On Tuesday, a judge in New York approved the extradition to California order for the disgraced sexual predator movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, where he will face additional sexual assault charges, the move ending a legal battle delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a legal argument over paperwork, and the defense team’s concerns about Weinstein’s failing health. Isn’t it strange that they all have failing health only when they have to face the music?
Judge Kenneth Case articulated that there was no longer a reason to delay Weinstein’s extradition, denying his attorney’s request to keep him at a state prison in New York where he’s serving a 23-year sentence for a rape conviction from last year. At his age, that’s pretty much a death sentence. He should have thought about all of that before he allegedly abused all those women spanning a decades-long career.
At the extradition hearing in Buffalo, New York, prosecutors said that Los Angeles officials plan to get Weinstein, 69, from the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, by the end of June or possibly early July, which will give Weinstein’s lawyer time to appeal Judge Case’s ruling.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Norman Effman <snicker> argued his client should remain in Wende’s hospital, which is equivalent to a maximum-security environment while being treated for ailments including a heart condition, high blood pressure, a loss of eyesight, and spinal stenosis, and other listed ailments rather than being transported across the country to a Los Angeles jail cell. The idea of arraignment by video was also rejected.
“What we were trying to do is not avoid the trial, but avoid an unnecessary stay in a jail rather than a prison,” Effman said, insisting that pre-trial incarceration in California would cause his client the loss of needed medical care.
Colleen Curtin Gable, the Erie County Assistant District Attorney involved in the case, made an argument in favor of Weinstein’s extradition being granted saying, “It’s Los Angeles. It’s not some remote outpost that doesn’t have any sort of medical care.”
Weinstein is set to face 11 sexual assault charges in California that involve five women, deriving from alleged assaults in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013. The charges include rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint, and sexual penetration by use of force.
Give any one of their father’s five minutes alone.
LA prosecutors initially charged Weinstein back in January 2020, at the time jury selection was starting in the New York City case where Weinstein ended up being convicted and sentenced to a prison term.
The Hollywood mogul is appealing the conviction that he raped an aspiring actress in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel room and forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment.
Under the terms of an interstate extradition agreement, Case has to get authorization to be able to transfer Weinstein to the LA authorities.
On top of concerns over Weinstein’s health, Effman challenged the legitimacy of extradition paperwork filed by Los Angeles authorities, which he said was defective because it didn’t list all the charges.
“We are challenging the paperwork because it’s not right. It’s wrong… They just copied the form and changed the date,” Effman told Case.
ADA Gable said that the paperwork “absolutely met the requirements” of the extradition agreement.
To challenge Weinstein’s lawyer’s concerns over his client’s health, Gable told the judge that Weinstein rejected a treatment for his eye condition last week, claiming he “wasn’t psychologically ready for it” and that prison officials went through the effort of going through a number of ophthalmologists that would be “acceptable to the defendant.”
It sounds like a bunch of stall tactics. He’s already doing 23 years for his crimes in New York, so what’re another few decades to him? He just doesn’t want to have to face his accusers in LA. For once, the rich and powerful are met with justice in a system where justice is breaking down each and every day before our eyes.
Rich is a conservative, syndicated opinion writer and owner of MAGA-Chat.com. He writes about politics, culture, liberty, and faith.
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