LOS ANGELES — Shortly after a New York appeals court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on rape charges in Manhattan, a defense attorney in the disgraced movie mogul’s Los Angeles case said the same should happen in California.

If Weinstein’s lawyer Mark Werksman has any doubts about whether the same legal strategy will work in both states, he didn’t betray them in his comments after Thursday’s victory for his client.

“We faced the same fundamental unfairness in the Los Angeles case, where the judge let the jury hear about four uncharged allegations of sexual assault,” said defense attorney Mark Werksman. “Harvey was subjected to a firehose of uncharged and incredible allegations which destroyed his right to a fair trial on the charges in the indictment. The case here should be reversed for the same reasons the New York case was reversed.”

Not all legal experts are as convinced.

In its 77-page decision, the New York appellate court ruled that a Manhattan judge robbed Weinstein of a fair trial when he let prosecutors put three women on the stand who accused the Miramax co-founder of sex crimes that he had not been charged with. Those witnesses included a woman L.A. prosecutors had charged Weinstein with assaulting.

In Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial — where he was indicted on 11 counts of rape and sexual battery — prosecutors took a similar approach, calling four women to the stand who accused him of uncharged assaults in New York, London, Puerto Rico and Toronto.

Dozens of women came forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct in 2017, ruining his career and landing him in prison. The New York decision marks a rare triumph since his downfall, but experts said it’s unlikely he’ll be able to overcome his California conviction on similar grounds.

A 1996 change to California evidence law broadly allows uncharged victims to testify in sex crimes cases if their allegations can help prove a pattern of behavior or propensity to commit a crime, said Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. County sex-crimes prosecutor.

“The California case is independent of the New York verdicts that were overturned,” Gorin said.“The law on admitting prior sexual assault evidence in California is very broad, and the judge’s decision to let that evidence in can be challenged as an abuse of discretion.”

Gorin added that Weinstein’s chances of a successful appeal in California were “slim to none.”

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