Appeals Court Upholds Fairness of Weingarten Trial and Truth of Charges But Drops One Charge on a Technicality

According to the NY Post the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that one charge had to be dropped against Yisroel Moshe Weingarten (YMG). He was charged with “transportation of a minor with intent to engage” in “criminal sexual activity” and “illicit sexual conduct.” Weingarten’s convictions for travel to and from the US were upheld, but the court overturned the conviction for travel between Belgium and Israel. While foreign activity by a US citizen can fall under US law, the court found that the legislation was not clear enough to assume it applied to travel between two foreign countries.

The Appeals Court also stated, “We reject Weingarten’s remaining challenges to his conviction.” The remaining challenges included Weingarten’s claim that the two lawyers hired for him by Menachem Blum were inadequate, that he should have been given a postponement of the trial, that he was not adequately warned about the risks of serving as his own lawyer, and that he only served as his own lawyer because he didn’t have enough time to find another lawyer.

In rejecting those challenges the court supported Judge Gleeson’s ruling that Weingarten had a fair trial. I reported on part of that ruling in my post, What Was Weingarten’s Strategy When He Decided to Be His Own Lawyer in Incest Trial? I will be reporting on other aspects of that ruling in the coming weeks.

In a nutshell, Weingarten got a fair trial and was correctly convicted of transporting his daughter for giluy arayos (incest). However, Congress slipped up in the wording of the legislation and failed to include travel between two foreign countries. The remaining charges all involved travel to or from the US.

VERDICT: Rasha, not Tzadik, but his rishus while travelling between Israel and Belgium can only be prosecuted by those two countries.