Harvey Weinstein has begged a New York decide to listen to the retrial in his landmark #MeToo case as quickly as potential because of his deteriorating well being, telling him: “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
Weinstein has power myeloid leukaemia, diabetes and coronary heart issues, and informed the decide he was struggling amid harsh situations at New York Metropolis’s Rikers Island jail complicated.
“Every day I’m at Rikers Island, it’s a mystery to me how I’m still walking,” he informed the court docket in Manhattan. “I’m holding on because I want justice for myself and I want this to be over with.”
The 72-year-old is going through a retrial after his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction involving two girls was overturned by New York’s highest court docket in April final yr. He has all the time maintained any sexual exercise he was concerned in was consensual.
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Pic: Jefferson Siegel/The New York Instances through AP, Pool
On the listening to on Wednesday, Choose Curtis Farber stated the retrial would begin on 15 April.
Nonetheless, Weinstein requested him to swap with one other, unrelated case the decide has scheduled in March.
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Weinstein is being held on the Rikers Island Jail complicated. File pic: Reuters
The disgraced film mogul had arrived on the court docket in a wheelchair greater than half an hour after the listening to’s scheduled begin time. In court docket, he complained that jail officers had given him the unsuitable medicine and failed to choose him up on time.
“I’m asking and begging you, your honour,” Weinstein stated. He informed the decide he was going through a “serious emergency situation” and wished to “get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible”.
He informed the court docket that at occasions he finds himself gasping for air and predicted he would quickly must be handled in hospital once more.
In December, he was rushed to hospital following an “alarming blood test result”.
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Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala, pictured outdoors court docket in October final yr, has additionally requested the decide to listen to the case as quickly as potential. Pic: AP/Yuki Iwamura
In court docket final week, Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala additionally appealed for the retrial to occur earlier in “the interest of humanity”, saying his shopper was “dying of cancer and is an innocent man right now in the state of New York”.
Choose Farber stated he would look into beginning the trial a couple of days sooner than deliberate if time permits, however the determination had been made following session with Weinstein’s attorneys in addition to prosecutors.
The decide additionally issued a key ruling on the retrial – upholding a separate cost based mostly on an allegation from a lady who was not a part of the unique case.
Weinstein’s attorneys had tried to get the cost thrown out, arguing that prosecutors solely introduced it to bolster their case with a 3rd accuser, however had been unsuccessful.
Regardless of the New York conviction being overturned, he stays in custody because of one other conviction in 2022, for the rape of an actress in Los Angeles in 2013. His attorneys have appealed that case.
Weinstein was one of the vital highly effective individuals in Hollywood – the co-founder of movie and tv manufacturing corporations Miramax and The Weinstein Firm, he produced movies such because the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Sport.
Nonetheless, fees had been introduced after a number of girls went public with allegations about him in 2017, fuelling the rise of the #MeToo motion.
In September final yr, prosecutors within the UK dropped two fees of indecent assault introduced in opposition to Weinstein in 2022, saying there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.
