Harvey Weinstein’s day began with expensive coffee and Acqua Panna mineral water at a breakfast meeting with his lawyers in a Four Seasons hotel near Manhattan’s criminal courts.
It was due to end at New York’s violence-plagued Rikers Island jail complex, where the former Hollywood film producer will await sentencing after a jury found him guilty on Monday of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another.
Judge James Burke had initially ordered Weinstein, prisoner 06581138Z, to be taken to the notorious prison immediately, until his sentencing on March 11.
Weinstein was instead diverted to Bellevue Hospital Center by ambulance on Monday after suffering chest pains.
But he will arrive at the jail – where violence and neglect are so entrenched that Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed in 2017 to close it down within a decade – after his release from hospital.
Weinstein’s lawyers are asking that the 67-year-old be sent to the jail’s North Infirmary Command – two dank buildings that house sick inmates and those with enough notoriety to require protection from their neighbors.
New York City’s Department of Correction declined to say where he would be sent.
Harvey Weinstein’s day began with expensive coffee and Acqua Panna mineral water at a breakfast meeting with his lawyers in a Four Seasons hotel, pictured
Judge James Burke had initially ordered Weinstein to be taken to Rikers Island jail complex, pictured in 2010, immediately, until his sentencing on March 11. Weinstein was instead diverted to Bellevue Hospital Center by ambulance on Monday after suffering chest pains
A jury found Weinstein guilty on Monday of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another
In 2015, federal prosecutors in New York concluded after an investigation that guards routinely abused inmates at the jail, which sits on an island in the East River, beneath the LaGuardia Airport flight path.
Housed partly in the jail’s original hospital building, the North Infirmary Command is not much of a respite, according to people who have worked there.
Rikers is one of America’s most high-profile prisons and has incarcerated celebrities including Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, rapper Tupac Shakur and former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Lawyers and criminologists have been calling for the jail’s closure for years, citing its age and regular violent incidents against inmates and guards that are blamed in part on its remote location, which makes family visits difficult.
A lawyer for Weinstein reminded Judge James Burke on Monday of some of her client’s ailments, noting he takes several medications and requires injections in his eyes to forestall blindness.
He entered and left the Manhattan court each day leaning on a walker, a remnant, according to his lawyers, of back surgery he had in December.
‘It’s not the cleanest,’ Malissa Allen, a mental health counselor who has treated inmates at the infirmary, said in an interview. ‘It’s a very old jail. A lot of people complain about the smell. It has the old basement smell.’
This 2016 photo shows a solitary confinement cell known all at New York’s Rikers Island jail
The jail sits on an island in the East River, beneath the LaGuardia Airport flight path
A cell in an enhanced supervision housing unit on Rikers Island pictured in 2015. Weinstein would likely wear a tan jumpsuit to indicate he has yet to be sentenced, Allen said, with his hearing set for March 11. Sentenced inmates are dressed in green
Weinstein’s bail was revoked and he was handcuffed shortly after the jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping Jessica Mann, a onetime aspiring actress, in 2013. He will be held on Rikers Island, pictured in 2015
In October last year New York officials approved a multi-billion-dollar plan to close the city’s notorious Rikers Island prison and replace the sprawling complex with smaller jails
The main building went up in 1932, according to the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, the labor union representing the jail’s guards.
Weinstein would likely wear a tan jumpsuit to indicate he has yet to be sentenced, Allen said, with his hearing set for March 11. Sentenced inmates are dressed in green.
Weinstein’s bail was revoked and he was handcuffed shortly after the jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping Jessica Mann, a onetime aspiring actress, in 2013. He has maintained his innocence and a long appeals battle is likely.
It was not clear in what kind of room or cell Weinstein would be held. There are bunk rooms with up to 40 or so patients, which have beeping hospital machines to monitor vital signs, Allen said. He may end up in a private or semi-private cell, as often happens with inmates who might be threatened by others.
‘I would think if you had to be at Rikers Island, you might prefer the infirmary,’ Lisa Pelosi, a criminal defense lawyer in New York, said in an interview. ‘But it is definitely not a pleasant place.’
Rikers is one of America’s most high-profile prisons and has incarcerated celebrities including Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, right, rapper Tupac Shakur and former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. John Lennon’s assassin Mark David Chapman, left, was also held there
Rikers Island is one of the most recognizable of US prison names, together with Sing Sing, located in Ossining in New York state, San Quentin in California and ADX in Colorado, a so-called ‘supermax’ prison nicknamed the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies.’
Fake heiress Anna Sorokin had been in custody at Rikers Island since her October 2017 arrest, but is believed to have recently been moved upstate to the Albion Correctional Facility.
The number of inmates at Rikers has fallen from around 20,000 in the 1990s to around 7,000. The 400-acre island in the East River, connected by bridge to the borough of Queens, is home to nine jails. Most inmates are defendants awaiting trial or serving sentences of less than one year.
An ambulance carrying Harvey Weinstein is escorted from a Manhattan courthouse Monday
Weinstein has maintained his innocence and a long appeals battle is likely