Weinstein rape retrial ends in mistrial as jury deadlocks

Harvey Weinstein’s third New York sex-crimes trial ended in mistrial Friday after a Manhattan jury said it could not agree on the third-degree rape charge involving Jessica Mann, leaving the case unresolved once again and pushing prosecutors toward a June 24 hearing on whether to seek a fourth trial.

Judge Curtis Farber told jurors to keep deliberating after they sent notes saying they were deadlocked, but the panel remained stuck after three days of deliberations that followed nearly three weeks of testimony. One juror later told reporters the split was nine to three for acquittal. The jury was majority-male, and the deadlock left the Mann charge, tied to her account of a 2013 encounter, in limbo.

The outcome highlights the difficulty of turning the legal reckoning around Weinstein into a final verdict that holds. He was once among Hollywood’s most powerful producers and a major Democratic donor, but allegations that surfaced publicly in 2017 helped propel the #MeToo movement, collapse the Weinstein Company and trigger criminal cases in New York and Los Angeles. Even now, the repeated retrials have produced only fragments of closure: a conviction on one count, an acquittal on another, and another hung jury on the charge involving Mann.

The latest retrial produced mixed results. Weinstein was convicted of one first-degree criminal sexual act count involving Miriam Haley and acquitted of another involving Kaja Sokola, but the unresolved rape count again failed to produce a verdict. A year earlier, at the 2025 retrial, jurors had also deadlocked on the same Mann charge after reaching a partial verdict on other counts.

Weinstein’s New York case has been repeatedly reset by appeals and retrials. His 2020 conviction was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals on April 25, 2024, after the court found that the trial judge had improperly allowed testimony from women whose allegations were not part of the charges. Prosecutors said they would try the case again, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said his office would consult with Mann before deciding next steps, while also considering Weinstein’s pending sentencing in the separate case involving Haley. For accusers, prosecutors and jurors, the latest mistrial underscored how even the most prominent accountability cases can still stall when a unanimous verdict proves out of reach.