More than six years after explosive sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein ignited the global #MeToo movement, a Manhattan state supreme court jury has begun hearing the disgraced Hollywood film mogul’s retrial on a third-degree rape charge brought by actress Jessica Mann.
The 74-year-old former producer, who uses a wheelchair due to chronic poor health, already remains behind bars serving a 16-year sentence for a separate 2022 rape conviction in California stemming from an assault on a European actress more than a decade ago. He is currently appealing that conviction, as well as a lower-court conviction from his first 2023 New York trial. Regardless of the outcome of this retrial, Weinstein will not be released from custody.
This retrial marks a second attempt to prosecute the Mann case, after a mistrial was declared last June. The initial proceeding collapsed when the jury foreperson withdrew amid internal conflict within the jury room and refused to continue deliberations. In that first trial, the jury did convict Weinstein of sexual assault against former film producer Miriam Haley, while acquitting him on the same charge brought by Polish-born actress Kaja Sokola.
For this new proceeding, Weinstein has assembled an entirely new defense team led by prominent high-profile attorney Marc Agnifilo, who currently represents rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in his own ongoing legal battles.
Weinstein, who is being held at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, has previously claimed he faces constant threats and harassment from other incarcerated people at the facility, forcing officials to hold him in almost permanent solitary confinement. In an interview with *The Hollywood Reporter* earlier this year, he stated, “I’m constantly threatened and derided. I wouldn’t last long out there.”
Long before the 2017 reckoning, Weinstein’s reputation as a powerful, temperamental industry kingmaker was paired with open industry rumors that he abused his position to sexually harass and assault young women seeking careers in Hollywood. Those rumors became public in October 2017, when *The New York Times* and *The New Yorker* published blockbuster investigative reports detailing decades of alleged abuse from more than a dozen accusers. The publication of those reports triggered a wave of additional allegations from more than 80 women total, and sparked the #MeToo movement that reshaped global conversations about sexual harassment and gender-based power abuse across all industries.