A New York grand jury has indicted disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein on additional sex crimes charges, according to prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The indictment for the disgraced Hollywood producer remains under seal until Wednesday.
The new charges come ahead of a retrial for Weinstein after a previous rape conviction collapsed this year. It remains to be seen whether the new charges will be included in the retrial, as prosecutors hope, or handled as a separate case by the court.
Prosecutors retrying Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction disclosed last week that they had begun presenting to a grand jury evidence of up to three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating as far back as the mid-2000s.
Weinstein — who is recuperating after emergency heart surgery — was not present at the Thursday hearing when prosecutors asked the judge to set a date for his arraignment.
Judge Curtis Farber ordered the city corrections department to house Weinstein in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward, if medically necessary.
Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction was overturned in April by the New York Court of Appeals, reversing a case that helped launch the #MeToo movement, and outraging sexual violence survivors.
Weinstein was originally sentenced to 23 years in prison in the New York trial.
He was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a former production assistant, Mimi Haleyi, at his apartment in 2006; and of rape in the third degree for an attack on aspiring actress Jessica Mann at a hotel in 2013.
In October 2017, following sexual abuse allegations dating back to the late 1970s, Weinstein was dismissed from his company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
By October 31, more than 80 women had made allegations of sexual harassment or rape against him. The allegations sparked the #MeToo social media campaign and subsequent sexual abuse accusations against many powerful men worldwide, a phenomenon referred to as the “Weinstein effect.”
In May 2018, Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape in New York. In February 2020, he was found guilty of two of five felony counts. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison and began serving his sentence at Wende Correctional Facility.
On July 20, 2021, Weinstein was extradited to Los Angeles to face further charges at a subsequent trial, where he was found guilty of three of seven charges on December 19, 2022. He was sentenced to 16 years in the Los Angeles trial, with his California prison term required to be served separately from his New York sentence.
In April 2023, Weinstein was extradited from California to New York, returning to Mohawk Correctional Facility. On April 25, 2024, the New York Court of Appeals overturned his New York rape convictions due to “egregious errors” of procedure, ordering a retrial. Weinstein remains in prison because of the California conviction.
After the 2024 New York Court of Appeals decision, Weinstein was transferred back to New York’s Rikers Island prison, with plans for a retrial in New York in September 2024. On July 19, 2024, it was ruled that Weinstein would be retried for the New York sex abuse charges, with a retrial tentatively set to begin on November 12, 2024.
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