LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County prosecutors have obtained a new indictment against Harvey Weinstein in the hopes of reviving a charge that a judge threw out earlier this month, attorneys said.
Weinstein will appear in a downtown courtroom Monday to answer the indictment, which was handed down last week, according to his attorney, Mark Werksman.
The disgraced mogul was indicted on 11 counts of rape and forced oral copulation and other charges in April, but L.A. County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench threw out one count of sexual battery against Weinstein last week, agreeing with a defense motion that the statute of limitations on the charge had run out.
The charge, which alleges Weinstein attacked a woman in 2010, was initially filed in October 2020, within the statute of limitations. But Lench granted the defense motion that the indictment created a new criminal proceeding and broke the statute.
The district attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last week, Werksman said he believed the battery charge was "effectively dead" regardless of whatever attempts prosecutors made to resuscitate it. Weinstein's lawyers will file a motion to once again seek to have the count dismissed Monday.
Weinstein — who was sentenced to 23 years in prison after he was convicted last year of rape in Manhattan — is expected to stand trial by November on the other remaining counts, which stem from allegations made by five women who say he assaulted them between 2004 and 2013 in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.
