FILE - Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 4 2022. Weinstein is expected to return to a New York court as he faces a retrial of his landmark #MeToo-era rape case in a matter of months. The fallen movie mogul has a court hearing Wednesday, May 29, 2024 to address issues related to the retrial, which is slated for sometime after Labor Day. (Etienne Laurent/Pool Photo via AP, file)
NEW YORK (AP) – Harvey Weinstein is appearing before a judge Wednesday afternoon in the same New York City courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial.
The disgraced movie mogul entered the court in a wheelchair, as he has during recent hearings for a retrial on rape charges after his 2020 conviction was tossed out.
Wednesday’s court hearing will address various legal issues related to the upcoming trial, which is tentatively scheduled for some time after Labor Day.
Weinstein’s original trial was held in the same courtroom where Trump is on trial now, but the two men are unlikely to bump into each other. Weinstein is in custody and will be brought to and from the courtroom under guard. He will be appearing in a courtroom on a different floor than where Trump is currently on trial.
Weinstein was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on Jessica Mann, an aspiring actor, and of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, a former TV and film production assistant.
But last month New York’s highest court threw out those convictions after determining that the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from other women that weren’t part of the case. Weinstein, 72, has maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
The New York ruling reopened a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures. The #MeToo era began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein.
Last week, prosecutors asked Judge Curtis Farber to remind Weinstein’s lawyers not to discuss or disparage potential witnesses in public ahead of the retrial.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office argued that Weinstein’s lead attorney, Arthur Aidala, made statements meant to intimidate Haley earlier this month.
Speaking outside of court on May 1, Aidala said Haley lied to the jury about her motive in coming forward and that his team planned an aggressive cross-examination on the issue “if she dares to come and show her face here.”
Aidala didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday about Bragg’s request.
Haley has said she does not want to go through the trauma of testifying again, “but for the sake of keeping going and doing the right thing and because it is what happened, I would consider it.”
Her attorney, Gloria Allred, declined to comment until after she attends Wednesday’s proceedings.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as both Haley and Mann have.
Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence in New York, was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and is still sentenced to 16 years in prison in California.
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
