Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized Monday following an “alarming blood test,” his lawyer stated, lower than per week after the disgraced film mogul filed a authorized declare alleging substandard medical care at New York Metropolis’s infamous jail complicated.
Weinstein, 72, was despatched to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for an “emergent treatment due to an alarming blood test result that requires immediate medical attention,” his lawyer, Imran Ansari, stated in an announcement.
“It is expected that he will remain there until his condition stabilizes,” the assertion continues. “His deprivation of care will not be solely medical malpractice, however a violation of his constitutional rights.”
Weinstein has been in metropolis custody since earlier this 12 months after the New York Courtroom of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction within the state. The case is about to be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.
In a authorized submitting final week, Weinstein’s attorneys accused the town of offering him with substandard medical take care of a litany of medical afflictions, which embody continual myeloid leukemia and diabetes.
“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,” Ansari stated in an announcement that likened Rikers Island to a “gulag.”
The troubled jail complicated, positioned on an island in New York Metropolis’s East River, has confronted rising scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and harmful circumstances. Final week, a federal choose cleared the best way for a potential federal takeover of the jail system, discovering the town had positioned its incarcerated inhabitants in “unconstitutional danger.”
A publicist for Weinstein, Juda Engelmayer, echoed the allegation in an announcement Monday.
“Mr. Weinstein, who is suffering from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, has been deprived the medical attention that someone in his medical state deserves, prisoner or not,” he said. “In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
