Spared from prosecution in Britain on Thursday, Harvey Weinstein now faces the prospect of a new indictment in New York, where prosecutors retrying the disgraced movie mogul’s rape case are taking steps to potentially charge him with up to three additional sex assaults.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service, which authorized two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein in 2022, announced Thursday that it decided to discontinue the proceedings because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.’’
“We have explained our decision to all parties,’’ the CPS said in a statement. ’’We would always encourage any potential victims of sexual assault to come forward and report to police, and we will prosecute wherever our legal test is met.”
At the same time, the Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York has begun presenting evidence to a grand jury of up to three previously uncharged allegations against Weinstein -– two sexual assaults in the mid-2000s and another sexual assault in 2016.
The New York grand jury’s term expires Friday, and a vote on an indictment could happen by the end of the week, though it’s possible the process could extend beyond that. Prosecutors said they would seek to combine any new charges with ones previously brought against Weinstein so that they could be tried together.
In April, New York’s top court overturned Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault convictions and ordered a new trial. The state’s Court of Appeals found that the judge in the 2020 trial unfairly allowed testimony from women whose claims against Weinstein weren’t part of the case.
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Prosecutors shared some information about the additional allegations that the grand jury is weighing at a court conference on Tuesday.
They include alleged sexual assaults at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and in a Lower Manhattan residential building between late 2005 and mid-2006, and an alleged sexual assault at a Tribeca hotel in May 2016.
Judge Curtis Farber elicited the details as Weinstein’s lawyers weighed potentially having him testify before the grand jury, which they said he’d wanted to do. Weinstein was not present at the conference.
Defense lawyer Arthur Aidala said Thursday that he’s decided against Weinstein testifying, citing a lack of sufficient information about the new allegations. He criticized prosecutors for seeking to add additional accusers to the case rather than simply trying Weinstein’s original indictment again.
“The case was overturned in April and they spent six months trying to dig up someone to come after him,” Aidala said.
Weinstein, 72, has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone. He remains in custody in New York while awaiting a retrial in Manhattan that’s tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12. He is expected back in court for a pretrial hearing Sept. 12.
Weinstein became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which took root in 2017 when women began to go public with accounts of his behavior. After the revelations emerged, British police said they were investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault that reportedly took place between the 1980s and 2015.
In June 2022, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorized London’s Metropolitan Police Service to file two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein over an alleged incident that occurred in London in 1996. The victim was in her 50s at the time of the announcement.
Unlike many other countries, Britain does not have a statute of limitations for rape or sexual assault.
After Weinstein’s conviction was overturned, New York prosecutors said they intended to bring new sexual assault charges against him and were actively pursuing claims of rape that occurred in Manhattan within the statute of limitations.
At the original trial, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. Those allegations will be part of his retrial. Weinstein’s acquittals on charges of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape still stand.
After the retrial, Weinstein is due to start serving a 16-year sentence in California for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles, authorities said. Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022.
Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company film studios, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, producing such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press