Jury deliberates in Harvey Weinstein's rape retrial

By Jack Queen and Jody Godoy

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Jurors in Harvey Weinstein's rape and sexual assault retrial began deliberating on Thursday in a Manhattan court, after a judge instructed them to weigh for themselves the credibility of the three accusers that the defense has said lied about their encounters with the once-powerful movie mogul. 

The Academy Award-winning producer and Miramax studio co-founder is accused of raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013 and assaulting two other women in 2006 and 2002. Weinstein, who has denied ever having non-consensual sex or assaulting anyone, has pleaded not guilty. The trial began in April.

The jury was excused for the day after deliberating for around five hours and requesting to review Mann's medical records shown at the trial, as well as testimony from Kaja Sokola, who prosecutors say Weinstein assaulted in Manhattan in 2006. The jury is expected to continue deliberating on Friday morning.

Weinstein, 73, is on trial for a second time after a New York state appeals court threw out his conviction in April 2024. He faces up to 25 years in prison for two counts of criminal sexual acts and up to four years for one count of rape. 

New York Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber instructed the 12 jurors on the law, and dismissed four alternate jurors on Thursday morning. After the jury was sent to deliberate, Weinstein, seated in a wheelchair and wearing a dark gray suit, thanked Farber and the court staff.

"I have been treated incredibly fairly," he said.

Weinstein's defense lawyer Arthur Aidala moved for a mistrial earlier on Thursday morning, because Farber replaced a juror who called in sick with an alternate. The judge denied the motion. Aidala has asked the judge several times to declare a mistrial, including over prosecutors' closing arguments, which concluded on Wednesday.

Weinstein is already serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty in December 2022 of rape in California. 

Prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. 

“He held the golden ticket, the chance to make it or not. He made each of these women feel small, no match for the power broker of Hollywood,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told jurors on Wednesday. 

Weinstein’s defense lawyers have said his encounters with the women were consensual and accused them of lying about being raped after failing to make it big in Hollywood by sleeping with him. 

"They are lying about what happened. Not about everything, but about a small slice - just enough to turn their regret, their buyers' remorse, into criminality," Aidala told jurors Tuesday.

Weinstein was convicted of rape by a Manhattan jury in February 2020, but the New York Court of Appeals threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial, citing errors by the trial judge. Weinstein had been serving a 23-year sentence in a prison in upstate Rome, New York, when the conviction was overturned.

That conviction was a milestone for the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men.

Weinstein has been held at New York City's Rikers Island jail since his conviction was overturned. He has had several health scares while being held at Rikers, and in September was rushed to a hospital for emergency heart surgery.

More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. He has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex.

Miramax studio produced many hit movies in its heyday, including "Shakespeare in Love" and "Pulp Fiction."

Weinstein's own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, five months after the original sexual misconduct accusations became widely publicized.

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder, Deepa Babington and Chizu Nomiyama)