Shamed movie producer Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex assault charge
18 September 2024, 21:34
The 72-year-old is awaiting a retrial after his 2020 rape conviction was overturned but remans in jail after being found guilty of rape in 2022.
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
A new indictment charged the jailed ex-movie mogul with committing a criminal sex act, accusing him of forcing oral sex on a woman at some point between April 29 2006 and May 6 of that year.
No details about the accuser involved in the new charge were released.
“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. He added that the investigation continues.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that were not part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment had been sealed.
Prosecutors have previously said the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged incidents dating back to the mid-2000s.
In April, New York’s highest court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women.
That court ordered a new trial, and it is tentatively scheduled to begin on November 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge’s term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they will seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
The 72-year-old has maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
The jailed ex-movie mogul, who recently had emergency surgery, arrived at the Manhattan court in a wheelchair.
A judge agreed last week to let Weinstein remain indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company and produced films such as Shakespeare in Love and The Crying Game.
