Ailing Harvey Weinstein begs for earlier retrial after judge sets April 15 date

Harvey Weinstein begged a judge on Wednesday to hold his sexual assault retrial as soon as possible, telling him “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.

The disgraced movie mogul objected after Judge Curtis Farber said the retrial would start on April 15, imploring him to swap with another, unrelated trial the judge has in March.

“Every day I’m at Rikers Island, it’s a mystery to me how I’m still walking,” Weinstein said at a hearing in court in Manhattan.

“I’m holding on because I want justice for myself and I want this to be over with,” he said.

Weinstein, 72, is being treated for numerous health conditions, including chronic myeloid leukaemia, heart issues and diabetes. He complained to Judge Farber that jail officers gave him the wrong pills on Wednesday morning and failed to pick him up for court in a timely fashion.

“So many people suffering on Rikers Island,” he said.

Weinstein arrived in court in a wheelchair more than half an hour after the hearing’s scheduled start time.

“I’m asking and begging you, your honour, to move your trial,” Weinstein said, suggesting that even a week’s head start would be helpful.

Weinstein said that at times he finds himself gasping for air and predicted that he would soon be in a hospital again for treatment.

He quizzed the judge about his trial calendar, including jury selection in another matter that is set to begin on Monday.

Judge Farber said he arrived at the April 15 date after consulting with prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers but would look into possibly starting the trial a few days earlier, if time allows.

“I’m in a serious emergency situation. I am begging the court to move your date,” Weinstein said, telling the judge he wanted to “get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible”.

Weinstein’s request came after Judge Farber issued a key ruling defining the scope of his retrial. The judge upheld a charge based on an allegation from a woman who was not in the original case.

Weinstein had wanted the extra charge thrown out, arguing through his lawyers that the Manhattan district attorney’s office only brought it to bolster their case with a third accuser after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women.

Scheduling the retrial was complicated by an increasingly crowded court calendar.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, is representing political strategist Steve Bannon in a border wall fraud trial set to start on March 4 before a different Manhattan judge.

Meanwhile, Judge Farber has a murder trial in March.

Before Bannon’s trial date was set last week, Mr Aidala had suggested that Weinstein’s trial go first in “the interest of humanity”, citing the ex-studio boss’s declining health.

“They know that Mr Weinstein is dying of cancer and is an innocent man right now in the state of New York,” Mr Aidala argued in court last week. He pleaded to prosecutors: “Can I try this dying man’s case first?”

Weinstein is being retried on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex 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 oral sex on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006.

The Manhattan district attorney’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.

Judge Farber ruled in October to combine the new indictment and existing charges into one trial.

Weinstein’s lawyers contend that prosecutors prejudiced him by waiting nearly five years to bring the additional charge, suggesting they had elected not to include the allegation in his first trial so they could use it later if his conviction were reversed.

Prosecutors called that thinking “absurd”, countering that Weinstein’s lawyers would have also been outraged if he had been charged based on the third woman’s allegation either during his first trial or immediately after his conviction.

Weinstein “would likely have characterised that timing as a vindictive and gratuitous pile-on”, prosecutors wrote in a court filing last month.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said the previously uncharged allegation “required a sensitive investigation” and serious contemplation before seeking an indictment, in part because there are no eyewitnesses to the alleged assault and no scientific or other physical evidence.

Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company and was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game.

In 2017, he became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which erupted when women began going public with accounts of his behaviour.

He has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.

In vacating Weinstein’s conviction, the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge, James M Burke, unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from other women who were not part of the case. Mr Burke is no longer on the bench.

Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. His 16-year prison sentence in that case still stands, but his lawyers appealed in June, arguing he did not get a fair trial.

Weinstein has remained in custody in New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, with occasional visits to hospital for medical treatment, while awaiting the retrial.