A judge on Wednesday set a 15 April trial date for Harvey Weinstein’s retrial, as the disgraced movie mogul pleaded in court to move the trial date sooner citing health conditions.
Weinstein appeared in court in New York on Wednesday morning, seated in a wheelchair. He addressed the court and begged the Manhattan criminal court judge Curtis Farber to move up the trial date to before 15 April, expressing he “can’t hold on anymore”.
“I’m asking and begging your honor to move your trial,” Weinstein, 72, said. “I can’t hold on anymore. I’m holding on because I want justice for myself.”
Weinstein is being treated for numerous medical conditions, including chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.
He described the conditions at Rikers Island, where he is currently being held, as a “medieval situation” according to the Hollywood Reporter, and told the court that he was in a “serious emergency situation”.
“Everyday I’m at Rikers Island, it’s a mystery to me how I’m still walking,” he said.
“I’m begging the court to move your date. I need to get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible.”
Weinstein asked the judge to switch his trial date with an another earlier trial that is already on the calendar. The judge explained that he had decided on the 15 April date after consulting with both the prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers, but said he would consider the possibly of starting the trial a few days earlier, if time permits.
Weinstein’s request came after the judge issued a ruling defining the scope of his retrial. The judge upheld a charge based on an allegation from a woman who was not in the original case.
Weinstein had wantedthe extra charge thrown out, arguing through lawyers that Manhattan prosecutors only brought it to bolster their case with a third accuser after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women.
Scheduling Weinstein’s retrial has been complicated by an increasingly crowded court calendar.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, is also representing the conservative strategist Steve Bannon in a border wall fraud trial that is set to start 4 March before a different Manhattan judge. Meanwhile, the judge has a murder trial in March.
Before Bannon’s trial date was set last week, Aidala had suggested that Weinstein’s trial go first in “the interest of humanity”, citing Weinstein’s declining health.
“They know that Mr Weinstein is dying of cancer and is an innocent man right now in the state of New York,” Aidala argued in court last week. He pleaded to prosecutors: “Can I try this dying man’s case first?”
Weinstein is being retried on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex on a movie and TV production assistant in 2006 and raped an aspiring actor in 2013. The additional charge, filed last September, alleges he forced oral sex on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in court papers that the woman, who has not been identified publicly, came forward to prosecutors just days before the start of Weinstein’s first trial but was not part of that case.
Prosecutors said they did not pursue the women’s allegations after Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison, but they revisited them and secured a new indictment after the state’s court of appeals threw out his conviction last April.
Farber ruled in October to combine the new indictment and existing charges into one trial.
Weinstein’s lawyers contend that prosecutors prejudiced him by waiting nearly five years to bring the additional charge, suggesting they had elected not to include the allegation in his first trial so they could use it later if his conviction were reversed.
Prosecutors called that thinking “absurd”, countering that Weinstein’s lawyers would have also been outraged if he had been charged based on the third woman’s allegation either during his first trial or immediately after his conviction.
Weinstein “would likely have characterized that timing as a vindictive and gratuitous pile-on”, prosecutors wrote in a court filing last month.
The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said the previously uncharged allegation “required a sensitive investigation” and serious contemplation before seeking an indictment, in part because there are no witnesses to the alleged assault and no scientific or other physical evidence.
Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company and was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game.
In 2017, he became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which erupted when women began going public with accounts of his behavior.
He has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
In vacating Weinstein’s conviction, the court of appeals ruled that the trial judge, James M Burke, unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from other women that were not part of the case. Burke is no longer on the bench.
Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. His 16-year prison sentence in that case still stands, but his lawyers appealed in June, arguing he did not get a fair trial.
Weinstein has remained in custody in New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, with occasional trips to a hospital for medical treatment, while awaiting the retrial.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
