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After a jury failed to reach a verdict on the rape charge in the previous retrial, Harvey Weinstein’s new retrial begins April 14, the Hollywood Reporter reports. The charge is a Class E felony, punishable by up to four years in prison in New York. and is related to the allegations made by actress Jessica Mann.
In June 2025, a New York jury found Weinstein guilty of one count of criminal sexual conduct during his retrial. He was acquitted on another count of criminal sexual conduct. The rape charge resulted in a mistrial. In the original trial in 2020, Weinstein was convicted of a sex crime and third-degree rape – punishment: 23 years in prison. In 2024, an appeals court overturned the verdict.
This time, Weinstein is represented by Jacob Kaplan, the lawyer currently defending Luigi Mangione. He also brought in Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, who were part of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ defense team in his sex trafficking and extortion trial. Weinstein will retain his previous main lawyer Arthur Aidala, who wants to challenge last year’s verdict.
Weinstein considers plea deal
Earlier this year, Aidala told Judge Curtis Farber in Manhattan that Weinstein would consider a plea deal related to the rape charge “if there was a legal offer that would run parallel” to his current sentence. At the same hearing, Aidala requested that the June criminal sexual conduct conviction be overturned on the grounds that a jury member said he felt pressured into a guilty verdict. The request was rejected.
Speaking to Judge Farber himself, Weinstein described his stay at Rikers Island as a “march to my death” and said he was “haunted by the thought that I will die here, unseen and unheard.”
At the trial in May 2025, Mann told the jury that she met Weinstein at a party around 2012 or early 2013. She was 27 years old at the time. After she met with him – hoping to advance her career – he asked her for a massage. Mann rejected his sexual advances but eventually performed oral sex on him on one occasion because he said he wouldn’t let her go until she allowed him to “do something,” according to the Associated Press. In a New York hotel in March 2013, he put pressure on her until she “just gave up.”
Mann’s statement after the mistrial
Last year, Mann shared a statement with ROLLING STONE after the mistrial. “Coming forward cost me everything: my privacy, my safety,” Mann said. “I exposed my trauma, my shame – everything I had buried just to keep living. Still, I stood up and spoke the truth. Over and over again. Harvey hides behind PR agencies, lawyers, spy agencies hired to intimidate. All I had was my voice.”
