A critical witness in the original trial of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has announced she will testify in his upcoming retrial on criminal charges.
After Weinstein’s conviction was overturned earlier this year, Mimi Haley, a former production assistant on The Weinstein Company’s “Project Runway,” said she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go through it all again.
“It involves so much re-traumatising and rehashing and reliving over and over again.”
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Haley’s attorney Gloria Allred said Tuesday, “(Haley) believes that it is the right thing to do and that it is important that she testifies.”
Although the 2020 jury did not convict Weinstein on the top count of predatory sexual assault, they did convict him of first-degree criminal sexual act against Haley and sentenced him to 20 years. Haley alleged that Weinstein had pinned her down and forced her into a sex act in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment.
His total sentence of 23 years also included a conviction for rape in the third degree of Jessica Mann in a New York hotel room in 2013.
Mann had already agreed to testify again in the retrial.
The New York Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s convictions in April saying all the uncharged prior bad act witnesses who testified, as well as allowing very broad cross-examination if Weinstein took the stand, violated his constitutional rights.
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Weinstein’s retrial on sex crime charges is tentatively set to begin on November 12. The case is one of two Weinstein faces in a New York court. Last week, he was indicted in Manhattan in connection to new sexual assault allegations, according to prosecutors.
Weinstein, 72, was not present at Thursday’s hearing because he was not medically cleared to attend after an emergency procedure on his heart and lungs earlier in the week. Weinstein was being treated in the intensive care unit at Bellevue Hospital until last Wednesday, said his attorney, Arthur Aidala.
A hearing on Weinstein’s health situation is set for Wednesday. If he is cleared to attend the hearing, Weinstein is expected to be arraigned on the new indictment.
Weinstein remains in prison while he appeals a separate 2022 conviction in Los Angeles, when he was found guilty on three sexual assault charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
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