Less than a week after suing the City of New York and others over “deplorable conditions” at Rikers Island jail, Harvey Weinstein is back in the hospital.
Seemingly suffering from leukemia, the convicted rapist and ailing producer is now at Manhattan’s Bellevue, where he has had frequent stints since first convicted of sex crimes by a NYC jury in early 2020.
“Harvey Weinstein, who has been suffering from a lack of adequate medical care and enduring deplorable and inhumane conditions on Rikers Island, has been transported to Bellevue Hospital for emergent treatment due to an alarming blood test result that requires immediate medical attention,” said Weinstein attorney Imran H. Ansari. “It is expected that he will remain there until his condition stabilizes. His deprivation of care is not only medical malpractice, but a violation of his constitutional rights.”
It should be noted that Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins partner is representing the 72-year-old Weinstein not just in his upcoming Empire State sex crimes retrial but also in his $5 million lawsuit over the state of the nearly 100-year-old sprawling and decrepit facility over in the Bronx that was filed late last week.
Today, Juda Engelmayer, the much-accused Pulp Fiction producer’s longtime PR man, had some more info on what was going down with Weinstein and his health.
“Mr. Weinstein, who is suffering from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, has been deprived the medical attention that someone in his medical state deserves, prisoner or not,” Engelmayer said Monday in a statement, harking back to the new suit against the City and other authorities. “In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
This is the third time Weinstein has been at Bellevue, the oldest public hospital in the USA, in almost as many months. Back in July he was on the prison ward for Covid-19 and then pneumonia. In September, the producer, who was convicted on sex crimes in LA on 2022, almost died before receiving heart surgery at Bellevue.
A month after pleading not guilty to a new sex crimes charge from the Grand Jury and the Manhattan District Attorney, Weinstein was diagnosed in late October with bone marrow cancer.
Falling fast from his powerful perch after a late 2017 New York Times expose on the decades of abuse and rape he had inflicted upon young women in and out of Hollywood, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after a jury in Manhattan found the former studio chief guilty in 2020 of raping actress Jessica Mann and sexually assaulting production assistant Miriam Haley. A panel of New York appeals court judges threw out the conviction in April, ruling 4-3 that prosecutors had erred by allowing the testimony of other Weinstein accusers whose claims were not being tried.
The once-feared mogul is expected to go on trial in New York sometime early next year, health and civil suit permitting.