Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized after an “alarming blood test,” his lawyer said, less than a week after the disgraced movie mogul filed a lawsuit alleging substandard medical care at the notorious New York prison complex.
Weinstein, 72, was sent to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for “emergency treatment due to an alarming blood test result requiring immediate medical attention,” his lawyer Imran Ansari said in a statement.
“He is expected to remain there until his condition stabilizes,” the statement said.
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“His denial of care is not only medical malpractice, but a violation of his constitutional rights.”
A spokesman for the New York City Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email. The agency’s inmate database confirmed that Weinstein was transferred from Rikers Island to the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
Weinstein has been in city custody since earlier this year after a New York appeals court overturned his 2020 rape conviction. The case is scheduled to be tried again in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.
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In a legal filing last week, Weinstein’s lawyers accused the city of providing him with substandard medical care for a range of medical conditions, including chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.
“When I last visited him, I found him with blood on his prison clothes, probably from an IV, with clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks, and he hadn’t even been given clean underwear – hardly sanitary conditions for someone with serious health problems ” Ansari said in a statement that compared Rikers Island to a “gulag.”
The troubled prison complex, located on an island in New York’s East River, has faced increasing scrutiny for poor treatment of inmates and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the prison system, finding that the city had put its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”
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Weinstein’s publicist, Juda Engelmayer, echoed those allegations in a statement.
“Mr. Weinstein, who suffers from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, has been denied the medical care that someone in his condition deserves, prisoner or not,” he said.
“In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
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