NEW YORK (AP) – Harvey Weinstein’s #MeToo retrial next month will largely be an abridged version of the original, with one big addition: a charge based on an allegation from a woman who wasn’t a part of the first case.
Just how the reprise of the disgraced movie mogul’s prosecution plays out should come into focus, when a judge is set to issue rulings on a variety of issues, including the scope of accuser testimony and potential expert witnesses.
Weinstein, 72, is expected to be in court when Judge Curtis Farber rules.
His retrial is scheduled to start on April 15 in state court in Manhattan – nearly a year after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges.
At his last court appearance, in January, Weinstein implored Farber to start the retrial sooner.
He told the judge “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on” with cancer, heart issues and harsh conditions at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, where he is locked up.
Weinstein is being retried on charges that he forcibly performed a sexual act 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 sexual acts on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’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.
