Harvey Weinstein Files Notice of Claim Over Rikers Island Detention
In a Notice of Claim filed against New York City and its Department of Correction (DOC) on November 26, 2024, lawyers for disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein said that their client has suffered at least $5 million in damages from shoddy healthcare and lousy conditions since being confined in the City’s Rikers Island jail complex in August 2024.
That’s when his 23 state convictions for sexually assaulting and raping young actresses were tossed, and he was returned to Rikers Island to await retrial on those charges. Weinstein was the first high-profile defendant tried for sexual predation of women after the “MeToo” movement began in 2020.
Imran H. Ansari, the attorney who last visited Weinstein, said he found his 72-year-old client “with blood spatter on his prison garb, possibly from IV’s, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided clean underwear—hardly sanitary conditions for someone with severe medical conditions and susceptibility to illness.”
“I questioned whether I was in a prison facility that is supposed to be managed in accordance with our constitution, or a gulag where the prisoners are treated like animals,” Ansari offered.
In what was probably not a coincidence, the claim was filed the same day that a federal court held the City in contempt of orders to improve conditions for the 6,300 prisoners and detainees held in the decrepit jail complex, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.54.] Weinstein’s claim remains pending, and PLN will provide updates as they are available.
Source: Deadline
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