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THE CITY
Harvey Weinstein Sent Back to Rikers After THE CITY Exposed VIP Treatment
By Reuven Blau,
2024-05-07
It’s curtains for Harvey Weinstein’s stay in a private hospital room.
The disgraced media mogul, 72, was moved back to the West Facility on Rikers Island hours after THE CITY reported he was being kept in a private room inside Bellevue Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit on a floor away from all other detainees.
“Your article was pretty much the reason,” Weinstein’s longtime spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, told THE CITY Monday night.
Almost all city detainees with serious medical issues are kept inside the Department of Correction’s medical unit on the 19th floor of the Manhattan public hospital.
But Weinstein was given his own phone, bathroom, and television — a perk few, if any, other city detainees are afforded. He spent his days talking to his legal team and watching CNN and other television programs.
He had been moved to the Bellevue almost immediately after he was brought to Rikers Island on April 27, when an state appeals court tossed his 2020 rape conviction.
At the time, Weinstein complained he was experiencing chest pain, according to a jail source, who noted the producer was also asking for a Pepsi.
His legal team says he’s dealing with a host of other serious medical conditions like constant chest and abdominal pain.
“He’s a sick man,” Weinstein attorney Donna Rotunno told THE CITY on Monday. “Harvey has multiple health issues and he’s never gotten the level of care that he received prior to going into custody.”
But after a series of tests medical staff at Bellevue concluded there was nothing serious enough to require hospital care, according to the Rikers source.
“The decision to discharge Mr. Weinstein from Bellevue Hospital and return him to Rikers Island was made by medical staff from New York City Health + Hospitals who are more than qualified to make these medical decisions,” said Engelmayer.
Back and Forth
Most high-profile detainees held at Rikers are currently kept in s West Facility. That jail was opened in 1991 to house people with contagious diseases. Now it is largely empty and detainees placed there, like former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, are typically given their own cells — away from other people locked up.
Weinstein was originally put in that area but was unhappy being on Rikers at all, according to the jail sources.
Frank Dwyer, DOC’s chief spokesperson, confirmed Weinstein was moved back to Rikers Monday night. He declined to comment further or explain why he was housed in the Bellevue ICU for days.
“Individuals in custody may require extended medical care which would necessitate staying at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue,” DOC spokesperson Annais Morales told THE CITY Monday.
Jeanette Merrill, a spokesperson for the city’s Correctional Health Services, which oversees medical care for incarcerated people, said Monday that she can’t “discuss the care of any specific patient due to privacy laws.”
“There is a forensic health general medicine unit at Bellevue,” she added. “However, if a patient requires a higher level of care, they can be treated in another medical unit in the hospital.”
Weinstein was previously incarcerated at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles northwest of Albany. He was transferred to city custody after New York’s highest court vacated his conviction, ruling that a trial judge unfairly allowed jurors to see and hear evidence that was not directly related to the charges.
The decision tossed his 23-year prison sentence and called for a retrial.
Weinstein remains behind bars because of a 2022 conviction for another rape in Los Angeles. The state of California sentenced him to 16 years in that case.
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