(NEW YORK) — A New York grand jury has indicted disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in court.
Weinstein — who is recuperating after emergency heart surgery — was not present, and prosecutors asked the judge to set a date for his arraignment.
Judge Curtis Farber ordered the city corrections department to house Weinstein in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward, if medically necessary.
“Inattention at Rikers carries very real risks. He could find himself again in crisis,” Farber said.
The new indictment remains sealed until arraignment, so the charges are not yet known. As ABC News previously reported, prosecutors presented evidence of three alleged sex assaults from varying time periods that were not part of his previous case.
Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, said they do not know what is in the new indictment.
“We know literally as much as all of you do,” he told reporters outside the courthouse following the hearing.
He said prosecutors are asking for a motion to consolidate Weinstein’s prior indictment with the new one.
Aidala said they are grateful that the judge ordered that Weinstein stay in a hospital prison given his “very poor health.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office previously presented evidence to the grand jury over an alleged sexual assault that occurred sometime in a four-month time period between late 2005 and mid-2006 in a lower Manhattan residential building, according to a transcript of a court hearing last week.
Prosecutors also indicated they were aware of two other potential offenses: a sexual assault in May 2016 in a hotel in Tribeca and a potential sexual assault that occurred at the Tribeca Grand hotel.
Thursday’s hearing was held days after Weinstein was rushed from Rikers Island, where he is being held, to Bellevue Hospital for emergency heart surgery after experiencing chest pains, his representatives told ABC News.
His trial is tentatively scheduled for this fall.
Weinstein, 72, has denied any wrongdoing and has said his sexual encounters were consensual.
The indictment comes months after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 sex crimes conviction. He had been found guilty of criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
In a scathing 4-3 opinion in April, the court found the trial judge “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.”
The court said that testimony “served no material non-propensity purpose” and “portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light.”
The third-degree rape charge in the overturned conviction stemmed from an accusation from Jessica Mann, who told the district attorney’s office at the time that she did not object to being named publicly after the verdict was reached. During the trial, she gave detailed testimony saying Weinstein repeatedly sexually assaulted her over the course of five years.
She commended the district attorney’s office on Thursday for its “continued efforts to bring Harvey to justice.”
“The significant new criminal charges leveled today against Harvey Weinstein show that this Grand Jury, like so many others, can see clearly through his facade for what he truly is: a predator who must be held accountable for his crimes,” she said in a statement.
Weinstein has also appealed a conviction on sex offenses in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison there.
Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
