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One of six sexual assault counts against Harvey Weinstein was dismissed in a New York courtroom on Thursday, as prosecutors admitted that police "failed to inform" them about a key interview.
The charged dismissed was Count 6, a criminal sex act in the first degree, stemming from an alleged assault on one-time aspiring actress Lucia Evans.
"We are moving full-steam ahead on the other counts," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said during a pre-trial hearing in front of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice James Burke.
Evans claimed that when she was a 21-year-old college student in 2004, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex in his office.
Evans’ accusations, first reported in The New Yorker magazine a year ago this week, led to dozens of other women coming forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct.
In a Sept. 12 letter from Illuzzi-Orbon to Weinstein's lawyers, made public for the first time on Thursday, the prosecutor disclosed that police interviewed a friend of Evans. But that interview wasn't passed on to the district attorney until recently.
The witness told an NYPD detective that "the defendant had offered her employment in exchange for oral sex, and that the complainant thereupon had performed oral sex on the defendant."
The prosecutor said the friend's statement was "at odds with the factual account the complainant previously provided our office."
"The People have recently learned that this account was earlier provided by the witness to a detective ... who failed to inform our office of important aspects of the account prior to the indictment in this case," Illuzzi-Orbon wrote in the letter to lawyer Ben Brafman.
In court on Thursday, Brafman accused Evans of perjury and called for an investigation of a detective on the case.
"And we are pleased with this development. The case is not over, but I think it is permanently and irreparably damaged," Brafman told reporters said outside court. "We will seek to dismiss the indictment, all of the counts."
The defense claims the charges against Weinstein involving Evans actually stem from "a consensual relationship." Brafman said emails between Weinstein and Evans will bolster the defense against the remaining charges.
The 66-year-old Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and is free on $1 million bail.