trials.”
The judges also clashed over the impact of the ruling on disadvantaged minorities as detailed in a footnote in the majority opinion,
Judge Singas correctly acknowledges that “victims of color are especially disadvantaged, through the intersection of rape and racial mythology, because of harmful stereotypes that ascribe heightened sexuality to these victims.” However, racial and ethnic stereotypes and express and implicit bias also play a significant role in the failures of our criminal legal system, as “men of color are still more likely than white men to be falsely accused, falsely arrested, and, yes, even falsely convicted.” Erosion of our precedents that limit the introduction of uncharged conduct in the manner our dissenting colleagues suggest would only amplify the risk that biased jurors would justify a vote to convict defendants of color on such uncharged conduct in cases where the evidence supporting the charged conduct is weak— an all too real phenomenon. Hollowing out [Rule 404] will not end systemic racism, but it may very well exacerbate societal injustices replicated within our courts.
Do you think these cases will increase the pressure for these jurisdictions, and others, to adopt a rule like Federal Rule of Evidence 413? Would that be a good outcome as a matter of policy?
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