Prosecutors look to try Harvey Weinstein for third time on sexual assault charge

The Guardian

4 days ago

New York prosecutors are looking to try Harvey Weinstein for a third time on a sexual assault charge on which a jury failed to reach a decision earlier this summer but which had succeeded in 2020 before being vacated by an appeals court.
New York judge Curtis Farber said on Wednesday he wants a charge involving actor Jessica Mann as the alleged victim to be tried again before the end of this year, though prosecutors indicated they would not be ready for trial until 2026. The news was first reported by NBC News.
Weinstein, 67, faces sentencing next month after being convicted in June of assaulting Miriam Haley in 2006, but that sentencing hearing may only go ahead if there is no retrial on the Mann rape charge.
In June, a jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge that Weinstein raped Mann. In 2020, a jury found that Weinstein had raped Mann in 2013, but that verdict, along with the guilty verdict on a charge that he sexually assaulted Haley, were overturned.
At the retrial, Weinstein, 73, was found guilty on one count of sexually assaulting Haley. He was cleared of assaulting a third named victim, Kaja Sokola, also in 2006, and Weinstein's lawyers insisted the encounters with all three accusers were 'transactional' and 'consensual'. The jury could not decide on the case involving Mann.
A spokesperson for Weinstein said on Wednesday that the bid to retry Weinstein on a single charge of third-degree rape of Mann was likely a bid by prosecutors to force his client into entering a guilty plea.
'At some point this becomes a little too much,' said Juda Engelmayer. 'The prosecution had a hard time making their case last time, and they'll have a hard time the next time around. Harvey is more than ready for his next day in court if it comes.'
Weinstein's sentencing in the Haley case is set for 30 September, Judge Farber said, but that will not go ahead until Weinstein is tried again on the charge relating to Mann.
Weinstein has consistently denied all of the charges against him. He is currently in custody in New York at Rikers Island jail awaiting a post-conviction hearing scheduled for Friday, at which allegations of juror misconduct may be brought up.
Weinstein did not testify at his first two trials in New York, or in a separate trial in Los Angeles on sexual assault charges. That case is under appeal.
In 2020, at his original trial, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of two sex crimes. The women named have chosen to be publicly identified.
He remains imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in the New York case.
He denies the allegations against him.
Associated Press contributed to this report