Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul, will face a Manhattan trial for the second time on April 15, though he pleaded with a judge to try him sooner.
Mr. Weinstein, 72, is accused of three sex crimes. A New York judge on Wednesday ruled against a motion to dismiss his most recent indictment.
Mr. Weinstein objected to the trial date in an exchange with the judge, Curtis Farber. He said he was “begging” him to move up the date because of his declining health.
“I can’t wait this long,” Mr. Weinstein said, adding: “The sooner the better.”
Mr. Weinstein, who was brought into a Manhattan criminal courtroom with his right hand cuffed to a wheelchair, sought to negotiate with the judge, saying that he was ill and “can’t hold on anymore.” The Rikers Island jail complex where he is being held is a “hellhole” and a “stain on the city,” Mr. Weinstein told the court.
“I’m holding on because I want justice for myself and I want this to be over,” he said.
After listening to Mr. Weinstein’s plea, Justice Farber said he was “empathetic” but that it would be difficult to reschedule other trials to accommodate the request.
Mr. Weinstein was already set to be retried after an earlier conviction was overturned. Last year, after a grand jury indicted him on a new charge that he sexually assaulted a woman in a Manhattan hotel in 2006, the judge ruled that the cases could be tried together.
Mr. Weinstein was first convicted in New York in 2020 of raping an aspiring actress in a hotel room. He was also convicted of assaulting a former television production assistant, who testified that he had forced oral sex on her in his Manhattan apartment.
Last April, the state’s highest court overturned his conviction, finding that the judge who had presided over the trial had erred by allowing prosecutors to call several accusers as witnesses even though their allegations had not led to charges.
Immediately, Manhattan prosecutors, led by District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, said they would retry Mr. Weinstein.
Before his legal troubles, Mr. Weinstein was a Hollywood producer with the power to make careers. But according to prosecutors and women who have come forward, he used his power to harass and sexually assault women. An investigation by The New York Times found that Mr. Weinstein had paid off sexual harassment accusers for decades, primarily targeting women who were young and trying to make it in the industry.
The New York case was considered a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement. His conviction was followed by another in a separate sex-crimes case in Los Angeles, where he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He has appealed that case.
Five years after his first trial, New York’s case against Mr. Weinstein will continue.
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, has said that his client’s health is failing — he has “fluid on his heart, fluid in his lungs” and spinal stenosis, among other ailments, he told Justice Farber at a hearing last year. In September, Mr. Weinstein was hospitalized for emergency heart surgery. The next month, he was diagnosed with cancer.
His lawyers have accused prosecutors of stalling and of searching for a victim to base new charges on after his conviction was overturned.
Prosecutors have firmly resisted those allegations. They wrote in a recent filing that they had first interviewed the woman connected to the most recent charge in January 2020, but that before they completed their investigation, Mr. Weinstein had already been convicted and sentenced and the office had decided to “conserve resources” rather than proceed with the case.
After the conviction was overturned, prosecutors signaled during a court hearing that they were investigating additional allegations against Mr. Weinstein.
Nicole Blumberg, an assistant district attorney, told the court in July that there were women who had not been ready to move forward with charges in 2020.
“Some of those women are now ready to proceed,” she said at the time.
The post New Harvey Weinstein Sex Crimes Trial Is Set for April 15 appeared first on New York Times.
