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Harvey Weinstein has been convicted on one count of committing a criminal sexual act in the retrial of his 2020 rape conviction in New York.
The disgraced Hollywood producer was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but he was acquitted of a second criminal sex act charge for the alleged assault of Kaja Sokola.
The jury is currently deadlocked on a rape charge involving Jessica Mann and was ordered to resume deliberations on Thursday, June 12th.
The partial verdict was delivered today, June 11th, after Weinstein called for a mistrial amid tensions within the jury. “This is my life that’s on the line,” he said. “I am not getting a fair trial.”
This came after the jury’s foreperson requested to speak with Judge Curtis Farber about tensions within the deliberations.
“He said words to the effect of ‘I can’t go back in there with the other jurors,'” Farber explained. The judge added that there was fighting within the jury, but the foreperson is “not going to change his position — whatever that position is.”
There were more than five weeks of testimony in the retrial, which included extensive questioning of his three accusers in the case.
Weinstein was being retried on two charges from his original 2020 trial and faced one new charge. He was retried on one count of first-degree criminal sexual act for forcibly performing oral sex on former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and one count of third-degree rape for the alleged sexual assault of aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013.
In addition, Weinstein faced a new criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcing oral sex on a third woman, Kaja Sokola, in 2006.
“They all had dreams of pursuing careers in the defendant’s world, the entertainment industry,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told jurors in her closing argument. She alleged Weinstein feigned interest in advancing the women’s careers when he really intended to “have their bodies and touch their bodies whether they wanted him to or not.”
Conversely, Weinstein’s attorneys argued that the accusers consented to his advances and described their interactions as “transactional.” In his closing argument, defense lawyer Arthur Aidala stated, “Yes, he wants to fool around with them, and yes, they want something from him.”
This retrial was necessitated by the New York Court of Appeals overturning Weinstein’s conviction in April 2024, finding that the original trial judge made numerous improper rulings that prejudiced the jury. In doing so, it threw out a 23-year prison sentence.
Weinstein remains convicted of a different rape in Los Angeles from a separate 2022 trial. He is currently serving a 16-year sentence for that case.
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