Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court in New York, U.S., September 18, 2024.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren’t part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it’s not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state’s highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial.
It has been tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12, though it’s likely to be delayed.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge’s term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors want to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say it should be a separate case. Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday he’d rule early next month on that issue.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
The 72-year-old Weinstein, who came to court in a wheelchair, has been at a Manhattan hospital following emergency surgery Sept. 9 to drain fluid around his heart and lungs.
A judge agreed last week to let Weinstein remain indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company and produced films such as “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Crying Game.”