Harvey Weinstein Hospitalized After Rape Conviction Overturned: ‘A Train Wreck Health-Wise’
Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized Friday just a day after a New York appeals court overturned the rape conviction against the disgraced producer.
Prior to the the New York Court of Appeals’ 4-3 decision nullifying the 2020 conviction, Weinstein was serving time his 23-year sentence at a Rome, New York prison. He was brought to New York City following the appeals court ruling, after which he was sent to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital for “all kinds of tests,” his lawyer Arthur Aidala said (via the Associated Press).
“They examined him and sent him to Bellevue. It seems like he needs a lot of help, physically. He’s got a lot of problems. He’s somewhat of a train wreck health-wise,” Aidala said, adding that the conditions of Weinstein’s transport to New York City impacted him.
“He was not treated well. They refused to give him even a sip of water, no food, no bathroom break. He’s a 72-year-old sickly man.” Despite the physical woes, Weinstein remains mentally “sharp as a tack,” Aidala said.
A spokesperson with the New York City Department of Correction said Weinstein would remain in custody while at Bellevue. Weinstein is due back in court on Wednesday.
In the 77-page decision Thursday, the majority of judges decided that the judge who oversaw Weinstein’s trial, Justice James M. Burke, should not have allowed prosecutors to let accusers whose allegations were not part of the charges against him to testify in the trial.
Court of Appeal Judge J. Rivera wrote that the decision to allow other accusers to testify was “highly prejudicial” to Weinstein. “Defendant [Weinstein] 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,” Rivera wrote. “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.”
Despite the overturned decision — New York prosecutors have pledged to retry him — Weinstein is not a free man since he was also sentenced to a separate 16-year sentence in his California sexual assault case. After processing and pending his medical results, he’ll likely be sent to a California prison to serve out that sentence.
“We’re grateful that he’s going to remain in jail, at least until he’s almost 90, because of the L.A. trial,” Weinstein accuser Lauren Sivan told Rolling Stone following the New York appeal. “But my heart goes out to those who testified in New York who really had to repeat the trauma that he put them all through. Those are really brave women who came forward and took the stand. And the idea that they might have to do it all over again is really heartbreaking. It’s like picking a scab off a wound for these women who might have to go through this all over again.”
