After a jury in a previous retrial failed to reach a verdict on a rape charge, Harvey Weinstein will begin another retrial on April 14, per The Hollywood Reporter. The Class E felony charge, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in New York, is related to accusations from the actress Jessica Mann.
In June 2025, a New York jury found Weinstein guilty on one count of a criminal sexual act during his retrial. He was also found not guilty on another count of a criminal sexual act. The rape charge resulted in a mistrial. In the initial 2020 case, Weinstein was convicted for one count of a felony sex crime and another for third-degree rape. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. In 2024, an appeals court overturned the conviction.
This time around, Weinstein will be represented by Jacob Kaplan, the attorney currently representing Luigi Mangione. He has also taken on Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, who were part of the defense team that represented Sean “Diddy” Combs during his sex trafficking and racketeering trial. Weinstein retains his former primary attorney, Arthur Aidala, who seeks to appeal the previous guilty verdict that was handed down last year.
Earlier this year, Aidala told Judge Curtis Farber in Manhattan that Weinstein would consider a plea deal in relation to the rape charge “if there was a court offer that would run concurrent” to the sentence he’s now serving.” During that same appearance, Aidala asked Farber to vacate the one criminal sexual act conviction from June, alleging a juror had claimed they felt bullied into a guilty verdict. The request was denied.
Speaking directly to Farber, Weinstein described his stay at Rikers Island as a “march to my death, adding that he is “haunted by the thought that I will die here unseen and unheard.”
At the May 2025 trial, Mann told the jury that she first met Weinstein at a party around 2012, or early 2013. She was 27 years old at the time, and after meeting with him with hopes of launching her career, he requested a massage. Mann rebuffed his sexual advances, but eventually performed oral sex on him on one occasion because he said he wouldn’t let her leave the room unless she allowed him to “do something,” according to the Associated Press. At a New York hotel in March 2013, she alleged that he pressured her into sex until she “just gave up.”
Last year, Mann shared a statement with Rolling Stone following the mistrial. “Coming forward cost me everything: my privacy, my safety,” Mann said. “I laid bare my trauma, my shame — everything I’d tried to bury just to keep living. Still, I stood up and told the truth. Again and again. Harvey hides behind PR firms, lawyers, spy agencies contracted to intimidate. I’ve had only my voice.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
