‘This Is a Good Day for Harvey’: Prosecution Dismisses Actress’s Rape Case After Failing To Convict Weinstein Three Times

New York prosecutors decided not to try the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein for a fourth time for allegedly raping the once-aspiring actress Jessica Mann on Thursday. However, Weinstein will be sentenced for his lingering criminal sexual act conviction on September 23.“This is a good day for Harvey,” defense attorney Jacob Kaplan told reporters outside Manhattan Criminal Court after Thursday’s proceeding. “He said for the past eight years, he’s always insisted that he was never inappropriate with Jessica Mann,” the attorney added. “So he’s very happy that this is over and we can move on.” On May 15, after a four-week trial and three days of deliberations, the jury rendered a hung verdict on the third-degree rape allegation. Justice Curtis Farber of the New York Supreme Court gave the Manhattan District Attorney’s office until Thursday to decide whether prosecutors wanted to bring the case again.On Thursday morning, the assistant district attorney, Nicole Blumberg, “respectfully” requested that the court dismiss the count.Ms. Mann met Weinstein at a party at Los Angeles in early 2013, when she was a 27-year-old aspiring actress and he was a 60-year-old Oscar-winning film producer. She accused Weinstein of raping her at the DoubleTree Hotel at Manhattan about one month after they first met, in March 2013.The case is complicated because Ms. Mann and Weinstein were in a four-year long, off-again-on-again relationship that included some consensual encounters, as Ms. Mann has acknowledged.It was the third time Ms. Mann’s charge had been brought against him in the same Lower Manhattan courthouse. In 2020, Weinstein was charged with raping Ms. Mann in both the first and third degrees. He was also charged with sex crimes brought by a former production assistant, Miriam Haley, who claimed Weinstein forcibly performed unwanted oral sex on her in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment while she was on her period.The jury found Weinstein not guilty of the most serious charges, two counts of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape. But it did convict him of the third-degree rape charge and the criminal sexual act involving Ms. Haley. The judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.Then, in 2024, Weinstein scored a landmark victory when New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, overturned those convictions and ordered a new trial. The court found that the trial judge had wrongly admitted testimony against Weinstein based on vivid allegations from women who were not part of the indictment.Weinstein remained incarcerated because he was also convicted in California for sex crimes and sentenced there to 16 years in prison. He is currently being held on New York’s notorious Rikers Island, where he recently told the Hollywood Reporter he is dying.The second New York trial took place in the spring of 2025. The Manhattan jury rendered a split verdict on the three-count indictment. Weinstein was acquitted of the sex crime regarding a former Polish model, Kaja Sokola, who alleged that the producer forcibly performed oral sex on her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2006 — this was a new charge the prosecution added for the second trial. But he was convicted of the sex crime involving Ms. Haley — again.Ms. Mann’s accusation of third-degree rape remained unresolved. The judge declared a mistrial after the jury’s foreman declined to return to the deliberation room, stating on the record that deliberations had become intolerable for him. After Weinstein refused to take a guilty plea, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office decided to go to trial for a third time.For this third New York trial, which began in April 2026, Weinstein switched attorneys, hiring Agnifilo Intrater, which is the same Manhattan firm that represents the man accused of gunning down the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, Luigi Mangione. Agnifilo Intrater was also part of the defense team that got the music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs acquitted of his sex trafficking and racketeering charges in federal court. Outside the courthouse, the defense attorneys told reporters that they plan to be involved in Weinstein’s California convictions, which are currently being appealed. Mr. Kaplan also reiterated what he had told the judge in court that he believed, Ms. Mann’s charge should have never been brought. “I just want to say, we commend the D.A.’s office for dismissing the charges against Mr. Weinstein, but, like we said in court, these charges should never have been brought to begin with,” Mr. Kaplan said. “When they brought the case back in 2018, they kept from the grand jury all the emails, all the text messages that we brought out during trial, showing the loving nature and consensual relationship they had for more than four years.” After the prosecution asked the court to dismiss the rape charge on Thursday, Ms. Blumberg read aloud a letter that Ms. Mann had written to the court. “It was clear to me at this last trial, I can no longer go through this,” Ms. Mann, 40, said in her letter. “It has put me through more harm than good,” the victim added, referring to her experience on the witness stand.The letter detailed that Ms. Mann was “enduring headaches,” and “depressions,” during her testimony, which affected her “cognitive abilities,” she wrote. “At one point I disassociated on the witness stand,” the letter said.Mr. Kaplan interrupted the reading, reminding the judge that Ms. Mann had testified for five days during the trial, and that her characterization of Weinstein, whom she repeatedly referred to as a rapist, was not appropriate. The prosecutor pushed back, arguing that “this is all part” of Ms. Mann’s decision, why she does not want to pursue the charges. The prosecutor further told the court that this decision was not “a reflection of any diminished confidence in the case.” Judge Farber asked the prosecutor to skip parts of the letter that characterized Weinstein but allowed her to finish reading it. Then he scheduled the sentence hearing for Weinstein’s conviction of Ms. Haley’s charge for September 23. The prosecutor said that Ms. Haley plans to make an impact statement. The maximum sentence for committing a criminal sexual act is a 25-year prison sentence. “To be clear, we believe Ms. Mann’s account and her credibility as a witness,” the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said in a statement.“This has been an extraordinarily taxing ordeal for her, and she has never wavered while testifying in front of two grand juries and three trial juries over the course of eight years. We thank her for her honesty and her tremendous bravery.”

‘This Is a Good Day for Harvey’: Prosecution Dismisses Actress’s Rape Case After Failing To Convict Weinstein Three Times

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