Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench, who oversaw Weinstein’s 2022 trial in downtown L.A., did place significant limits on the number of so-called “prior bad acts” witnesses called by prosecutors. That number at one point was in the double digits, before Lench limited prosecutors to four.

Over the last three decades, a movement has grown to relax the law in sexual assault cases, according to Daniel Medwed, a professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern who used to be a criminal appellate attorney in New York. Courts are becoming more open to introducing other evidence of sexual assault, he said, allowing prosecutors to build cases against suspected repeat offenders.

“If someone does this once or twice, it’s likely they’ve done it a lot of times,” Medwed said.

While New York’s law may be out of step with evolving thinking on rules governing testimony in sexual assault cases — where often victims don’t come forward against their accusers until long after the statute of limitations on such crimes has run out — Medwed said the state’s rules provide a needed layer of protection for a defendant’s civil rights.

“It’s a traditional view, maybe it’s a lingering civil libertarian view that the jury punishes someone not for who they are alleged to be, but what they’ve done in this case,” he said. “Loosening the rules of evidence could be a slippery slope to an erosion of all our rights.”

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what, if any, impact the New York ruling had on the L.A. case.

Weinstein has denied all wrongdoing in both states and has filed a notice of appeal in California, though a brief outlining the exact parameters of his appeal in L.A. has not been made public.

That filing is expected in late May.

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