Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an extradition order seeking to move Harvey Weinstein from detention in New York to California, where he was previously convicted of rape.
This follows a decision by a New York appeals court in April to overturn Weinstein’s rape conviction, but the underlying charges against him remained. Weinstein, 72, remains in custody in New York, where he is being held at a Manhattan medical facility after being hospitalized for COVID-19, double pneumonia and other health issues.
Weinstein’s conviction in New York was overturned after an appeals judge found that a state judge erred in allowing three women to testify at the trial, even though Weinstein was not charged with the allegations.
A New York state judge said Newsom had 90 days to sign an extradition order after Weinstein’s conviction was vacated in late April. The writ was signed on June 19, and The Times requested a copy of the document from the governor’s office on Wednesday.
The former Hollywood mogul has been mired in separate criminal proceedings in New York and California over the years since his career was upended in 2018 amid rape and sexual assault allegations.
In 2020, he was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual assault in New York and sentenced to 23 years in prison, a sentence that was overturned earlier this year.
In 2022, Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles of forcible rape, forced oral copulation and sexual penetration with a foreign object. In 2023, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in California.
When Weinstein was sentenced in California, he was 70 years old and in frail health. He still had to serve more than two decades in New York, but it seemed unlikely that he would serve that time.
But the conviction in New York was overturned, raising questions about where Weinstein will serve his sentence while awaiting his retrial in September.
His California conviction is still being appealed.
“We are reviewing the significance of this extradition and how it will affect the status of his case in California,” said Mark Werksman, Weinstein’s California attorney.
