Former film producer Harvey Weinstein, whose 2020 conviction for rape was overturned last Thursday by a New York appeals court, has been hospitalized after his return to a New York jail and is currently undergoing a battery of tests. medical.
“It seems like he needs a lot of help. He has a lot of problems. They are doing all kinds of tests on him. His health is a disaster,” the former audiovisual magnate’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, reported to the American press this Saturday.
Weinstein, whose fall was a symbol of the movement
Aidala specified that his client’s ailments are physical because mentally he remains “firm” and with his “feet firmly planted on the ground.”
Likewise, he criticized the treatment received, alleging that normally the transfer of prisoners takes one or two weeks but that in his case it took only 24 hours and that they did not even let him go to the bathroom.
“He is a sick 72-year-old man (…) They refused to give him even a sip of water, or food, or a break to go to the bathroom,” he stressed.
However, Aidala said he still expects the former film producer to appear next Wednesday before the Manhattan Supreme Court as a preliminary step to a possible new trial.
The court’s ruling this Thursday was approved by a slim majority of 4-3 judges and was based on the fact that several women who claimed to have been victims of Weinstein were improperly called to testify as witnesses, when the accusations they made were not part of of the facts judged.
Weinstein was serving a 23-year sentence in a New York state prison after being convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant in 2006 and third-degree rape in an attack on a young actress in 2013.
After being convicted in March 2020, he was sent to Los Angeles to stand trial there for other sex crimes and was again convicted. This last time to 16 years in prison, so the annulment last Thursday would not mean his release, but rather his possible transfer to California to serve the second sentence.