The news that Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape conviction was overturned left his victims and #MeToo advocates reeling in disgust. But the disgraced Hollywood mogul was so happy he cried tears of joy.
And now the 72-year-old, who has a host of medical problems that go far beyond his infamously deformed genitalia, is looking forward to being transferred from a bleak upstate prison to a lockup in his old stomping grounds of New York City.
“Today is a big deal for him. He wants to get the hell out of there,” his lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said of Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York, where Weinstein has spent the last year.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the judge who presided over Weinstein’s 2020 trial “erroneously” allowed testimony from women with sexual misconduct allegations against him who were not the victims in the case.
The court ordered a new trial, and a Manhattan District Attorney spokesperson told The Daily Beast they plan to retry Weinstein—who was also convicted in 2022 of similar charges in Los Angeles.
Aidala said Weinstein got the news that his conviction was overturned when someone at Mohawk handed him a news bulletin. He then spoke to his client just after 10 a.m.
“He just heaped praise on me and my whole team. He said ‘thank you’ more times than I could count,” Aidala said.
Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s spokesman, said that after he got the news from Aidala, he immediately sent a jailhouse message to Weinstein that read, “Mazel, you were overturned.”
“That’s one of the ways he found out too,” he said.
Weinstein called him around 10:57 a.m. with gratitude and questions.
“Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for supporting me,” Weinstein said, according to Engelmayer. “He was having a regular day in prison and then this happened. He cried to me.”
Engelmayer said he talked to Weinstein three times on Thursday and in between, the #MeToo villain was speaking with family members and lawyers.
Because he is no longer a convict in New York, Aidala said, Weinstein can get out of the state prison northeast of Syracuse. But since he is being retried and has been convicted in California, he will still be under lock and key.
The defense team is pushing for him to be transferred to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, where he has been treated before, or the medical unit at Rikers Island, where he was jailed between conviction and sentencing.
Weinstein’s team has said he suffers from heart problems, diabetes, sleep apnea, and rotting teeth and is technically blind. He has come to court in a wheelchair in the past.
It’s not clear when a retrial would start, but Aidala has already said that Weinstein would take the stand for the first time.
“He’s been dying to tell his story from Day 1,” he said.
Whatever the outcome, it will likely be years before he’s a free man. He was sentenced to 16 years in the Los Angeles rape case; his lawyers said Thursday that he will file an appeal of that conviction on May 20.
