Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an extradition order requesting the transfer of Harvey Weinstein from custody in New York to California, where he was previously convicted on rape charges.
The decision came after a New York appeals court in April ruled to overturn Weinstein’s rape conviction, though the underlying charges against him remain. Weinstein, 72, remains in custody in New York, where he is being held in a Manhattan medical facility after being hospitalized for a COVID-19 infection, double pneumonia and other health issues.
Weinstein's conviction in New York was overturned after appeals judges ruled that a state judge erred by allowing three women to testify at his trial even though no charges had been filed against the movie mogul in connection with their allegations.
Newsom had 90 days after Weinstein’s conviction was dismissed in late April to sign the extradition order, according to a New York state judge. The order was signed on June 19, and The Times requested a copy of the document from the governor’s office on Wednesday.
The former Hollywood titan has been embroiled in separate criminal proceedings in New York and California for years since his career was upended by allegations of rape and sexual assault in 2018.
He was convicted in 2020 in New York of rape and criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to 23 years in prison before the conviction was overturned earlier this year.
In Los Angeles, Weinstein was found guilty in 2022 of rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration with a foreign object of an Italian model in 2013. He was sentenced in 2023 to 16 years in prison in California.
The California sentence, handed down when Weinstein was 70, in frail health and still had more than two decades left to serve in New York, seemed unlikely to be carried out.
But the overturned conviction in New York has raised questions about where Weinstein will serve his sentence while he awaits a new trial in September.
His conviction in California is still under appeal.
“We are reviewing the significance of this extradition and how it will impact the status of his case in California,” said Weinstein's California attorney, Mark Werksman.
Weinstein initially faced more than 11 sexual assault charges stemming from allegations that he raped and groped multiple women in hotel rooms in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills between 2004 and 2013.
His trial in California included testimony from Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who accused the then-mogul of raping her in a Beverly Hills hotel suite in 2005, when she was a struggling actress. The rape “destroyed me emotionally,” she told jurors.
Siebel Newsom was among several women who testified that Weinstein used his influence to isolate them in hotel rooms and assault them in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Puerto Rico or Toronto. Details of her allegations had not been made public before her testimony.
The other women involved in the case testified anonymously. The Times does not name victims of sexual assault unless they have spoken publicly or asked to be identified. Siebel Newsom accused Weinstein of abuse in a 2017 Huffington Post essay that was published just days after mainstream media outlets began reporting on rape allegations against the Miramax co-founder. Her involvement in the Los Angeles trial was not widely known until The Times reported on it in October 2022.
Jurors have not reached a consensus on charges based on Weinstein's alleged attacks on three women, including Siebel Newsom, and prosecutors have dropped charges related to allegations made by a fourth woman.
In sentencing Weinstein, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench ruled that he could not serve his California sentence at the same time as his New York one.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
