The Manhattan district attorney’s office has said it will not retry a third-degree rape charge against Harvey Weinstein and the judge in the case has formally dismissed the charge.
The decision comes six weeks after a mistrial was declared in Weinstein’s third New York rape trial.
The judge had declared the mistrial after the jury had deliberated for more than two days but been unable to reach a verdict.
The trial concerned the charge that Weinstein had raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann in a hotel room in 2013.
The disgraced former Hollywood mogul had been convicted of raping Mann in 2020, but that verdict had been overturned, leading to a second trial last year. In the second trial, the jury delivered a mixed verdict on two other counts but then deadlocked on the third-degree rape count involving Mann, causing the judge to order a new trial. Weinstein had pleaded not guilty on all three charges.
In a statement on Thursday (June 25), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that “following discussions with Jessica Mann, who does not wish to testify again, and in accordance with our survivor-centred approach to prosecutions, we informed the court that we will not retry the remaining count of Rape in the Third Degree.”
Bragg’s statement continued: “To be clear, we believe Ms Mann’s account and her credibility as a witness. This has been an extraordinarily taxing ordeal for her, and she has never wavered while testifying in front of two grand juries and three trial juries over the course of eight years. We thank her for her honesty and her tremendous bravery.”
The District Attorney is still recommending that Weinstein be sentenced to 20 years in prison for his conviction in New York for violently sexually assaulting former Project Runway assistant Miriam Haley. That sentence, said Bragg’s statement, “would account for the significant harms his actions have caused Ms Haley.”
Weinstein, who has been incarcerated since 2020, also faces sentencing on other convictions in California.
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