Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to LA sex charges

By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH | City News Service

LOS ANGELES — Disgraced movie shaper Harvey Weinstein pleaded not blameworthy Monday successful downtown Los Angeles to sex-related transgression counts involving 5 women, including a restored complaint that had been dismissed by a judge.

Weinstein is owed backmost successful tribunal Oct. 25.

The latest expansive assemblage indictment, handed up Aug. 18, charges Weinstein again with the challenged number of intersexual artillery by restraint against a pistillate successful May 2010.

It marked the 3rd clip the prosecution has asked the expansive assemblage to amend the indictment against the 69-year-old Weinstein, who was initially indicted successful March connected 11 counts involving 5 women.

The challenged number is the lone complaint involving 1 of the 5 alleged victims.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench initially sustained the defense’s situation to that number astatine a July 29 hearing, but agreed to let the prosecution the accidental to question a expansive assemblage indictment to amend the indictment.

The latest indictment alleges that Weinstein was “continually charged” with that transgression since April 2020 and done Aug. 12, erstwhile the justice again sustained the defense’s situation to that count, which was dismissed that day.

Weinstein’s attorneys had unsuccessfully challenged 2 different counts — forcible oral copulation and forcible rape involving different alleged unfortunate betwixt September 2004 and September 2005.

Weinstein was extradited July 20 from New York, wherever helium has been sentenced to 23 years successful situation for raping an aspiring histrion and a transgression enactment enactment against a erstwhile accumulation assistant.

He was brought into a downtown Los Angeles courtroom successful a wheelchair a time later, with 1 of his attorneys entering a not blameworthy plea connected his behalf. He remains jailed without bail.

Weinstein’s ineligible squad had tried to artifact his transportation from New York to Los Angeles until helium was “medically fit” to beryllium moved. A tribunal papers filed successful Los Angeles by the defence contended that Weinstein was successful “urgent request of aesculapian attraction to prevention his eyesight, and that this attraction could instrumentality anyplace from 24 to 36 months.”

The defence had besides asked a justice successful Los Angeles to hold the transportation until Weinstein’s aesculapian attraction is completed.

Los Angeles County prosecutors initially charged Weinstein successful January 2020 with forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and intersexual penetration by usage of unit involving 1 pistillate connected Feb. 18, 2013, and intersexual artillery by restraint involving different pistillate a time later.

Weinstein was subsequently charged successful April 2020 with intersexual artillery by restraint — 1 of the counts challenged by the defence — involving a pistillate successful May 2010. In November 2020, prosecutors added six much counts — 3 counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation — involving 2 alleged victims successful Beverly Hills betwixt 2004 and 2010.

The expansive assemblage subsequently indicted Weinstein connected the aforesaid charges.

“We’ve maintained Mr. Weinstein’s innocence from the beginning,” Jackson said. “Mr. Weinstein continues to support that and we look guardant to looking astatine the newest iteration of the charging papers and then, from there, moving guardant with the process.”

Weinstein produced specified films arsenic “Shakespeare successful Love,” which successful 1999 received the champion representation Oscar, and “Pulp Fiction.”