New York's highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction.
It found the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that were not part of the case.
The state Court of Appeals ruling reopens a painful chapter in America's reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures - an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein. The court ordered a new trial.
His accusers could again be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.
In a 4-3 decision, the state Court of Appeals said the trial judge made a mistake by letting prosecutors introduce testimony from women who claimed that Weinstein assaulted them, even though they were not part of the charges he faced.
The court also said the trial judge compounded the error by letting Weinstein be cross-examined in a way that portrayed him in a "highly prejudicial" light.
"It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behaviour that destroys a defendant's character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges," Judge Jenny Rivera wrote for the majority.
"The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial," she added.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will now need to decide whether to retry Weinstein on the charges.
Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of criminal sex act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.
He will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.
Weinstein's lawyers argued Judge James Burke's rulings in favour of the prosecution turned the trial into "1-800-GET-HARVEY".
The reversal of Weinstein's conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years, after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction.
The former leading Hollywood mogul co-founded the Miramax film studio, whose hit movies included "Shakespeare in Love" and "Pulp Fiction."
His own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018.
