NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein is expected to return to 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 lawyer, Arthur Aidala.
Aidala said Weinstein will attend the hearing despite the 72-year-old being hospitalized shortly after his return to the city’s jail system on Friday from an upstate prison. He said Weinstein, who has heart problems and diabetes, was undergoing unspecified tests due to health problems.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said it is determined to retry the case against Weinstein. Legal experts say this could be a long road and the question is whether the women he is accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said Friday that she was still considering whether to testify in any new trial.
Aidala said Saturday he plans to tell the judge he believes a trial could take place 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 an additional 16 years in prison in California.
In the New York case that has now been overturned, he was convicted of third-degree rape for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013, and for forcing himself on Haley, a former “Project Runway” production assistant, in 2006. Weinstein had He pleaded not guilty and maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who allege sexual assault unless they agree to be identified, as Haley did.
On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in a 4-3 decision, vacating his 23-year prison sentence, after concluding that a trial judge allowed jurors to see and hear too many evidence not directly related to what you have been accused of. .
The decision shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic achievements during the #MeToo era, a movement that kicked off a wave of sexual misconduct allegations in Hollywood and beyond.
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