Harvey Weinstein, the 69-year-old American film producer serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York state prison, has once again been indicted for a sexual assault charge that was dismissed by a Los Angeles judge one week ago, Deadline reported.
On Thursday, District Attorney George Gascón’s office came back with a new grand jury who revived the dismissed sexual assault charge while scheduling the next hearing on August 23 in Downtown Los Angeles.
Since October 2017, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, following which he was dismissed from Miramax, the production company he had co-founded with his brother Bob Weinstein, and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.
After nearly two years of allegations of serial sexual harassments, in February 2020, Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault. Following a trial in the Manhattan Supreme Court, he was sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment for mainly two cases: a first-degree criminal sexual act when he forcibly performed oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006, and the other for committing third-degree rape where he attacked aspiring actor Jessica Mann in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein’s conviction was a shot in the arm for the #MeToo movement that witnessed women across the globe coming out with allegations of sexual misconduct and assault at the workplace against powerful men.
He was charged with several cases in California in 2020 for crimes in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013, and was formally indicted on April 11, 2021. On April 12, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office sought Weinstein’s extradition for trial on 11 charges, involving five unnamed women.
During his indictment, it was revealed that the Los Angeles County jury had indicted Weinstein on four counts of forcible rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery and one count of sexual penetration by force.
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On June 15, the Erie County, New York, Court Judge Kenneth Case had finally ordered his extradition.
Weinstein continues to plead not guilty claiming that any kind of sexual activity was consensual.
On August 12, the Los Angeles court had dismissed one out of the 11 West Coast charges against East Coast convicted sex offender Weinstein. While agreeing to the producer’s lawyers last month, the judge agreed that the prosecutors had not informed a grand jury that the March 2010 attack in a Beverly Hills hotel was now outside the span of the statute of limitations on such crimes