Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appeared in court in New York, USA on September 18, 2024.
Gina Moon | Reuters
Harvey Weinstein On Wednesday, he pleaded not guilty to a new sex crime charge in New York while awaiting a retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new charges were not immediately released. He was charged with sex crimes.
The jailed former movie mogul has long maintained that any sex was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had sued extra Sex crime charges were not part of the case that led to his sentencing 2020 conviction now overturned. But the new indictment has been sealed until his trial.
Prosecutors said the grand jury heard evidence from as many as three alleged attacks, two at hotels near Tribeca and one at a residential building in Lower Manhattan. Prosecutors said the alleged incidents occurred between the mid-2000s and 2016.
But it’s unclear whether those charges form the basis for the new indictment.
As he braces for new charges, Weinstein awaits a retrial after the New York State Supreme Court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The High Court, called the Court of Appeal, ordered a new trial.
It is tentatively scheduled to start on November 12, but may be postponed.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the then-presiding judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. The judge’s term will expire in 2022 and he will no longer serve as a judge.
Prosecutors want the new charges included in the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say it should be a separate case. Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday he will rule on the issue early next month.
Weinstein was also convicted in a Los Angeles rape case in 2022 and is still in prison awaiting a retrial in New York.
Weinstein, 72, who appeared in court in a wheelchair, has been receiving treatment at a Manhattan hospital after undergoing emergency surgery on Sept. 9 to drain fluid from his heart and lungs.
A judge last week agreed to let Weinstein remain in a prison ward at Bellevue Hospital indefinitely rather than be transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York’s Rikers Island prison complex.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, co-founding the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, which produced films such as “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Crying Game.”
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