Harvey Weinstein’s NYC sex crimes cases should be combined: prosecutors

The New York enactment crimes cases against disgraced movie shaper Harvey Weinstein should beryllium combined to debar saddling the strategy with repetitive trials, Manhattan prosecutors argued successful tribunal filings made nationalist Friday.

“Consolidation is warranted successful this lawsuit due to the fact that of the compelling nationalist involvement successful avoiding lengthy, burdensome, duplicative trials that would discarded enactment and judicial resources, further clog the tribunal system, and load aggregate juries — benefits that defendant’s absorption does not adjacent contest,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote successful a Thursday filing, calling Weinstein’s claims of undue prejudice “unfounded.”

The Manhattan territory lawyer past period announced a caller indictment against Weinstein, charging him with first-degree transgression intersexual enactment for allegedly assaulting an unnamed pistillate betwixt April 29, 2006, and May 6, 2006. 

It came months aft DA Alvin Bragg’s bureau said it would retry the Miramax laminitis connected first-degree transgression intersexual enactment and third-degree rape charges archetypal brought successful 2018 — stemming from accusations of attacks connected erstwhile aspiring histrion Jessica Mann successful 2013 and accumulation adjunct Miriam Haley successful 2006 — aft the New York Court of Appeals successful April threw retired his New York conviction and subsequent 23-year sentence. 

The appeals tribunal recovered the justice who presided implicit Weinstein’s landmark 2020 proceedings wrongly allowed grounds astir uncharged intersexual battle allegations.

Weinstein’s attorneys asked State Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber to contradict the Manhattan DA’s request, arguing that combining the cases would contradict the fallen movie mogul his owed process and rights to speedy trials.

“By allowing grounds connected these distinctly antithetic charges to overlap, the assemblage whitethorn convict based connected a wide cognition of Weinstein’s character, alternatively than connected the circumstantial elements of each discourtesy and the credibility of the idiosyncratic complainants,” lawyer Diana Fabi Sampson wrote Friday, accusing prosecutors of “a thinly veiled effort to contradict Harvey Weinstein a just trial.”

Weinstein, 72, has pleaded not blameworthy to each charges. It’s unclear erstwhile helium volition spell connected trial. Farber antecedently scheduled the retrial for Nov. 12, but prosecutors aboriginal said they needed until January.

The convicted “Pulp Fiction” shaper was rushed to the infirmary for exigency bosom surgery past period and has been splitting his clip betwixt Rikers Island situation and Bellevue Hospital since authorities returned him to New York from Los Angeles, wherever helium was serving a 16-year condemnation for his December 2022 conviction connected abstracted rape and intersexual battle charges.

Weinstein volition stay successful New York until his Manhattan matters are resolved and, careless of the outcomes, he volition past beryllium returned to California to decorativeness serving his situation word there.

The downfall of the erstwhile larger-than-life Hollywood titan came successful precocious 2017 aft The New Yorker and The New York Times reported bombshell exposés alleging helium had raped, sexually abused and mentally tormented scores of young women passim his career.

The allegations revved up the planetary #MeToo question against workplace intersexual harassment and led to thousands of accusations levied against men successful positions of power.