Harvey Weinstein Case Goes to Jury After Mistrial Request Denied

Harvey Weinstein’s case is in the hands of New York jurors again as deliberations began Thursday in the ex-movie mogul’s rape retrial.

The 12-person jury began deliberating around 11:30 a.m. after a six-week trial. Three women testified over the course of the trial that Weinstein sexually assaulted them while they were trying to make it in Hollywood, while Weinstein’s defense argued he’s the scapegoat of a #MeToo movement gone wrong.

Weinstein attorney Arthur Aidala moved for a mistrial before deliberations began, after a juror emailed the court Thursday morning saying she wasn’t feeling well. In a subsequent phone call, she said she was throwing up, had anxiety, and wouldn’t come to court that day, court officials said.

“She’s a juror Mr. Weinstein wants deliberating,” Aidala said, initially seeking a delay for the juror to recover. “We see her taking notes. We’ve had eye contact.”

The prosecution supported removing the juror. When Judge Curtis Farber declined to delay the trial and instead replaced the juror with an alternate, Aidala exclaimed that Weinstein’s “life is literally on the line” and that excusing the juror sends a bad message to society about jury duty. The motion for a mistrial was denied.

Weinstein was retried by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after New York’s highest court overturned the office’s 2020 conviction against the former producer. A New York Court of Appeals majority in 2024 ruled that women testifying to uncharged allegations deprived Weinstein of a fair trial.

The women who had testified to uncharged sexual misconduct didn’t return for the retrial. Two of the alleged victims at this trial—Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley—testified to charged allegations at the first trial. Jurors also heard this time from a third, new accuser, Kaja Sokola.

Weinstein’s defense displayed an aggressive style in a case seen partly as a litmus test for the endurance of the #MeToo movement. In summations this week, Aidala said Weinstein was “used” and “abused” by women trying to make it in Hollywood who then sought to cash in on his notoriety amid the #MeToo movement. While he ran a so-called casting couch, the encounters were consensual, Aidala argued.

Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg suggested to jurors that Aidala had sought to turn the trial into a “circus” to deflect from evidence that proved the prosecution’s case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Weinstein “wouldn’t take no for answer,” she said in summations Wednesday. But he underestimated his victims who showed “power and strength” by testifying, she told jurors in her closing message.

Weinstein, 73, has been in a wheelchair throughout the trial and jailed in a Manhattan hospital prison ward rather than Rikers Island. He has said he has cancer.

The former Hollywood powerbroker addressed the judge directly Thursday morning after jurors began deliberations. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he said to the court staff, for being “just and fair” with him.

Regardless of the result in New York, he faces a 16-year sentence stemming from a California conviction on appeal in that state.