The Crown Prosecution Service said that it had “decided that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”
British prosecutors have dropped a case against Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, just two years after authorizing indecent assault charges against him.
In a statement on Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service said that, “following a review of the evidence,” it had decided to halt the proceedings against Mr. Weinstein.
Frank Ferguson, head of the service’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said in the statement that there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”
“We have explained our decision to all parties,” he added.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said in an email that the service would not be giving any further details of the reasoning behind the decision.
The case dates to 2022, when British prosecutors authorized two charges against Mr. Weinstein of indecent assault of a woman in London in 1996. Under British law, it is illegal to identify potential victims of sexual assault, even after prosecutors drop a case.
At the height of his powers, Mr. Weinstein, now 72, was one of the world’s most important movie producers, widely seen as able to make or break an actor’s career.
In 2017, his career went into free fall after The New York Times reported that he had, over the course of nearly three decades, paid off women who had accused him of sexual assault. In the story’s aftermath, prosecutors mounted cases against him in both Britain and the United States.
Last year, Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in California.
In April, New York’s highest court overturned Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 felony sex crimes conviction, ruling that the original judge had deprived him of a fair trial. The court said that the original judge should not have let prosecutors call witnesses who said that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them when their accusations did not form part of the case.
In May, Manhattan prosecutors announced they would retry Mr. Weinstein on sex crimes charges and he is currently in the Rikers Island jail complex awaiting that case.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
