Prosecutors are asking a Manhattan judge to consolidate the two sex crime cases that Harvey Weinstein faces in New York into a single trial this year. | Entertainment
— Prosecutors are asking a Manhattan judge to consolidate the two sex crime cases that Harvey Weinstein faces in New York into a single trial this year — a move that the disgraced movie mogul’s lawyers oppose.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office argued in court filings released Friday that the cases have significant overlap as they involve similar criminal statutes, witnesses, expert testimony and documentary evidence.
They say separate trials would be “extraordinarily inefficient and burdensome” and waste judicial resources.
“There is a strong public interest in consolidating these indictments for trial because separate trials would require duplicative, lengthy, and expensive proceedings that would needlessly consume judicial and party resources,” the office wrote in its filings.
Weinstein is awaiting retrial on two sex charges stemming from his landmark #MeToo case after the state’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction earlier this year.
He also pleaded not guilty last month to a new sex crime charge in which prosecutors say he forced oral sex on a woman in a Manhattan hotel in spring 2006.
