NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein faces sentencing and a possible retrial in his New York City sex crimes case, but it's still unclear when they’ll happen — and whether the former movie mogul will end up in front of another jury at all.
Manhattan Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday he could sentence Weinstein on Sept. 30, but only if there’s no retrial on a rape charge that the last jury failed to decide. If there is a retrial, the judge wants it to happen this fall.
Prosecutors and Weinstein's lawyers vowed Wednesday that they were willing to square off at yet another trial — it would be his third in New York and fourth overall.
But Weinstein’s lawyers aren’t ruling out the possibility of reaching deal to resolve the case, though they also emphasize he’s not willing to plead guilty to raping Mann, and they are pressing prosecutors simply to abandon that charge.
Weinstein, 73, was convicted in June of forcing oral sex on TV and movie production assistant and producer Miriam Haley in 2006. The charge carries a possible sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
At the same time, the jury acquitted him of forcing oral sex on another woman, one-time model Kaja Sokola, but couldn’t decide a charge that he raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in 2013.
Manhattan prosecutors reiterated Wednesday that they and Mann are ready for another trial on the rape charge. In this case, any conviction is punishable by up to four years in prison — less than Weinstein has already served, and far less than the potential 25 years he faces for his conviction related to Haley.
Prosecutors requested a January trial date, but Farber proposed the fall.
“The case needs to be tried this year,” Farber said.
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala agreed, urging the judge to set the earliest possible date.
If a fall trial happens, it would likely put Weinstein’s high-profile #MeToo case back in court as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is in the final stage of his reelection bid.
Bragg, a first-term Democrat who made prosecuting sex crimes cases a priority, has expressed satisfaction with Weinstein's conviction on a criminal sex act charge related to Haley. Bragg has said Mann deserves a verdict on her part of the case.
“This work, first and foremost, is about the survivors, and that’s why we’re prepared to go forward," Bragg said in June.
Aidala told reporters outside court that, in his view, it’s up to prosecutors to resolve the rape charge — either by dropping it and clearing the way for sentencing, or by promptly taking it to trial again.
Weinstein sat in court in a wheelchair while wearing a blue suit and black-rimmed glasses. The “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” producer is committed to fighting the rape charge at another trial, Aidala said, though the lawyer added: “I’ve been doing this long enough to say never say never.”
At Weinstein’s first trial in 2020, jurors convicted him of raping Mann and forcing oral sex on Haley.
Then an appeals court overturned those convictions and sent the case back for retrial because of legal issues involving other women’s testimony.
This spring, a new jury convicted him again of sexually assaulting Haley and acquitted him of doing the same to another woman who wasn’t part of the first trial. But amid fractious deliberations, the majority-female jury got stuck on the charge related to Mann.
Mann has testified that she also had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein, but that she told him “I don’t want to do this” as he cornered her in the hotel room. She said he persevered with advances and demands until she “just gave up.”
Weinstein also stands convicted of sex crimes in California; he's appealing that verdict. He denies all of the allegations against him.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who allege they have been sexually assaulted unless they give permission to be identified. Haley and Mann have done so.
Michael R. Sisak And Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press
