For the second time in a year, jurors failed to reach a verdict on whether Harvey Weinstein raped Jessica Mann, prompting a Manhattan judge on Friday to declare a mistrial in one of the final unresolved chapters of the disgraced movie mogul’s sprawling sex crimes cases.
After two days of deliberations, the seven men and five women on the jury told the court they were unable to unanimously decide whether 74-year-old Weinstein was guilty of third-degree rape stemming from Mann’s allegations that he assaulted her at a Manhattan hotel in 2013. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the encounter was consensual.
Justice Curtis Farber delivered an Allen charge, urging the panel to continue deliberating and reminding jurors that “it wasn’t meant to be easy.”
But by 1 p.m., jurors informed the court they remained hopelessly deadlocked. Farber then declared a mistrial. A hearing was set for June 24 to learn whether prosecutors will choose to go to a fourth trial.
Weinstein’s public downfall in 2017, after dozens of women accused him of sexual misconduct, became a catalyst for the #MeToo movement. Jurors in the retrial, however, only heard testimony related to Mann’s allegations.
Mann, a hairstylist and aspiring actor, now 40, has testified that she willingly had some sexual interludes with the then-married producer, but that he subjected her to unwanted sex in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 after she repeatedly said no. He was convicted in 2020, but that verdict, along with another charge, was later overturned.
Lawyers for Weinstein have maintained that the encounter was consensual. They have emphasized that Mann subsequently continued seeing Weinstein and expressing warmth toward him. Mann has said she was mired in complicated feelings about him, herself and what had happened.
Her viewpoint changed in 2017, when a series of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein propelled the #MeToo movement. Weinstein has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone. Some of those accusations generated criminal convictions against Weinstein in New York and California.
In a second trial last year, Weinstein was found guilty on one count of a criminal sexual act in the first degree and not guilty on another. But a third charge, of raping Mann, ended in a mistrial after the jury foreperson declined to return to deliberations, citing concerns for his safety.
Mann also played a central role in Weinstein’s landmark 2020 conviction in New York, which was later overturned in a split decision by the state’s highest court. A retrial on the same charge last year similarly ended in a mistrial.
Despite the mistrial, Weinstein still faces significant prison time after jurors in his 2025 retrial convicted him of sexually assaulting former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam Haley. He faces up to 25 years in prison on that conviction.
Weinstein is also serving a separate 16-year sentence in California following his 2022 conviction in Los Angeles for raping and sexually assaulting Italian model and actor Evgeniya Chernyshova. He is expected to return to California custody before serving any New York prison sentence.
