Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on one charge of sexual assault but acquitted on another a year after his first conviction was overturned.
Weinstein, 73, was previously convicted in 2020. The case was thrown out last year after a court found the trial judge had admitted testimony from several women who were not part of the charges the film mogul was being tried for. He remained in prison because he was already serving a 16-year sentence for a Los Angeles rape conviction in 2022.
On Wednesday, a jury at the Manhattan supreme court found allegations credible that Weinstein forced oral sex on Miriam Haley, his assistant on the show Project Runway, in 2006.
The jury acquitted him of a sexual assault charge stemming from allegations raised by Kaja Sokola, a former model. A verdict was not reached on rape charges for the alleged assault of the actress Jessica Mann in 2013. Mann did not testify in the first trial.
The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, had zeroed in on Mann’s accusations, requesting to listen again to her testimony and review her medical records on Tuesday. Mann, who had a consensual relationship with Weinstein during and after the alleged assault, said she had learnt to separate her pain from the relationship.
The split verdict reflects a divided jury whose week-long deliberations became heated at times. One juror asked to be removed from the case after claiming fellow jurors had been “unjust and unfair” to a member of the panel, which then prompted the defence to file for a mistrial.
A fruitless mistrial request was made again after the foreman accused jurors of “pushing” their views and “bullying” him, the Associated Press reported.
“He did indicate that at least one other juror made comments to the effect of ‘I’ll meet you outside one day’, and there’s yelling and screaming,” the judge told the court about a private conversation with the foreman.
Weinstein gave a telephone interview last week in which he insisted that although he regretted his actions, they were not criminal. “I have regrets that I [put] my family through this, that I put my wife through this, that I acted immorally,” he told Fox 5. “I put so many friends through this and hurt people that were close to me, by the way, by actions that were stupid. But never illegal, never criminal, never anything.”
Over the course of the trial Weinstein’s defence tried to paint him as a victim of the MeToo movement, which sought to hold powerful men in the film industry accountable for their unsolicited and at times criminal sexual advances to young and aspiring actresses. His lawyer, Arthur Aidala, claimed Weinstein had become a scapegoat for the movement simply because of his fame and status.
“If this guy wasn’t Harvey Weinstein, would we even be here?” Aidala said, arguing that the sexual encounters had been consensual and that the victims were “women with broken dreams” motivated by money to testify.
During Sokola’s cross-examination, Aidala asked if the $3.5 million she obtained from civil settlements in recent years had “changed the course of your life” the way Sokola said her assault did. “No. That’s very unfair,” Sokola answered. “That’s not true.”
Prosecutors rejected Aidala’s characterisations, noting that the victims had gone to great lengths to avoid attention — changing their names, avoiding the media and only testifying after prosecutors asked them to. Nicole Blumberg, the district attorney, argued that Weinstein had long abused his power, and thought “the rules did not apply to him”.
“Now is the time to let him know the rules apply to him,” Blumberg said.
Weinstein, who did not testify at the trial, is being held at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after a judge approved his request for medical care. He has several health problems and was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer last year.
