Harvey Weinstein to be retried April 14 on rape charge after jury deadlock, publicist says
Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein will face a retrial beginning April 14 on a third-degree rape charge involving Jessica Mann, his publicist said, reviving a count on which jurors previously deadlocked after a volatile partial retrial last year.
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The judge in that case declared a mistrial when the jury foreperson refused to return for further deliberations amid a feud inside the jury room, halting the proceedings before a verdict could be reached on the Mann allegation.
Prosecutors will now try again to secure a conviction on the single rape count, even as the case’s other outcomes remain mixed. In June, the jury convicted Weinstein of sexual assault against Miriam Haley and acquitted him of allegedly sexually assaulting Kaja Sokola.
Weinstein’s spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, said prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade juries on the Mann allegation. “Each time prosecutors have asked a jury to convict Harvey Weinstein on (Mann’s) very allegation, they have come up short of a unanimous decision,” he said. “Mr. Weinstein has always maintained that the relationship was consensual, and we look forward to presenting the evidence again.”
The new trial date extends a legal saga that reshaped Hollywood and reverberated far beyond it. Allegations against Weinstein exploded into public view in 2017, toppling one of the most powerful figures in entertainment and fueling the MeToo movement, which exposed systemic exploitation of women and prompted a reckoning over accountability and workplace culture.
More than 80 women ultimately accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, transforming him into a symbol of abuse of power in the film industry. The movement spurred policy changes at studios, unions, and awards bodies and intensified scrutiny of how allegations are handled by employers and law enforcement.
Weinstein’s legal fortunes have seesawed. His original 2020 conviction in New York—and the 23-year prison sentence that followed—was thrown out in 2024 after an appeals court found irregularities in how witnesses were presented. Last year’s proceedings, described as a partial retrial, sought to revisit parts of the overturned case and produced the split results that now set up April’s new proceeding on the Mann count.
The coming retrial will again put Weinstein, now emblematic of an era-defining cultural shift, back at the center of a courtroom battle over consent and credibility, themes that have defined the cascade of cases and allegations since 2017. It will also test prosecutors’ strategy after a mistrial paused the last attempt to secure a verdict on the Mann allegation.
The retrial is scheduled to start April 14. Further details on courtroom logistics and witness lists were not immediately available.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
