Harvey Weinstein pleaded not responsible to 4 rape counts and 7 different sexual assault costs in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday.
The sheriff’s deputies took the 69-year-old convicted rapist in a wheelchair to courtroom. He was sporting brown jail overalls and a face masks. Lawyer Mark Werksman joined the plea for the disgraced movie mogul the day after Weinstein was extradited from New York to California, the place he was serving a 23-year jail sentence.
He’s now awaiting a second trial on a second coast and the potential of one other lengthy jail sentence.
Weinstein’s costs contain 5 ladies and run from 2004 to 2013. Most are stated to have taken place within the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles motels that New York-based Weinstein would make his Hollywood headquarters. Some occurred throughout Oscar week when his movies have been long-running earlier than the #MeToo motion introduced him down.
He confessed to 4 instances of rape, 4 instances of violent oral copulation, two instances of sexual harassment by way of restraint, and one case of sexual penetration with violence, which collectively may imply a jail sentence of 140 years.
The ladies weren’t named on the indictment paperwork.
A New York jury discovered Weinstein responsible of raping an aspiring actress in a Manhattan resort room in 2013 and forcibly performing oral intercourse on a tv and movie manufacturing assistant in his Manhattan condominium in 2006.
He appeals towards this conviction and applies for brand new proceedings. Weinstein protests his innocence and claims that every one sexual exercise was consensual.
The Los Angeles Lawyer’s Workplace first indicted Weinstein in January 2020 when jury choice started within the New York case.
Extra costs have been added later within the 12 months, and in March he was indicted by an LA County grand jury.
The pandemic and procedural delays resulted in Weinstein’s extradition taking nicely over a 12 months. His attorneys cited his deteriorating well being as they tried to maintain him in a state jail close to Buffalo, New York till the jury choice within the Los Angeles trial started.
Weinstein’s California detention counts towards his New York sentence, officers stated.
Harvey Weinstein, as soon as a significant energy in Hollywood alongside together with his brother Bob and their movie corporations Miramax and The Weinstein Co., was known as the arch-villain of the #MeToo motion as of late 2017, when the ladies’s studies have been printed within the New York Instances and the New Yorker . He’s arrested in New York seven months later.
Rumors of Weinstein’s habits circulated in film business circles for many years, however he silenced many prosecutors with payouts, nondisclosure agreements, and fears that he would possibly break their careers.
The Los Angeles costs got here from a process drive set as much as sort out sexual misconduct in Hollywood when #MeToo took off.
Weinstein and porn actor Ron Jeremy are among the many few defendants on the workforce who refused to prosecute greater than 20 well-known males as a result of the allegations towards them have been too outdated or couldn’t be confirmed.
