MANHATTAN (CN) — A New York state court judge on Wednesday afternoon set a new trial date for disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein to be retried on sex crimes after his 2020 rape and assault convictions were overturned last week by the state’s top appeals court.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber confirmed that he will hold Weinstein’s retrial “sometime after Labor Day — the exact date to be determined.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office affirmed that they wish to retry Weinstein in light of the 4-3 repeal of his convictions by the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, over prejudicial testimony included in his 2020 trial in Manhattan criminal court.
“We believe in this case and we will be retrying the case,” Nicole Blumberg, chief assistant district attorney of the Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence Bureau at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, said at Weinstein’s first court hearing since he was removed from an upstate prison back to the custody of Manhattan prosecutors.
"We have every belief that the defendant will be convicted again,” Blumberg added.
The New York City prosecutors requested a fall trial, starting “possibly as early as September.”
A suit-clad Weinstein was wheeled into the 13th floor courtroom by a New York courts officer shortly after the 2:15 hearing commenced.
Weinstein has been hospitalized at Bellevue Hospital since Saturday, two days after he transferred from Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles northwest of Albany, back into the custody of the state's Department of Corrections.
His New York defense attorney Arthur Aidala said the 72-year-old former movie industry mogul is “sharp as a tack, he’s as smart as he ever was,” and mentally capable to participate in his defense at the new trial.
Jessica Mann, one of Weinstein’s victims who testified for several days at his 2020 trial, attended the hearing on Wednesday, sitting in the courtroom gallery in the row in front of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
At an unrelated press conference later on Wednesday afternoon, Bragg told reporters he looks forward to "having a new day in court, and the Court of Appeals ruling not being the last word or chapter in this."
"The Court of Appeals decision certainly restricts us from using evidence that was used last time, but to be clear, we have a very strong case," he said.
The Manhattan jury ultimately convicted Weinstein in a mixed verdict on counts of rape in the third degree against Mann and of assaulting former "Project Runway" production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006.
The jury acquitted Weinstein on two counts of predatory sexual assault were class A-II felonies that would have carried a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life term of imprisonment.
On Wednesday, Aidala pledged to bring perjury charges against Haleyi for her testimony in the 2020 trial.
Speaking to reporters outside of the courthouse on Wednesday, Haleyi's attorney, famed feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, proclaimed that the overturning of Weinstein's New York conviction is not a revocation of the global MeToo movement ignited by the accusations against him in the fall of 2017.
Allred — who at one point held up a small laminated sign that read "The 'ME TOO' Reckoning Will Continue" — said Haleyi has not yet decided whether she will testify at the fall retrial.
Weinstein had argued at the New York Court of Appeals the conviction should be overturned because the trial judge allowed prejudicial testimony from three women whose accusations of sexual assault by Weinstein were not part of the state’s case-in-chief.
“Defendant was convicted by a jury for various sexual crimes against three named complainants and, on appeal, claims that he was judged, not on the conduct for which he was indicted, but on irrelevant, prejudicial, and untested allegations of prior bad acts,” Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals Jenny Rivera wrote in the high court’s 4-3 decision. “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose.”
“The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial," the judges said.
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