Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced former Hollywood mogul whose downfall spurred a global reckoning over sexual abuse and harassment of women, was found guilty in Manhattan on Wednesday of a felony sex crime for the second time in a little more than five years.
But a jury of 12 New Yorkers acquitted Mr. Weinstein on another of the charges against him, and reached no decision on a third. The panel is expected to return on Thursday to continue deliberating on the final charge, third-degree rape.
The conviction, on a single count of criminal sexual act, was handed down despite bets by Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers that the #MeToo movement had waned enough to cast doubt on the motives and credibility of his accusers — three women who were seeking work in the film and television industry.
Mr. Weinstein had previously been convicted of sex crimes in Manhattan in 2020, but the conviction was overturned. In the retrial, he was accused by the Manhattan district attorney’s office of assaulting the women — Miriam Haley, Kaja Sokola and Jessica Mann — between 2006 and 2013. He was convicted in the attack on Ms. Haley and acquitted in the incident involving Ms. Sokola.
The partial verdict was delivered on the fifth day of deliberations, around 1:50 p.m., by a jury of seven women and five men in the courtroom of Justice Curtis Farber on the 13th floor of the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
As the foreman announced the decision, a room of observers listened intently. Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, had vigorously objected to the reading of a partial verdict.
The charge on which Mr. Weinstein was convicted carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
The mixed verdict advanced — but did not end — a trial that at times was openly cast by Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers as a referendum on the #MeToo movement and its staying power. And it followed a series of contentious discussions by the jurors that sometimes spilled out into the courtroom.
Shortly before the decision was announced, it was disclosed that the jurors had been “yelling and screaming” at each other, and that one had told another, “I’ll see you outside one day.”
After the verdict was read, the judge overseeing the case ordered prosecutors and Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers not to make any public statements until the jury had finished deliberating on the final charge.
Standing outside the courthouse after Mr. Weinstein was convicted again of attacking her, Ms. Haley expressed gratitude to the jury.
“I hope it is finally over,” said Ms. Haley, who during the trial had to recount her experience for the second time since 2020. “It’s just a relief all around, and I’m happy that I showed up despite some intimidation tactics by the defense.”
Ms. Sokola called it a win that Mr. Weinstein had once again been found guilty of a sex crime, even if he had been acquitted of assaulting her.
“I truly hope from the bottom of my heart that standing here right now will give courage to others to speak up,” Ms. Sokola said, her voice shaking.
The allegations of abuse by Mr. Weinstein, first reported by The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017, touched off the #MeToo movement and soon saw him toppled from his powerful perch atop the film and television industry.
Reacting to public pressure and revelations that they had declined to prosecute a past report of assault against Mr. Weinstein, prosecutors in Manhattan charged him with sex crimes in 2018.
He was tried in 2020 and convicted of rape and criminal sexual act. The verdict, which resulted in a 23-year prison sentence, was seen as a watershed moment. Mr. Weinstein was later convicted of sexual assault in a separate Los Angeles case and sentenced to 16 years in prison there. He is appealing that case.
The New York conviction was overturned last year by the state’s highest court, forcing the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to weigh whether to prosecute Mr. Weinstein again. The earlier case had been brought by Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
Almost immediately, Mr. Bragg said his office would move to retry Mr. Weinstein. A year later, and after the addition of a new criminal sexual act charge, jury selection began in a second trial.
Although the broad contours of the two New York cases appeared similar, they differed in significant ways.
The flaw in the earlier case stemmed from the trial judge’s decision to allow prosecutors to bring in testimony from women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose allegations were not the basis for any of the charges against him, the New York Court of Appeals ruled. Several of these women were called solely to show the defendant’s pattern of behavior.
In a fiercely contested 4-to-3 decision, the appeals court judges said that Mr. Weinstein had been deprived of a fair trial when the women were allowed to testify about the uncharged crimes. The judges ordered a new trial.
This time, no one was called solely to testify about Mr. Weinstein’s so-called prior bad acts. And a series of decisions by Justice Farber on what prosecutors and the defense could mention about the past trials and accusations were issued before the start of trial, leaving the lawyers on both sides with a labyrinth of rulings to maneuver as they presented their arguments.
However, as the trial got underway in April, the case presented to the jurors was a familiar one. Through the testimony of 24 witnesses and the presentation of a trove of emails, flight records and other documents, the prosecutors sought to cast Mr. Weinstein as a high-powered and influential movie executive with few limits on what he felt he could do.
As he traveled around the world, attending exclusive events filled with celebrities and dignitaries, he also met young women striving to break into the industry, prosecutors said. He pulled them into his orbit with promises of stardom and success, they said, and then sexually assaulted them.
During their days on the stand, the three women at the core of the case recounted their experiences.
It was the second time that Ms. Haley, a former production assistant, and Ms. Mann, once an aspiring actress, testified against Mr. Weinstein in Manhattan. Ms. Sokola, a former model, was added to the case following the reversal of Mr. Weinstein’s conviction last year.
All of the women said they had met Mr. Weinstein when they were young — Ms. Sokola when she was a newly arrived 16-year-old model in New York — and had gravitated toward him because of his prominence in Hollywood.
Shortly after they met him, they said, he forced himself on them. Afterward, the women said, they felt intimidated by his dominance in Hollywood and refrained from telling the police.
The women were allowed to testify about multiple episodes in which they said Mr. Weinstein assaulted them, but he was charged for a single episode involving each of them. The other incidents occurred outside New York, or too long ago to be the subject of criminal charges under the state’s statute of limitations.
Mr. Weinstein was charged with sexually assaulting Ms. Sokola in the spring of 2006, after meeting her and her sister around lunchtime at a Manhattan hotel. He brought Ms. Sokola to a room and forced oral sex on her, she testified.
In Ms. Haley’s case, Mr. Weinstein was charged with backing her into a bedroom, forcing her onto a bed, holding her down and forcibly putting his mouth on her vagina in his SoHo apartment in July of 2006. He had invited her to “say hi” the night before they were scheduled to attend a premiere in Los Angeles, she said.
And in 2013, Ms. Mann said, she was visiting New York and had planned a morning meal with friends and Mr. Weinstein, but he had arrived early and got a hotel room over her objections. After she accompanied him to the room, she testified that he injected his penis with medication that produced an erection and then raped her.
However, the women’s histories and relationships with Mr. Weinstein were complicated, a point his lawyers tried to use to argue that the interactions were all consensual.
For years after they said he had assaulted them, the woman stayed in contact with him — Ms. Mann called it a “dance” in which she tried to keep him both happy and at a distance. At one point, Ms. Mann said, she decided to enter a romantic relationship with him.
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers questioned the women about interactions they had with him after they said they were attacked, including friendly emails and communications to schedule meetings. The lawyers pushed the women on their motivations for coming forward, asking about the sums of money — ranging from about $475,000 to $3.5 million — they had received from settlements with Mr. Weinstein’s former company.
They grilled the women on why they had waited until after the stories broke about Mr. Weinstein in 2017 to tell law enforcement.
In the end, the jurors convicted Mr. Weinstein of committing a criminal sexual act against Ms. Haley, and will return on Thursday to continue their deliberations over whether he raped Ms. Mann.
Maria Cramer, Anusha Bayya, Jan Ransom and Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
The post Jury Convicts Weinstein in Second New York Sex Crimes Trial appeared first on New York Times.
