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 appeared 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, 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 indictment handed down last week marked the third amended indictment against Weinstein this year, as prosecutors have had to grapple with repeated defense attempts to get charges dismissed on statutory grounds. A similar attempt to knock out two charges against Weinstein related to assaults alleged to have taken place in 2004 and 2005 failed this year.
Weinstein was slated for an arraignment Monday morning, but his attorneys sought a continuance, according to Ricardo Santiago, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 20.
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.
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