The former Hollywood producer was found guilty of one count of sexual assault and acquitted on another.
Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of one count of sexual assault and acquitted on another in his sex-crimes retrial in New York on Wednesday.
The mixed verdict comes after two trials and dozens of allegations against the former Hollywood producer. Weinstein was tried and convicted on similar sex crimes in 2020. But New York’s highest court overturned that conviction last year. The court’s majority found that the trial judge wrongly allowed testimony from women who weren’t involved in the case.
The jury on Wednesday afternoon hadn’t reached a consensus on his rape charge connected to accuser Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress. The judge dismissed jurors for the day after the foreperson reported fighting in the jury room, saying they should take the rest of the day to cool off.
“Start with a fresh slate,” Judge Curtis Farber told the jury.
Weinstein was found guilty of a criminal sex act against one-time production assistant Miriam Haley. She said that in 2006 he forcibly performed oral sex on her in a Manhattan apartment. The maximum sentence for the charge is 25 years.
Two of Weinstein’s accusers from his first trial returned to testify for a second time: Mann, who accused him of a 2013 rape, and Haley, who said he forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006.
Kaja Sokola, a former model from Poland who was a new accuser in the retrial, told jurors that Weinstein invited her to his Manhattan hotel room in 2006 to look over movie scripts. Once there, he pushed her on a bed and forcibly performed oral sex on her, she said.
The jury said Weinstein was not guilty of a count of criminal sex act for the alleged attack against her.
All three accusers testified that Weinstein physically overpowered them and preyed on their ambitions to work in the film industry. Weinstein’s defense lawyers argued in court that the sex acts were consensual. He is expected to be sentenced at a later date.
Weinstein is still serving a 16-year sentence for a separate sexual-assault conviction in California and is appealing that case.
Weinstein attended his trial but didn’t take the stand in his own defense. He arrived in the courtroom each day in a wheelchair from the Bellevue Hospital prison ward, where he was held during the trial, according to public records. He sat at times with his hands covering his mouth, and during his lawyer’s closing arguments he occasionally smiled.
During the weekslong trial, prosecutors urged jurors to look beyond Weinstein’s diminished courtroom persona and see him as a movie-industry titan who exploited and assaulted women.
Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax and Weinstein Co., was one of the most successful producers in Hollywood. Dozens of women began publicly accusing him of assault in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement that rose to global prominence and forced a national reckoning over sexual harassment.
His original conviction in New York was a pivotal moment for #MeToo, showing that a powerful man could be held responsible for sexually assaulting women who risked their careers if they said no. His overturned conviction last year stunned sex-crime survivors and #MeToo advocates.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com
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