Prosecutors Say They Plan to Retry Harvey Weinstein as Soon as the Fall

NEW YORK — Manhattan prosecutors on Wednesday said they planned to retry Harvey Weinstein after his recently overturned sex crimes conviction and could be ready to do so as soon as this fall.

“It was a strong case in 2020,” Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said, adding: “It remains a strong case in 2024.”

Weinstein, 72, the disgraced former Hollywood producer, appeared in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday for the first time since his 2020 conviction was overturned last week.

Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, Weinstein smiled and waved at his legal team as he was pushed into the courtroom in a wheelchair. His lawyer in New York, Arthur Aidala, sat beside him at the defense table while his lawyer in California, Jennifer Bonjean, sat in the rows behind him. In court, Aidala said his client wasn’t healthy physically but was “sharp as a tack” mentally.

In 2020, Weinstein was convicted of raping one woman and committing a criminal sexual act against another, but the New York Court of Appeals overturned the convictions last Thursday, saying he had not had a fair trial. It was a 4-3 decision that horrified many of the women whose decision to speak out against him had helped ignite the #MeToo movement.

On Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sat in the rows behind the prosecutors. In his row was Jessica Mann, one of the accusers in the case who was an aspiring actress when she said Weinstein raped her in a New York hotel room.

In the decision to overturn the conviction, the court sided with Weinstein’s defense team, ruling that the trial judge who presided over the case had erred in allowing the prosecutors to call as witnesses women who said that they were sexually assaulted by Weinstein but whose accusations were not tied to the charges he faced.

Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence at a prison facility in upstate New York, was transferred Friday to the Rikers Island jail complex to await next steps in his judicial process. He is also facing 16 years in prison in California, where, in 2022, he was convicted of raping an Italian actress in 2013. He was to begin that sentence after finishing his term in New York. Weinstein’s legal team plans to appeal that ruling this month.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .