California
Weinstein’s rape conviction upheld, but appeals court says he must be resentenced
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s 2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him 16 years in prison to resentence him.
A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.
“We reject his attempts to disturb the jury’s guilty verdicts,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email that “We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”
The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.
The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed.
Weinstein, 74, still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.
In California, Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.
After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued Weinstein in civil court.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named.
Chernyshova testified that Weinstein arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.
Weinstein’s defense argued that Weinstein deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.
The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.
“The lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.
But the appeals court said in its ruling that Weinstein did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.
“Thus, there was no denial of Weinstein’s constitutional right to present a defense,” the panel wrote in its opinion.
The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.
And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults Weinstein was not charged with was appropriate, and allowed under state law.
Before his sentencing, Weinstein told the judge that this was a “made-up story” from a woman he had never met.
The Los Angeles jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.
“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Engelmayer said in his email Friday. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.
Chernyshova’s lawyer David Ring said in an email Friday that she “has persevered for years to reach this point against the man who raped her” and thanks the prosecutors and appellate lawyers “for putting Harvey Weinstein away for good.”
Washington
DC reaches court settlement with man detained while protesting troops’ patrol with Darth Vader theme song
WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia has reached a settlement agreement for an undisclosed amount of money with a resident who claims police illegally detained him for following an Ohio National Guard patrol while playing Darth Vader’s theme song from “Star Wars” on his phone — an act of protest against the Trump administration’s federal law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital.
A court filing late Thursday says the plaintiff, Sam O’Hara, will drop his lawsuit’s claims against the district and four Metropolitan Police Department officers within three business days of receiving the settlement payment. The filing doesn’t specify a dollar amount for the deal between the district and O’Hara, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.
In an email on Friday, an ACLU spokesperson referred to the settlement’s financial terms as “a significant amount” that O’Hara “is pleased with” but said they aren’t disclosing the dollar figure to protect his privacy. A spokesperson for D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office declined to comment on the settlement.
O’Hara’s agreement with the district doesn’t resolve his related claims against an Ohio National Guard member. Attorneys for the Guard member, Sgt. Devon Beck, has asked a judge to dismiss O’Hara’s claims against him.
“He was there because that was his assigned duty,” Beck’s lawyers wrote. “This was not an accidental encounter or a one-time disagreement on a public sidewalk.”
An earlier court filing, in February, said O’Hara had reached a settlement agreement “in principle” with the district. In response, a judge agreed to suspend the case while they negotiated terms.
“The government’s efforts to silence me ultimately backfired and brought more attention to the unjust deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.,” O’Hara said in a statement. “This settlement serves as a reminder that constitutional freedoms are worth defending, especially when those in power would prefer we stay quiet.”
O’Hara sued the district last October, claiming police officers violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures and excessive force.
The ominous orchestral music of “The Imperial March” from the Star Wars movies was the soundtrack for O’Hara’s peaceful protests against President Donald Trump’s ongoing deployment of Guard members in Washington. Millions of TikTok users have viewed O’Hara’s videos of his interactions with troops, according to his lawsuit.
O’Hara, an artist who works in the hospitality industry, says he didn’t interfere with the Guard troops during their Sept. 11, 2025, encounter on a public street. One of the troops summoned Metropolitan Police Department officers, who stopped O’Hara and kept him handcuffed for 15 to 20 minutes before releasing him without charges, according to the lawsuit.
“The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests,” the suit says.
Trump, a Republican, issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency in Washington last August. Within weeks, hundreds of Guard troops and federal agents were helping police patrol the city. The surge inflamed tensions with residents of the heavily Democratic district. Hundreds of Guard members remain deployed in the district nearly a year later, with no clear end in sight.
Washington
Court rejects Trump EPA bid to abandon rule restricting deadly soot pollution
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to abandon a Biden-era rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel is a setback for the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and its repeated efforts to boost coal, a reliable but polluting energy source.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit leaves intact, for now, a tighter standard set in 2024 on pollution from coal-fired power plants, factories and other industrial sources.
The EPA under President Donald Trump asked the appeals court last year to invalidate the Biden-era rule, arguing that the agency under previous leaders had exceeded its statutory authority and acted unreasonably by failing to consider costs to businesses affected by the rule.
The court denied the Trump administration’s request, saying in a decision written by Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg that the agency’s arguments “lack merit.”
The ruling leaves in place an annual limit of 9 micrograms of fine particle pollution — often called soot — per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms established more than a decade ago. The EPA rule sets an air quality level that states and counties must achieve in the coming years to reduce particle pollution from power plants, vehicles, industrial sites and wildfires.
The EPA’s bid to walk away from the Biden-era rule came in response to a lawsuit by 25 Republican-led states and a host of business groups that attempted to block the 2024 rule in court. A suit led by attorneys general from Kentucky and West Virginia argued the EPA rule would raise costs for manufacturers, utilities and families and could block new manufacturing plants.
The EPA under Biden had said the tighter limits would avoid more than 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 2,000 hospital visits and 4,500 premature deaths.
An EPA spokeswoman said in November that the 2024 rule would cost “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to American citizens” and was not based on a full review of available science.
The EPA said Friday it was reviewing the court decision.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling as a victory for public health and a rebuke of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“Clean air is not a luxury. The 2024 soot standard is a critical advancement for public health, projected to save thousands of lives every year,’’ said Patrice Simms, vice president of healthy communities at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “Lee Zeldin’s EPA must stop catering to polluters and must instead fulfill its mission to protect public health,” Simms added.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, another environmental group, said the delay in implementing the 2024 rule has meant millions of Americans continue to breathe unhealthy levels of soot.
“The science has long been clear, and now the law is too. The EPA must stop stalling and deliver the clean air the Clean Air Act requires,’’ said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health scientist for the NRDC.
