Judge Declares Mistrial in Harvey Weinstein Rape Retrial With Women Jurors Voting To Acquit

The judge presiding over the third rape trial of the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in the case of the former aspiring actress Jessica Mann declared another mistrial on Friday after five women on the jury refused to find him guilty.“Unfortunately, there wasn’t a verdict,” Judge Curtis Faber said with a sigh. At 11 am Friday, on its third day of deliberations, the jury had sent the judge a note saying that they could not reach a “unanimous decision.” Jurors told reporters later outside the courthouse that nine of them had wanted to acquit Weinstein and three — all of them men — had wanted to convict.The judge ordered them to continue deliberating, and told them, if they needed a “readback or clarifications of the law,” that he would be “ready” to provide them. “Please continue to deliberate,” he said and sent them back to the jury room. But about two hours later, the jury of seven men and five women sent another note, repeating again that they could not reach a verdict. The judge asked the parties, and after the lead defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, briefly spoke to Weinstein, he told the judge he and his client believed the best approach would be to relieve the jury of their duty and to declare a mistrial. “After discussing with Weinstein, we do think we should declare a mistrial,” Mr. Agnifilo told the judge.An assistant district attorney, Nicole Blumberg, did not agree. She asked the judge to instruct the jury to keep deliberating. But the defense pushed back again, telling the judge it did not think that any further “deliberation would be fruitful.” The judge granted the defense’s request and declared a mistrial. He told the parties to return to court on June 25. Prosecutors have until then to decide if they want to bring the charge for a fourth time.Jurors told reporters later outside the courthouse that nine of them had wanted to acquit Weinstein and three — all of them men — had wanted to convict.The four-week trial at Manhattan Criminal Court heard from close to 20 witnesses, including Ms. Mann, who testified for five days. It was the third time in six years that she accused Weinstein of raping her at the Midtown Manhattan DoubleTree Hotel in March 2013.In 2020, Weinstein faced his first trial, where he was found guilty of Ms. Mann’s charge as well as a sexual assault charge brought by former production assistant Miriam Haley. The judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.Weinstein’s conviction was considered a historic victory for the #MeToo movement, which gained momentum in 2017 after more than 80 women came forward accusing Weinstein of sexual harassment, including Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Angelina Jolie.The film producer denied all allegations, insisting the encounters were consensual. He was eventually forced out of his production company and briefly checked into Gentle Path, an expensive Arizona rehab facility for sex addiction, before leaving early.Then, in 2024, Weinstein scored a landmark victory when New York’s Court of Appeals overturned his convictions. The higher court found that the trial judge had wrongly allowed damaging testimony from women whose allegations were not part of the case, thereby prejudicing the jury.Weinstein — who had been incarcerated at a medium-security prison in upstate New York — was transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail in New York City. He remained behind bars because he had also been convicted of sexual crimes in Los Angeles and sentenced there to another 16 years in prison. He has appealed that case as well and is currently waiting for a decision. In 2025, the Manhattan district attorney’s office took Weinstein to court for a second time. The jury delivered a split verdict. Weinstein was acquitted of the sex crimes involving a former Polish model Kaja Sokola, but convicted on the charge involving Ms. Haley, who said he forcibly performed oral sex on her at his Manhattan apartment, also in 2006.Ms. Mann’s third-degree rape allegation remained unresolved. The judge declared a mistrial after the jury foreman refused to return to deliberations, saying on the record that the process had become intolerable for him.When Weinstein refused to accept a plea deal, prosecutors could have simply dropped the case. Instead they decided to try Ms. Mann’s third-degree rape charge for a third time in what appeared to be a fight for moral vindication rather than an effort to further punish a sex offender.Third-degree rape is a class E nonviolent felony carrying a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Weinstein, who has been incarcerated since 2020, has already served that time.The case was complicated because Ms. Mann and Weinstein had an on-again, off-again relationship that lasted four years and included some consensual sexual encounters, as Ms. Mann acknowledged on the witness stand.She met the producer at a party at Los Angeles in early February 2013, when she was a 27-year-old aspiring actress trying to break into Hollywood and he was a 60-year-old Oscar-winning movie mogul.In March 2013, Ms. Mann traveled to New York with two friends for a weekend in the city. Weinstein, who lived at Manhattan at the time, was supposed to meet her at her hotel for breakfast, she testified. Instead, he arrived early, booked a room, and pressured her to follow him there. Once inside, he trapped her in the room, demanded that she undress, and raped her, she testified.“He treated me like he owned me,” Ms. Mann told prosecutors last month from the witness stand.During cross-examination, Weinstein’s defense attorneys confronted her with a note she had written in her phone’s notes app two days after the alleged rape.In the note, she confessed that she had become emotionally attached to someone and wanted “that person to love me back.” The journal-like entry had not been introduced as evidence in the previous trials.But Weinstein hired a new legal team for this round — Marc Agnifilo, Jacob Kaplan, and Teny Geragos — who combed through the old phone records and uncovered the note.Prosecutors rejected the defense’s suggestion that Ms. Mann’s emotional attachment to Weinstein meant he could not have raped her. They called clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Lisa Rocchio, who testified that “It’s quite common for someone to love an individual and really hate what that individual was doing.”

Judge Declares Mistrial in Harvey Weinstein Rape Retrial With Women Jurors Voting To Acquit

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