The New York sex crimes cases against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein should be combined to avoid saddling the system with repetitive trials, Manhattan prosecutors argued in court filings made public Friday.
“Consolidation is warranted in this case because of the compelling public interest in avoiding lengthy, burdensome, duplicative trials that would waste party and judicial resources, further clog the court system, and burden multiple juries — benefits that defendant’s opposition does not even contest,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote in a Thursday filing, calling Weinstein’s claims of undue prejudice “unfounded.”
The Manhattan district attorney last month announced a new indictment against Weinstein, charging him with first-degree criminal sexual act for allegedly assaulting an unnamed woman between April 29, 2006, and May 6, 2006.
It came months after DA Alvin Bragg’s office said it would retry the Miramax founder on first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape charges first brought in 2018 — stemming from accusations of attacks on former aspiring actor Jessica Mann in 2013 and production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 — after the New York Court of Appeals in April threw out his New York conviction and subsequent 23-year sentence.
The appeals court found the judge who presided over Weinstein’s landmark 2020 trial wrongly allowed testimony about uncharged sexual assault allegations.
Weinstein’s attorneys asked State Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber to deny the Manhattan DA’s request, arguing that combining the cases would deny the fallen movie mogul his due process and rights to speedy trials.
“By allowing testimony on these distinctly different charges to overlap, the jury may convict based on a general perception of Weinstein’s character, rather than on the specific elements of each offense and the credibility of the individual complainants,” attorney Diana Fabi Sampson wrote Friday, accusing prosecutors of “a thinly veiled effort to deny Harvey Weinstein a fair trial.”
Weinstein, 72, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. It’s unclear when he will go on trial. Farber previously scheduled the retrial for Nov. 12, but prosecutors later said they needed until January.
The convicted “Pulp Fiction” producer was rushed to the hospital for emergency heart surgery last month and has been splitting his time between jail on Rikers Island and Bellevue Hospital since authorities returned him to New York from Los Angeles, where he was serving a 16-year sentence for his December 2022 conviction on separate rape and sexual assault charges.
Weinstein will remain in New York until his Manhattan matters are resolved and, regardless of the outcomes, he will then be returned to California to finish serving his prison term there.
The downfall of the once larger-than-life Hollywood titan came in late 2017 after The New Yorker and The New York Times reported bombshell exposés alleging he had raped, sexually abused and mentally tormented scores of young women throughout his career.
The allegations revved up the global #MeToo movement against workplace sexual harassment and led to thousands of accusations levied against men in positions of power.
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