The disgraced movie producer, Harvey Weinstein, was granted permission to be moved to a Manhattan hospital from his jail cell on Rikers Island during the course of his retrial, a judge ordered on Thursday. 

“To not do so could lead to exacerbation of and further serious medical conditions, and possibly death,” State Supreme Court Judge Paul Goetz said in his decision.

One of the defense attorneys, Imran Ansari, told the Sun in a statement sent in an email on Thursday evening that his client “is relieved by the Court’s Order directing the City to transfer him from Rikers Island to Bellevue Hospital so he can receive the medical treatment he needs as he begins his trial.”  

“It is without question that Rikers Island is the prime example of a deficient and dangerous prison. Mr. Weinstein has suffered tremendously within its walls and no human in his medical condition, no matter what they are accused of, should be treated so inhumanely and without any regard to the protections of our Constitution,” Mr. Ansari added. 

Mr. Weinstein, 73, the Oscar-winning film producer who had a spectacular fall from grace, is facing a retrial at the same Manhattan courthouse where he was found guilty of two out of five charges in 2020: a felony sex crime and a third-degree rape. The first charge related to a former production assistant, Miriam Haley, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2006. The rape charge stemmed from an accusation by an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, who said Mr. Weinstein raped her in his hotel room in 2006. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. 

Last year New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals vacated the conviction and ordered a new trial, after it found the trial judge had wrongly admitted testimony by women whose accusations were not part of the original indictment. 

However, Mr. Weinstein remained incarcerated because he was also found guilty of sexual offenses by a jury in Los Angeles in 2022, and sentenced to another 16 years in prison. 

Rikers Island, where Mr. Weinstein is being held, is widely considered one of the worst jails in the country. It is important to note that the facility is not a prison, but a jail, meaning it holds alleged offenders who have not been convicted, who are awaiting trial, and also people who are serving sentences of one year or less or are temporarily detained there pending transfer to another facility. 

According to the New York Times, five people died at the notorious detention center within the first three months of this year alone. City and State reported that “at least” 19 people died there in 2022, “the highest number of deaths since 2013,” and that “at least” nine people died in 2023, followed by another five deaths in 2024. 

New York City jails have a long history of overpopulation, dangerous conditions and violence against and negligence toward the incarcerated. In October 2019, Mayor De Blasio signed into law a plan to close Rikers Island and build four new borough-based jails. But as recent media coverage reports, the closure is still plagued by delays and frustrations.  

Before Mr. Weinstein was brought to Rikers a year ago when his conviction was overturned, Mr. Weinstein was incarcerated at a medium security prison in upstate New York. For the last year, he has shuttled between Rikers and Bellevue, as his health deteriorated.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ansari filed an emergency relief petition stating that Mr. Weinstein’s incarceration could possibly have fatal consequences, and asked that his client be allowed to stay at Bellevue Hospital for the full course of the trial, which is expected to last about six weeks, so he can “be treated at a facility that has shown to consistently improve his medical conditions and prevent irrevocable consequences to the livelihood of Weinstein, including further serious medical conditions, or death,” Mr. Ansari’s motion stated. 

Mr. Weinstein, who sat in a wheelchair in court, looking pallid and holding an inhaler, suffers from numerous illnesses, including chronic myeloid leukemia and extensive coronary artery disease, depends on medication, which the staff at Rikers, according to his attorney and spokesperson, has often failed to provide.  

“His medications are routinely delayed or administered improperly, he has gained an alarming amount of fluid weight due to mismanagement of his health, and he’s left freezing in his cell without even clean clothes. This is not incarceration—it’s deliberate indifference,” Mr. Weinstein’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, wrote the Sun in an email on Wednesday.  

While the former entertainment mogul has been incarcerated on Rikers Island, he has been undergoing treatment for bone marrow cancer. He also had an emergency heart surgery in 2024, suffers from diabetes, and was recently hospitalized at Bellevue for a dangerously swollen tongue, which, according to the emergency relief motion, was misdiagnosed by the jailhouse doctors,    

“Although the infection was clearly viral in nature, he was initially prescribed antibiotics. It was only after Weinstein himself raised the issue – referencing the treatment recommended by his private physician – that he was finally prescribed appropriate antiviral medication,” Mr. Ansari wrote in his filing. 

But on Thursday, during an unseasonably cold spring, a judge ordered the defendant to be taken from his frigid cell to a warm hospital bed, “permitting Mr. Weinstein to be housed at Bellevue Hospital during the pendency of his trial due to medical conditions deteriorating significantly, unreasonable, and dangerously, leading to multiple instances, where Weinstein feared for his life,” the ruling stated. 

Meanwhile, jury selection continued at a slow pace on Thursday. As the Sun reported, nine jurors, five women and four men, were selected and sworn in on Wednesday, half the amount the presiding judge, Curtis Faber, needs, including the six alternates. 

More than 140 prospective jurors were brought into court Thursday. After dozens raised their hands, signalling scheduling issues, or an inability to be impartial due to the extensive media coverage, about fifty jurors moved on to the next round.     

Both the prosecution and the defense still have seven peremptory challenges, meaning they each can strike seven people they do not believe to be impartial regarding the case. 

To help with jury selection, Mr. Weinstein has hired the renowned jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, whose greatest claim to fame is helping pick the jury that acquitted OJ Simpson.

Jury selection will resume on Monday, as there will not be court on Friday. 

As the defense attorneys were leaving the courthouse on Thursday afternoon, Arthur Aidala told the Sun that his client may possibly testify during his retrial. 

“It’s possible that Mr. Weinstein will testify,” he said in the elevator. “It’s possible.”