New York grand jury convened for possible new charges against Harvey Weinstein
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(NEW YORK) — The Manhattan district attorney’s office has begun presenting evidence to a grand jury that could return a new indictment against Harvey Weinstein — as soon as Friday — over an alleged sexual assault that occurred sometime in a four-month time period between late 2005 and mid-2006 in a lower Manhattan residential building, according to a transcript of an unannounced court hearing this week.
Prosecutors also indicated during a hearing on Tuesday they were aware of two other potential offenses: a sexual assault in May 2016 in a hotel in Tribeca and a potential sexual assault that occurred at the Tribeca Grand hotel.
Providing notice to the defense of potential offenses does not guarantee what charges a new indictment might contain. The grand jury’s term is scheduled to end Friday, at which point prosecutors could put potential charges to a vote.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA’s office declined to comment.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, signaled during the hearing that Weinstein could testify himself before the grand jury.
“Mr. Weinstein is very, very seriously considering going — wheeling himself into the grand jury and letting the grand jurors see what he looks like these days,” Aidala said, according to the transcript.
Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing and has said his sexual encounters were consensual.
The New York Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 opinion, overturned his 2020 rape conviction. He remains held at Rikers Island while he appeals a conviction in Los Angeles.
The Manhattan DA’s office signaled this summer it would retry Weinstein and prosecutors revealed they had spoken to other alleged victims whose accounts were not part of the original case.
(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, finding several major issues “impugn the reliability” of the original outcome.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faulted the trial judge for dismissing the case before the jury had reached a verdict. The jury was allowed to continue deliberating before ultimately finding the newspaper not liable in February 2022.
“Unfortunately, several major issues at trial — specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court’s Rule 50 dismissal ruling — impugn the reliability of that verdict,” the opinion said.
Palin sued the Times and its former opinion editor, James Bennet, over an editorial published on June 14, 2017. The piece, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” linked the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to a digital graphic of a crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts published in March 2010 by Palin’s political action committee. A relationship between the crosshairs map and the shooting was never established. Rather, at the time of the editorial, the attack was widely viewed as a result of the shooter’s mental illness.
Palin’s original defamation lawsuit was dismissed but, in 2019, the Second Circuit vacated the dismissal. The case went to trial in 2022. Judge Jed Rakoff granted the Times’ motion for a directed verdict days before the jury found the newspaper was not liable for defaming Palin.
In its opinion on Wednesday, the appeals court agreed with Palin that Rakoff “erroneously disregarded or discredited her evidence of actual malice and improperly substituted its own judgment for that of the jury.”
The New York Times told ABC News in a statement Wednesday: “This decision is disappointing. We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”
Rakoff said at the time that he would set aside the verdict and dismiss the lawsuit because Palin had not met the high standard of showing the Times had acted with “actual malice” when it published an editorial that erroneously linked Palin’s political action committee to a mass shooting.
Palin sued the Times in 2017, roughly nine years after she was tapped to be Sen. John McCain’s GOP vice presidential nominee, claiming the newspaper deliberately ruined her burgeoning career as a political commentator and consultant by publishing an erroneous editorial she said defamed her.
The editorial that prompted the lawsuit was published on the same day a gunman opened fire on GOP politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in a Washington, D.C., suburb, injuring six, including Republican Rep. Steve Scalise.
The Times’ editorial board wrote that prior to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and left Giffords with a traumatic brain injury, Palin’s political action committee had fueled a violent atmosphere by circulating a map that put the electoral districts of Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
Two days later, the Times published a correction saying the editorial had “incorrectly described” the map and “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”
During the trial, Palin, in her testimony, accused the Times of deliberately fabricating information to sully her reputation.
Bennet testified that while he was responsible for the erroneous information in the editorial, it was an honest mistake and that he meant no harm.
(ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn.) — Two people are dead, and three were left injured after authorities say a man drove into the patio area of a tavern in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, on Sunday.
Authorities responded to a call of an incident at the Park Tavern in St. Louis Park around 8 p.m. local time.
According to a rep for the St. Louis Park Police, surveillance footage shows the driver going into the establishment’s parking lot, attempting to park and then driving into Park Tavern’s outside patio. Police have not released the video.
The incident left two dead and three injured. Information on the conditions of the injured individuals was not immediately available.
Police arrested the driver for criminal vehicular homicide.
The Minnesota State Patrol are performing a reconstruction of the incident, police said. An official said the investigation is ongoing.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(MEMPHIS) — A second former Memphis police officer federally charged in connection with the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols has pleaded guilty, weeks before the trial is set to begin, court filings show.
Emmitt Martin III is one of five former officers indicted last year on federal civil rights, conspiracy and obstruction offenses in connection with Nichols’ death.
After initially pleading not guilty to the charges following the indictment, Martin pleaded guilty to two of them during a change of plea hearing in federal court in Memphis Friday afternoon, online court records show.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to the court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the online records.
The government said it will recommend a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
In the plea agreement, Martin admitted that, along with the other defendants, he “unlawfully assaulted” Nichols, and then attempted to “corruptly persuade” his supervisor to make “false and misleading statements” on the incident report to “cover up their use of unreasonable force on Nichols.”
ABC News has reached out to his attorney for comment.
Martin is the second former officer to plead guilty in the case ahead of the federal trial, which is scheduled to start next month.
In November 2023, Desmond Mills Jr. pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force — as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
The government said at the time that it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’ plea agreement.
Nichols, 29, died on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after a violent confrontation with police following a traffic stop. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report showed he died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma.
The federal indictment alleges that Martin and Mills — along with Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — deprived Nichols of his constitutional rights during the confrontation.
Each of the defendants, according to the indictment, was involved in beating Nichols during the Jan. 7 traffic stop and none relayed information about their assault to the Memphis police dispatcher, their supervisor or the emergency medical technicians and paramedics who were coming to the scene.
The officers allegedly spoke at the scene about how they had struck Nichols, but they also did not relay that information to first responders or their supervisors even as his condition “deteriorated and he became unresponsive,” the indictment alleges.
As part of his plea agreement, Mills admitted to “repeatedly and unjustifiably striking Nichols with a baton and to failing to intervene in other officers’ use of force against Nichols,” the Department of Justice said in a press release following his change of plea hearing.
He also admitted to not providing any medical aid to Nichols afterward, despite knowing he “had a serious medical need,” and not alerting police or EMTs that Nichols had been struck in the head and body, the DOJ stated.
He further admitted to making false statements and accounts about Nichols’ arrest and the use of force used on him to a supervisor and in a Memphis Police Department report, according to the DOJ.
The other three defendants pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. Their trial is scheduled to start on Sept. 9 and is expected to last three weeks.
If convicted, two of the counts in the indictment carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, while the other two each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, according to the DOJ.
All five former officers also face state felony charges, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping, in connection with Nichols’ death. They pleaded not guilty.
The Memphis Police Department fired the five officers — who were on the department’s now-disbanded SCORPION unit — following an investigation into Nichols’ death.