Weinstein’s rape conviction upheld, but appeals court says he must be resentenced
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s 2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him 16 years in prison to resentence him.
A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.
“We reject his attempts to disturb the jury’s guilty verdicts,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email that “We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”
The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.
The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed.
Weinstein, 74, still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.
In California, Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.
After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued Weinstein in civil court.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named.
Chernyshova testified that Weinstein arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.
Weinstein’s defense argued that Weinstein deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.
The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.
“The lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.
But the appeals court said in its ruling that Weinstein did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.
“Thus, there was no denial of Weinstein’s constitutional right to present a defense,” the panel wrote in its opinion.
The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.
And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults Weinstein was not charged with was appropriate, and allowed under state law.
Before his sentencing, Weinstein told the judge that this was a “made-up story” from a woman he had never met.
The Los Angeles jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.
“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Engelmayer said in his email Friday. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.
Chernyshova’s lawyer David Ring said in an email Friday that she “has persevered for years to reach this point against the man who raped her” and thanks the prosecutors and appellate lawyers “for putting Harvey Weinstein away for good.”
Washington
DC reaches court settlement with man detained while protesting troops’ patrol with Darth Vader theme song
WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia has reached a settlement agreement for an undisclosed amount of money with a resident who claims police illegally detained him for following an Ohio National Guard patrol while playing Darth Vader’s theme song from “Star Wars” on his phone — an act of protest against the Trump administration’s federal law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital.
A court filing late Thursday says the plaintiff, Sam O’Hara, will drop his lawsuit’s claims against the district and four Metropolitan Police Department officers within three business days of receiving the settlement payment. The filing doesn’t specify a dollar amount for the deal between the district and O’Hara, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.
In an email on Friday, an ACLU spokesperson referred to the settlement’s financial terms as “a significant amount” that O’Hara “is pleased with” but said they aren’t disclosing the dollar figure to protect his privacy. A spokesperson for D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office declined to comment on the settlement.
O’Hara’s agreement with the district doesn’t resolve his related claims against an Ohio National Guard member. Attorneys for the Guard member, Sgt. Devon Beck, has asked a judge to dismiss O’Hara’s claims against him.
“He was there because that was his assigned duty,” Beck’s lawyers wrote. “This was not an accidental encounter or a one-time disagreement on a public sidewalk.”
An earlier court filing, in February, said O’Hara had reached a settlement agreement “in principle” with the district. In response, a judge agreed to suspend the case while they negotiated terms.
“The government’s efforts to silence me ultimately backfired and brought more attention to the unjust deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.,” O’Hara said in a statement. “This settlement serves as a reminder that constitutional freedoms are worth defending, especially when those in power would prefer we stay quiet.”
O’Hara sued the district last October, claiming police officers violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures and excessive force.
The ominous orchestral music of “The Imperial March” from the Star Wars movies was the soundtrack for O’Hara’s peaceful protests against President Donald Trump’s ongoing deployment of Guard members in Washington. Millions of TikTok users have viewed O’Hara’s videos of his interactions with troops, according to his lawsuit.
O’Hara, an artist who works in the hospitality industry, says he didn’t interfere with the Guard troops during their Sept. 11, 2025, encounter on a public street. One of the troops summoned Metropolitan Police Department officers, who stopped O’Hara and kept him handcuffed for 15 to 20 minutes before releasing him without charges, according to the lawsuit.
“The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests,” the suit says.
Trump, a Republican, issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency in Washington last August. Within weeks, hundreds of Guard troops and federal agents were helping police patrol the city. The surge inflamed tensions with residents of the heavily Democratic district. Hundreds of Guard members remain deployed in the district nearly a year later, with no clear end in sight.
Washington
Court rejects Trump EPA bid to abandon rule restricting deadly soot pollution
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to abandon a Biden-era rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel is a setback for the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and its repeated efforts to boost coal, a reliable but polluting energy source.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit leaves intact, for now, a tighter standard set in 2024 on pollution from coal-fired power plants, factories and other industrial sources.
The EPA under President Donald Trump asked the appeals court last year to invalidate the Biden-era rule, arguing that the agency under previous leaders had exceeded its statutory authority and acted unreasonably by failing to consider costs to businesses affected by the rule.
The court denied the Trump administration’s request, saying in a decision written by Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg that the agency’s arguments “lack merit.”
The ruling leaves in place an annual limit of 9 micrograms of fine particle pollution — often called soot — per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms established more than a decade ago. The EPA rule sets an air quality level that states and counties must achieve in the coming years to reduce particle pollution from power plants, vehicles, industrial sites and wildfires.
The EPA’s bid to walk away from the Biden-era rule came in response to a lawsuit by 25 Republican-led states and a host of business groups that attempted to block the 2024 rule in court. A suit led by attorneys general from Kentucky and West Virginia argued the EPA rule would raise costs for manufacturers, utilities and families and could block new manufacturing plants.
The EPA under Biden had said the tighter limits would avoid more than 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 2,000 hospital visits and 4,500 premature deaths.
An EPA spokeswoman said in November that the 2024 rule would cost “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to American citizens” and was not based on a full review of available science.
The EPA said Friday it was reviewing the court decision.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling as a victory for public health and a rebuke of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“Clean air is not a luxury. The 2024 soot standard is a critical advancement for public health, projected to save thousands of lives every year,’’ said Patrice Simms, vice president of healthy communities at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “Lee Zeldin’s EPA must stop catering to polluters and must instead fulfill its mission to protect public health,” Simms added.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, another environmental group, said the delay in implementing the 2024 rule has meant millions of Americans continue to breathe unhealthy levels of soot.
“The science has long been clear, and now the law is too. The EPA must stop stalling and deliver the clean air the Clean Air Act requires,’’ said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health scientist for the NRDC.
