Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein begged a Manhattan judge on January 29 to expedite his rape and sexual assault retrial so he can get off Rikers Island alive, telling the jurist he was “gasping for air” at the troubled jail complex.
The demand to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber, virtually unheard of from a criminal defendant, came at a pretrial hearing in Weinstein’s case after the judge scheduled trial for April 15. The convicted moviemaker has cancer and diabetes and underwent major heart surgery late last year.
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He told Farber he’d almost been given the wrong medication before coming to court on January 29 and that it was a “mystery” he was still alive.
“I’m gasping for air,” Weinstein, 72, said. “I’m in a serious emergency situation. I’m begging the court to move your [other trial] so … I can get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible.”
Calling Rikers a “stain on this city,” Weinstein, who arrived at the hearing in a wheelchair, said he was advocating on behalf of all detainees at the jail.
“There are so many people suffering at Rikers Island. So many of the people I’m with in prison are going through similar problems,” he said. “They don’t have the same mouthpiece as I have.”
Farber told the Pulp Fiction producer that an upcoming trial was unmovable, with jury selection about to begin.
“So that’s already set in stone?” Weinstein asked about jury selection.
“Beyond set in stone,” Farber responded, later saying he would see if it could start slightly earlier than planned.
The Miramax cofounder is accused in Manhattan of first-degree criminal sexual act for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on an unnamed woman between April and May 2006 in an indictment handed up by a grand jury in September. At the January 29 hearing, Farber declined to throw out that count as the defense requested.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is also retrying Weinstein on charges he was found guilty of in February 2020 after New York’s Court of Appeals threw out his landmark conviction and subsequent 23-year sentence based on testimony permitted by the trial court judge concerning allegations for which he was not charged.
The 2020 case concerned accusations the one-time Hollywood titan raped former aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013 and sexually assaulted his former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006.
Weinstein, who denies ever engaging in nonconsensual sex, was found guilty of separate rape and sexual assault charges in Los Angeles in December 2022 and sentenced to 16 years, which he’s expected to continue serving after the resolution of his New York case. He is appealing that conviction.
The fallen filmmaker’s undoing in late 2017 followed exposés in The New Yorker and The New York Times alleged he had sexually abused, raped, and tormented scores of young women over the course of his career, turbocharging the global #MeToo movement against workplace sexual harassment.
—Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News (TNS)
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If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline provides confidential 24/7 support. Call 800-656-HOPE (4673) or chat online at RAINN.
