Harvey Weinstein to face new trial after NY rape conviction overturned

PTI, May 1, 2024, 11:24 AM IST

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Harvey Weinstein is due back in a New York courtroom on Wednesday for his first appearance since an appeals court last week overturned his 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial.

The preliminary hearing in Manhattan is expected to include discussion of evidence, scheduling and other matters, according to Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala.

Aidala said Weinstein will attend the hearing, despite the 72-year-old having been hospitalised since shortly after his return to the city jail system on Friday from an upstate prison. He has said Weinstein, who has cardiac issues and diabetes, was undergoing unspecified tests due to his health issues.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has said it is determined to retry the case against Weinstein. Legal experts say that may be a long road and come down to whether the women he’s accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said Friday she was still considering whether she would testify at any retrial.

Aidala said Saturday that he plans to tell the judge that he believes a trial could occur any time after Labor Day.

The once-powerful studio boss was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and is still sentenced to another 16 years in prison in California.

In the New York case that is now overturned, he was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013, and of forcing himself on Haley, a former “Project Runway” production assistant, in 2006. Weinstein had pleaded not guilty and maintained any sexual activity was consensual.

The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley has.

On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals vacated his conviction in a 4-3 decision, erasing his 23-year prison sentence, after concluding a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to what he was charged with.

The ruling shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the era of #MeToo, a movement that ushered in a wave of sexual misconduct claims in Hollywood and beyond.