Harvey Weinstein back in court, key witness mulls retrial testimony
Harvey Weinstein will appear in a New York City court next week, the first step in potentially retrying the film mogul after his 2020 rape conviction was overturned.
New York’s highest court on Thursday threw out Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, ordering a new trial. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has said it intends to pursue a retrial, but gave no indication about the agenda for Wednesday’s hearing.
“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement on Friday.
Meanwhile, a woman whom Weinstein was convicted of sexually assaulting stated on Friday that she is contemplating whether she would testify in any potential retrial. Mimi Haley said she is still processing Thursday’s decision by the state Court of Appeals and is considering numerous factors, including the trauma of having to prepare for another trial and again relive what happened to her.
“It was retraumatising and gruelling and exhausting and all the things,” she said during a news conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred.
“I definitely don’t want to actually go through that again.
But for the sake of keeping going and doing the right thing and because it is what happened, I would consider it.”
Weinstein was convicted in New York in February 2020 of forcing himself on Haley, a TV and film production assistant, in 2006 for oral sex and raping an aspiring actress in 2013.
Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in that case.
Thursday’s Court of Appeals court ruling in New York essentially resets Weinstein’s case, with next week’s hearing the first step in the process of potentially retrying him. Prosecutors will work off the same indictment, albeit excluding the charges he was acquitted of four years ago.
Among other things, authorities will need to sort out where Weinstein is incarcerated while he awaits a new trial in New York.
He could be sent to the city’s notorious Riker’s Island jail complex, or to California to begin serving a sentence for his conviction there.
On Thursday, Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, hailed the state Court of Appeals ruling as “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”
The court overturned Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, citing the admission of uncharged prior sexual acts testimony and prejudicial questioning about Weinstein’s behaviour as an abuse of judicial discretion.