More accusers may come forward to testify in Harvey Weinstein‘s New York retrial this fall, prosecutors said in court. On Wednesday, the former movie producer appeared in a Manhattan courtroom a month after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction.
Nicole Blumberg, Manhattan’s Assistant District Attorney, told Judge Curtis Farber that “some people who were not ready to speak out in 2020” may now do so for the new trial. An exact date for the retrial has yet to be announced, but it’s expected to be sometime after Labor Day.
On April 25, New York’s highest court ruled in a 4-3 decision that the judge in Weinstein’s 2020 trial had allowed too many women to testify about allegations that were not part of the case. Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in New York was reversed, but he remains in custody due to his Los Angeles conviction; he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for sexual assault after a 2022 trial. For now, Weinstein will remain in New York ahead of his retrial as he rejected the extradition request to relocate him to California.
“At the time the jury was deciding the evidence in California, they were working under the assumption and the belief that he had properly been convicted in New York,” Jennifer Bonjean, the attorney who is handling Weinstein’s California appeal, told Variety. “Now we know that’s not true.”
Three women testified in the New York trial as “prior bad acts witnesses” to discuss Weinstein’s pattern of bad behavior and assault. The New York Court of Appeals ruled their testimony distracted the jury from the charges for which he was on trial, which led to the overturned conviction.
“We reaffirm that no person accused of illegality may be judged on proof of uncharged crimes that serve only to establish the accused’s propensity for criminal behavior,” wrote Judge Jenny Rivera in the court’s majority opinion. “It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”
Weinstein’s next hearing is set for July 9.