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Harvey Weinstein faces New York retrial after 2020 rape conviction overturned

Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, says his team is determined to retry case against the disgraced movie mogul

Harvey Weinstein in court in New York on 1 May 2024. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/AFP/Getty Images

Harvey Weinstein in court in New York on 1 May 2024. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/AFP/Getty Images

Harvey Weinstein will be retried in New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said on Wednesday, a week after the state’s highest court threw out his 2020 rape conviction.

Weinstein arrived at a Manhattan courthouse in the afternoon, his first appearance since the decision by the appeals court last week.

Wearing a navy blue suit, he was seated in a wheelchair pushed by a court officer as he entered the preliminary hearing in Manhattan that is expected to include discussion of evidence, scheduling and other matters, according to Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said via his office staff that his team was determined to retry the case against the disgraced movie mogul.Legal experts say that may be a long road and come down to whether the women he is accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said on Friday she was still considering whether she would testify at any retrial.

Aidala said Weinstein was attending the hearing despite the 72-year-old having been hospitalized since shortly after his return to the city jail system on Friday from an upstate prison. He has said Weinstein, who has cardiac issues and diabetes, was undergoing unspecified tests because of his health issues.

Prosecutors said one of the accusers, Jessica Mann, was in court on Wednesday and asked the judge for an early fall date for retrial.

Aidala said on Saturday that he plans to tell the judge that he believes a trial could occur any time after Labor Day in September.

The once-powerful studio boss was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and is still sentenced to another 16 years in prison in California.In the New York case that is now overturned, he was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013, and of forcing himself on Haley, a former Project Runway production assistant, in 2006. Weinstein had pleaded not guilty and maintained any sexual activity was consensual.

The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley and Mann have.

On Thursday, the New York court of appeals vacated his conviction in a 4-3 decision, erasing his 23-year prison sentence, after concluding a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to what he was charged with.

The ruling shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the era of #MeToo, a movement that ushered in a wave of sexual misconduct claims in Hollywood and beyond. But the founder of #MeToo, Tarana Burke, has called the women who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein “heroes” and said such campaigns for justice and equality will continue to bring about progress in society.

Other advocates said the movement “will persist”.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Author: Editors Desk, Guardian staff and agency

Source: RT

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