NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein is due back in a New York courtroom Wednesday for his first appearance since an appeals court last week overturned his 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial.
According to Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, the preliminary hearing in Manhattan is expected to include discussion of evidence, scheduling and other matters.
Aidala said Weinstein will attend the hearing even though the 72-year-old has been hospitalized since shortly after returning to the city jail on Friday from an upstate prison. He has said that Weinstein, who has heart problems and diabetes, underwent unspecified tests because of his health problems.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has said it is committed to retrying the case against Weinstein. Legal experts say this could be a long road and that what matters is whether the women he is accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said Friday she was still considering whether to testify at a retrial.
Aidala said Saturday he plans to tell the judge he believes a trial could take place anytime after Labor Day.
The once powerful studio boss was also convicted of another rape in Los Angeles in 2022 and has been sentenced to another 16 years in prison in California.
In the now-dismissed New York case, 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 pleaded not guilty and claimed that any sexual activity was consensual.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people who claim they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be named, as Haley has done.
On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in a 4-3 decision, vacating his 23-year prison sentence after the judge concluded that jurors were allowed to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to what he was charged with accused. .
The ruling shocked and disappointed women celebrating historic achievements in the era of #MeToo, a movement that ushered in a wave of sexual misconduct claims in Hollywood and beyond.