Italian
Harvey Weinstein’s legal team fear he will die in the “torture chamber or medieval dungeon” Rikers Island Prison, where he has been left festering in blood-spattered clothes, in the same underwear for weeks, in freezing temperatures and denied basic medicine for cancer.
Lawyers for the disgraced movie mogul say his care at the notorious New York prison is so bad they suspect he has been deliberately and vindictively mistreated and “the inevitable outcome is death.” Weinstein, 72, was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in October, and was rushed to the prison ward at lower Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital on December 2 when an “alarming” blood test revealed dangerously low levels of white cells, making him more vulnerable to infection and causing a physical crash.
Last week his lawyers filed a lawsuit against New York City, alleging the disgraced Hollywood mogul is receiving negligent medical care and living in “gulag” conditions. They are seeking $5 million in damages. His attorney Imran H. Ansari told The Hollywood Reporter that when recently visiting Weinstein at Rikers, “He had blood spattered on him. I was shocked to see that any prisoner would be treated that way. He was totally unkempt. The clothes seemed like they were not clean or washed. And he told me he hadn’t been provided clean underwear in two weeks. It seemed like he was being completely mistreated.”
Throughout his legal proceedings, Weinstein’s team had been pushing for the entertainment mogul to be held full time at Bellevue Hospital. He has appeared in person at the majority of his hearings throughout the summer and fall and has been brought in to court in a wheelchair.
“If it’s not intentional mistreatment, it’s certainly negligent mistreatment. Torture chamber or medieval dungeon; all these sorts of phrases could be applicable to Rikers. It’s just shocking to see a prison that would be run here in the United States, but even more so here in New York,” Ansari added.
In reply, a spokesperson for the New York City mayor’s office said the public hospital system works with the Department of Correction to “ensure people in custody have access to high-quality health care on Rikers Island, including individuals who have complex medical and mental health needs.”
Ansari said he suspects Weinstein is being deliberately targeted for neglect in Rikers because of his former King of Hollywood status, “If somewhere behind a closed door someone is saying, ‘Let’s screw Harvey over and withhold this and withhold that’ …. Maybe there is a sense of vindictiveness towards him? I don’t want to be speculative, but he is certainly not just another inmate number. I’m sure everyone knows this is Harvey Weinstein. This was the guy who was living in the lap of luxury and was at the top of his game in Hollywood, and here he is now. And I don’t know if that either consciously or subconsciously feeds into some of the decisions made about his medical treatment or whether they’re going to send him to Bellevue Hospital or hold him back in Rikers and its draconian and deplorable conditions.”
Ansari said Weinstein has “a laundry list” of medical conditions including leukemia, diabetes, coronary artery disease, sleep apnea, severe dental issues causing him “tremendous pain,” vision problems, thyroid issues, severe fluid retention, obesity – despite having undergone lap band surgery – and chronic back pain. He has also recently contracted COVID-19 and pneumonia while at the notorious jail.
He was hospitalized in April and July, and he had emergency heart surgery in September. He claims medical staff at Rikers have failed to give Weinstein even the most basic cancer treatment.
“You don’t need to be a doctor to say this, but if you’re not going to get the medical treatment for terminal illnesses like cancer, like leukemia, and it goes unchecked and it’s not treated properly, the inevitable outcome from that is death,” he explained.
“So if he’s not provided the proper care, if he’s forced to reside and endure subpar, unhygienic, unsanitary conditions in a weakened state, so if you’re suffering from all these conditions and you’re on medications that may lower your immune function and make you more susceptible to illness, and then on top of that you’re being placed in an unsanitary unhygienic prison, then I would imagine that even increases even more your susceptibility to a potentially fatal illness or a horrible outcome,” Ansari added.
He has also said, “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,” referencing the Soviet Union’s forced labor camps.
Weinstein, who has been accused by more than 80 women of sexual assault or harassment, has been in city custody since earlier this year after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case is set to be retried in spring next year.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The troubled jail complex, located on an island in New York City’s East River, has faced growing scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the jail system, finding the city had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”
The jail, which is set to be closed in 2027, has been plagued by violence and deaths of inmates, Nineteen people died in custody at Rikers Island in 2022, nine more died in 2023, and five died in the first eight months of this year. Rates of stabbings and slashings, fights, assaults on staff “remain extraordinarily high,” Judge Laura Swain said. She found the city and the Department of Correction in civil contempt over 18 separate claims of failing to rectify use of force and safety issues in a scathing, 65-page contempt order.
But Ansari said, “Rikers, it’s its own beast. It’s the infrastructure, aside the treatment of prisoners and unchecked violence and deplorable conditions in terms of access to medical care and things like that. The infrastructure of Rikers is horrible. If you go there to visit a client, you’re looking at these buildings, and they’re falling apart. You just see that it’s crumbling infrastructure-wise.”
He added that while Weinstein is “laser-focused” on proving his innocence, he is experiencing “severe issues” with his prison conditions, “No matter what you want to think about Harvey Weinstein or whatever opinion you have about his guilt or innocence, it flies in the face of us priding ourselves of being a civilized and humane society when people are suffering from medical conditions and not getting the treatment just because they’re in jail, especially for something terminal like cancer.”
He has been housed on the medical wing at Rikers, which lacks basic medical care, blankets, clean clothes, and sanitary conditions, Ansari said. At Bellevue Hospital, he remains on a prison wing with other inmates, guarded by correctional staff, “but at least he has access to medication and the ICU, should he need to be admitted. We hope he will remain at Bellevue until his trial. He has previously been released from Bellevue back to Rikers too early,” Ansari added.
State Senator Jessica Ramos, who visited the Rikers facility in September and noted the overcrowding, vermin-infected and filthy conditions, previously said the one thing that “no picture can capture” is “the stench”. “It’s the smell of death,” said Ramos, who witnessed an inmate attempting to hang himself, “It was a house of horrors.”
