Harvey Weinstein’s legal team filed court documents Tuesday alleging that Rikers Island, the notorious New York jail where he’s awaiting a new trial on rape charges, has been medically neglecting him and providing unsafe living conditions.
An attorney for the 72-year-old disgraced Hollywood mogul filed a notice of claim announcing plans to sue the city of New York. The jail complex, the document alleges, has failed to properly manage Weinstein’s many medical issues, including leukemia and diabetes, and left him living in frigid conditions without clean clothes.
“When I last visited him, I found him 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,” Weinstein’s attorney, Imran H. Ansari, said in a statement.
“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 continued, referencing the Soviet Union’s forced labor camps.
The legal claim seeks $5 million in damages.
The New York Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to request for comment on the lawsuit.
Weinstein was found guilty of rape in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. But earlier this year, the New York Court of Appeals overturned his verdict, in part because of a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case. Weinstein is now awaiting a new trial expected to begin some time next year.
