LOS ANGELES — Though Harvey Weinstein claims he’s about to go blind, Los Angeles County is promising he’ll receive “continuity of care” for his ailing eyes once transferred from New York to California to face sex crime charges.
Lawyers for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office said in separate paperwork obtained by the Daily News that the jailed movie mogul accused of sexually assaulting five Jane Does in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles won’t suffer any disruptions in his medical care once retrieved from Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County.
Once in the custody of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies, Weinstein could receive his next Avastin shot in early August to treat his vision loss diagnosed in New York, a county lawyer said in a letter to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan filed Wednesday.
Weinstein, 69, also would receive “reasonable treatment for cataracts including surgery if necessary,” the lawyer wrote.
The county lawyer, Karen Joynt, even said she’s prepared to help Weinstein’s lawyers obtain new glasses with corrective lenses for the convicted sex predator after a New York doctor wrote in a report that his “current reading glasses are broken and do not fit him.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said they’re ready to bring Weinstein to trial within three months to keep the ball rolling.
“The People are informed and believe that Los Angeles County Sheriff Department is capable of providing continuity of medical care,” lawyer Cassandra Thorp, representing the DA, wrote to Judge Ryan in her letter dated July 6.
Weinstein’s California-based lawyer said Wednesday that extradition still poses a threat.
“We appreciate the DA and the Sheriff promising to provide Mr. Weinstein with quality medical care, but he is midstream in a critical and sensitive course of treatment with an ophthalmologist in Buffalo that is necessary to prevent him from going blind,” lawyer Mark Werksman said in a statement to the Daily News.
“We believe he should be allowed to complete his treatment with his current doctor without the delays and dislocation and medical risks that will be caused by transporting him to Los Angeles,” Werksman said.
The lawyers for Los Angeles County filed their letters this week in response to a Habeas Corpus petition Weinstein filed in Los Angeles June 15, the same day a New York judge declined to deny Weinstein’s extradition any further.
Weinstein, now serving a 23-year sentence for his February 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault, was recently indicted in Los Angeles grand jury on charges that run the gamut from forcible oral copulation to sexual battery by restraint and rape.
______
