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Bid to extradite Harvey Weinstein to California fought by NYC prosecutors

Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears at a hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 1, 2024, in New York City. This is his first public appearance since the New York State Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction on April 25. (Steven Hirsch/Pool/Getty Images/TNS)
By Anusha Bayya and Thomas Tracy New York Daily News

NEW YORK – Harvey Weinstein appeared in a Queens courtroom Thursday morning as prosecutors fought an extradition request to send him back to California following the stunning overturning of his New York rape and sex assault conviction.

California authorities have requested that New York City law enforcement officials bring the disgraced media mogul, 72, back to the West Coast, where he is facing additional sex abuse charges.

“With the New York case against Weinstein overturned, he’s technically now a fugitive from the state of California,” a law enforcement source said.

New York is fighting the extradition request since the disgraced Miramax founder is expected to be retried on the rape case as soon as the fall.

The decision to retry Weinstein was announced earlier this month at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing attended by the movie producer and Jessica Mann, one of two women who he was found guilty of attacking more than four years ago.

A state Supreme Court jury determined Weinstein was guilty of criminal sexual act in the first-degree and third-degree rape in 2020, finding he forcibly performed oral sex on Miriam Haley in 2006 and committed third-degree rape in an incident with Mann in 2013.

He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, which he was serving at the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York – where he returned after facing another trial in California that resulted in his December 2022 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges and a 16-year sentence.

The stunning April 25 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals overturning Weinstein’s New York conviction found the trial court judge, James Burke, shouldn’t have permitted testimony by three women – Taralê Wulff, Dawn Dunning, and Lauren Young – about uncharged allegations of sexual violence.

The extradition hearing could have taken place anywhere in New York City, a source said. While Weinstein was convicted in Manhattan, a Queens court was selected because of its proximity to Rikers Island, where Weinstein is currently incarcerated as he awaits his new trial, the source said.