Prosecutors will retry Harvey Weinstein after appeals court overturns NY rape conviction
NEW YORK — Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein will be retried as soon as this fall following the stunning overturning of his rape and sexual assault conviction, Manhattan prosecutors said Wednesday.
The decision was announced at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing attended by Weinstein and Jessica Mann, one of two women who he was found guilty of attacking more than four years ago.
“We believe in this case and will be retrying this case,” Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said inside a packed 13th-floor courtroom, successfully asking Judge Curtis Farber to remand the Miramax founder.
“Jessica Mann is here in court. She’s one of the sexual assault survivors, and she’s here today to show that she’s not backing down,” Blumberg later said. “She wanted everyone to know the truth and that the defendant may have power and privilege, but she has the truth.”
The Miramax founder, wearing a navy suit and light blue tie, was brought into court in a wheelchair and shook hands with attorneys seated in the front row as a court officer transported him to the defense table.
His lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said his client continues to maintain his innocence.
“I will tell you he’s sharp as a tack, and as smart as he ever was,” the defense attorney said, adding that Weinstein intends to participate in his defense. Aidala said Weinstein had been receiving treatment at Bellevue’s prison ward for “serious medical issues.”
Judge Farber told the parties to return to court on May 29 and estimated the case would go on trial sometime after Labor Day when both sides said they could be ready.
Attorney Gloria Allred, who represents Miriam Haley, the other woman Weinstein was found guilty of attacking in his New York case, said she is still deciding whether she wants to participate in another trial and would let prosecutors know when she’s made up her mind.
“It is a difficult decision because it is retraumatizing to her every time she needs to recount what she alleges happened to her,” Allred said.
A state Supreme Court jury determined Weinstein, 72, was guilty of criminal sexual act in the first-degree and third-degree rape in 2020, finding he forcibly performed oral sex on Haley in 2006 and committed third-degree rape in an incident with Mann in 2013.
He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, which he was serving at the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y. — where he returned after facing another trial in California that resulted in his December 2022 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges and a 16-year sentence.
The stunning April 25 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals overturning Weinstein’s New York conviction found the trial court judge, James Burke, shouldn’t have permitted testimony by three women — Taralê Wulff, Dawn Dunning, and Lauren Young — about uncharged allegations of sexual violence.
