A judge says Harvey Weinstein is weighing a potential guilty plea to resolve an undecided rape charge and avoid going to trial for a third time in New York. But, amid the plea talk Thursday, the disgraced movie mogul said he knows he was unfaithful and acted wrongly, but he insisted that he «neve.
— Harvey Weinstein is weighing a potential guilty plea to resolve a rape charge and avoid going to trial for a third time in New York, his lawyer and a judge said Thursday, even as the disgraced movie mogul insisted he “never assaulted anyone.”
For now, at least, Weinstein is on course for a retrial as soon as March in the landmark #MeToo-era case. The judge asked defense lawyers to tell prosecutors within two weeks whether Weinstein is planning a guilty plea.
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Prosecutors haven’t offered Weinstein any breaks. But he could plead guilty to the crime as charged, a low-level felony. Defense attorney Arthur Aidala said the 73-year-old Weinstein might do so if assured that any prison time for the rape charge would run concurrently with a sentence he’s awaiting on a separate, higher-level sexual assault conviction, which Manhattan Judge Curtis Farber declined to overturn Thursday.
After asking Farber to hear him out, a pallid but emphatic Weinstein said his “spirit was breaking” after nearly six years behind bars, presently at New York City’s Rikers Island jail.
