NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein has been moved to a New York Metropolis hospital after a choose authorised the ailing ex-studio boss’s request to remain there reasonably than in jail when he is not in court docket for his #MeToo retrial.
Decide Paul Goetz late Thursday ordered that Weinstein be instantly relocated from the town’s infamous Rikers Island jail advanced to the jail ward at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan so he can obtain obligatory medical remedy.
Weinstein’s attorneys lobbied for the transfer as jury choice obtained underway this week.
They argued in court docket papers that being locked up in a generally freezing jail cell was exacerbating the Oscar-winning producer’s well being points, which embrace power myeloid leukemia, diabetes and strolling difficulties that require a wheelchair to get out and in of court docket.
Goetz’s order will stay in impact at the least till subsequent Thursday, when he’s set to carry a listening to to debate the matter additional.
A distinct choose, Curtis Farber, is presiding over Weinstein’s retrial. The case will resume Monday with extra jury choice after 9 jurors had been picked this week. In all, 12 jurors and 6 alternates should be seated.
Weinstein is being tried once more on rape and sexual assault expenses after New York’s highest court docket, the Courtroom of Appeals, final yr overturned his 2020 conviction and 23-year jail sentence and ordered a brand new trial, discovering that improper rulings and prejudicial testimony tainted the unique one.
Weinstein has pleaded not responsible and denies raping or sexually assaulting anybody.
Weinstein has been forwards and backwards quite a few occasions to Bellevue in current months for remedy of assorted maladies. At a pretrial listening to in January, he railed towards his remedy at Rikers, telling Farber he wished to “get out of this hellhole as rapidly as attainable.”
Weinstein’s attorneys filed a authorized declare towards New York Metropolis final November, alleging he was receiving substandard medical remedy in unhygienic circumstances at Rikers. The declare, which seeks $5 million in damages, argues that Weinstein has been returned to Rikers every time earlier than absolutely recovering on the hospital.
The troubled jail advanced has confronted rising scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and harmful circumstances. Final yr, a federal choose cleared the way in which for a attainable federal takeover, discovering the town had positioned inmates in “unconstitutional hazard.”
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