A fragile looking Harvey Weinstein showed up in a Manhattan courtroom this morning for proceedings in his upcoming new New York sex crimes trial. Entering the hearing in a wheelchair through a side door, this was the first public appearance of the much accused and convicted producer since it emerged he has cancer — specifically, chronic myeloid leukemia.
The news that Weinstein is receiving treatment for bone marrow cancer followed the incarcerated producer’s emergency heart and lung surgery in September. Additionally, Weinstein is facing a new indictment against him stemming from an allegation by an as-yet-unnamed accuser.
Weinstein’s health and legal woes had become increasingly intertwined even before his cancer diagnosis.
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Moved from an upstate New York prison after his 2020 New York sex crimes conviction was overturned in April, the ailing 72-year-old has shuttled between New York City’s notoriously harsh Rikers Island jail, the courthouse, and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan over the past few months. Throughout all that, and with his Empire State sentence tossed aside, Weinstein remained in custody because of his 2022 criminal convictions in Los Angeles for rape and sexual assault.
Today’s hearing was structured around the Manhattan DA office’s request to meld together the remains of the old case with the new charge — something the defense objects to. The new trial was set to start on November 12, but both the prosecution and the defense have expressed doubts the timeline is achievable. The consolidation was granted by the judge quickly in the session.
The terms of his confinement changed after his emergency surgery: Days later, with Weinstein still too sick to appear in court in person, Judge Curtis Farber ruled on September 12 that he would not be returned to Rikers Island and would remain at the jail ward of Bellevue Hospital.
In that hearing, Weinstein’s main lawyer Arthur Aidala went through the litany of health problems plaguing his client — “He’s gotten Covid more times than I can count” — and described Weinstein’s condition after the surgery: hospitalized with a tube in his chest attached to a bag draining fluids from his body, and breathing with help from an oxygen mask. Aidala said that Weinstein “almost died” in the custody of New York City’s corrections department this summer
The producer made it into surgery, Aidala added, only after he raised the alarm with the DA’s office following a frantic chain of contacts that began with Weinstein calling his legal health representative Craig Rothfeld, by phone from Rikers. After that call, Rothfeld contacted Aidala to say, “I think Harvey’s gonna die.”
Aidala later praised the judge for “a commonsense directive that someone who is as ill as Mr. Weinstein is should stay in a hospital setting.” The ruling came the same day that prosecutors revealed the existence of the new grand jury indictment against Weinstein. However, after just a few days at Bellevue, Weinstein was in fact moved back to Rikers, where he has primarily been ever since, we hear.
“He’s trying to stay upbeat,” said Weinstein’s longtime spokesman Juda Engelmayer told Deadline today in the hall outside Judge Farber’s courtroom. “He should be in a hospital.”
Weinstein was convicted in by New York jury almost five years ago of sexually assaulting a production assistant, Mimi Haley in 2006 and raping an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann in 2013. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison before an appeals court ruled 4-3 this spring that prosecutors had violated Weinstein’s right to a fair trial by letting jurors hear from other women whose accusations were not included in the charges against him.
A more aunt-looking than ever Weinstein returned to court in a wheelchair on September 18 to plead not guilty to a new charge of sexually assaulting a woman. The alleged victim’s identity has not yet been made public. What is known is that the assault occurred between April and May of 2006.
The single count of criminal sexual act in the first degree carries a maximum sentence of 25 years.
With the new indictment unsealed, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg released a statement thanking “this survivor who bravely came forward.” He added: “This investigation is ongoing.”
Although the new indictment contains only one charge from a single accuser, Aidala told reporters on September 12 that, based on his conversations with prosecutors, he counted three new sex crime complaints against Weinstein from 2005-2016 being investigated by the DA’s office.
“We don’t know what the exact accusations are, the exact locations are, the exact timing is,” the defense lawyer declared. “But they went out and found human beings who are willing to say Mr. Weinstein did something wrong.”
More than 80 women working at all levels of the film industry have come forward to accuse Weinstein of rape and assault during and after the height of the MeToo movement that called out powerful men in entertainment, politics and business for exploitive and abusive behavior.
Weinstein reached civil settlements with dozens of accusers but still faces more lawsuits. One of those suit was brought forth in October 2023 by actress Julia Ormond against Weinstein, Disney, CAA and Miramax under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which extended the statute of limitations for alleged victims of sexual assault to sue. In late August, Disney, CAA and Miramax all failed in their efforts to have the case dismissed.
In that case and all others over the past several years, Weinstein has denied wrongdoing. To that, the Pulp Fiction producer’s lawyers filed an appeal of his Los Angeles conviction in June. There is no indication of when that appeal will be heard or decided.
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