Harvey Weinstein Pleads Not Guilty to Rape and Sex Charges

A grand jury indicted Weinstein last week

harvey weinstein
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Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty to rape and sex act charges on Tuesday in Manhattan, according to the Associated Press.

A grand jury indicted Weinstein last week on charges rape in the first and third degrees, as well as on charges of criminal sexual act in the first degree.

At the time, Weinstein’s attorney Ben Brafman said in a statement, “The announcement of Mr. Weinstein’s Indictment, does not come as a surprise… Mr. Weinstein intends to enter a plea of Not Guilty and vigorously defend against these unsupported allegations that he strongly denies. We will soon formally move to dismiss the indictment and if this case actually proceeds to trial, we expect Mr. Weinstein to be acquitted.”

Weinstein was arrested last month in New York City on three felony charges of rape and criminal sex act stemming from a months-long investigation by the NYPD into accusations by multiple women.

Though Weinstein has been accused of misconduct by more than 80 women, the criminal charges by New York prosecutors stem from the accusations of two women. The first-degree criminal sex act charge comes from a case involving aspiring actress Lucia Evans in 2004.

The two rape charges stem from an unidentified accuser who accused Weinstein of keeping her against her will in a room at the DoubleTree Metropolitan hotel in midtown Manhattan in 2013. According to the complaint, Weinstein “engaged in sexual intercourse with informant by forcible compulsion, to wit, defendant penetrated informant’s vagina with his penis and, at the time of the incident informant had clearly expressed her lack of consent to the act.”

Weinstein had entered a not guilty plea, and he has denied all accusations of nonconsensual sex. He is out on $1 million bail.

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