Former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein appeared in a Manhattan courtroom last Wednesday where prosecutors requested a September retrial after his 2020 rape conviction was overturned by an appellate court late last month.
During the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg noted that Jessica Mann, one of Weinstein’s accusers who attended last week’s hearing, was prepared to testify against Weinstein in a new trial.
Blumberg told Judge Curtis Farber that the district attorney’s office believed in the case would be retrying Weinstein on the charges.
The judge set a pretrial hearing for May 29 with an expected trial date after Labor Day.
Weinstein, who attended the hearing in a wheelchair, did not address the court. The former producer had been hospitalized since being transferred to a New York City jail from a prison upstate on April 26.
Defense attorney Arthur Aidala told the court that he was not concerned about Weinstein’s mental capacity, describing the 72-year-old as “sharp as a tack.” He said Weinstein welcomed the chance to prove his innocence in a new trial, explaining that his client’s “life is on the line.”
Weinstein was convicted in 2020 of third-degree rape for assaulting Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress, in 2013, and forcing himself on production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006.
Weinstein pleaded not guilty to the charges and insisted that his encounters with the two women were consensual.
In a 4-3 decision on April 25, the New York Court of Appeals vacated Weinstein’s conviction, concluding that the trial judge allowed too much evidence unrelated to the charges to be presented to the jury.
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who attended the hearing without her client Mimi Haley, told reporters after the hearing that Haley had not decided if she would testify again at the retrial. Allred explained that the original trial had been painful and traumatizing for Haley.
