Following a judge’s ruling declining to set aside the criminal sex act conviction from Harvey Weinstein’s 2025 retrial, the film executive is considering a plea deal to avoid a retrial this spring.
Last June, jurors delivered a split verdict, convicting him on one criminal charge; acquitting him of another; and deadlocking on the final count, resulting in a mistrial after the foreperson refused to return to deliberate and said other jurors were threatening him.
The verdictless count, under which Weinstein is accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, is the subject of a retrial set for March — but there’s a chance the disgraced movie boss will change the plot.
At a hearing Thursday, defense attorney Arthur Aidala suggested Weinstein may be open to a plea if it could run concurrent to his existing sentence, according to reports.
Earlier on Thursday, Judge Curtis Farber denied Weinstein’s motion to set aside his conviction of a criminal sex act in the first degree, which stems from allegations he assaulted former production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haley in 2006.
According to Weinstein’s attorneys, the trial was tainted by fighting and bullying among the jury.
Farber detailed a scuffle among jurors his 25-page ruling, and said neither of two juror affidavits submitted in support of Weinstein’s motion changes his mind that the judge “responded appropriately to juror complaints during the course of deliberations, nor provides any further grounds in support of defendant’s motion to set aside the verdict.”
“Appellate courts have consistently held that reports of yelling, escalated tempers, shouting obscenities, bullying and even threats of violence are insufficient to impeach a duly rendered verdict,” Farber wrote.
Haley testified at trial that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at his apartment two decades ago while she begged him to stop. While convicting him on that count of a criminal sex act, which carries a possible 25-year sentence, jurors acquitted him on a second count of the same charge pertaining to Polish ex-model and current psychologist Kaja Sokola, who accused Weinstein of groping her in a New York City bathroom, also in 2006, when she was 16 years old.
Mann meanwhile testified that Weinstein raped her in a hotel in 2013 after she told him, “I don’t want to do this.”
Sokola was the lone new accuser at the 2025 retrial, ordered after an appeals court in 2024 overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction in Manhattan.
Weinstein, who is seen widely as the spark that ignited the #MeToo movement after more than 80 women accused him of misconduct or assault, is already jailed on a 16-year sentence out of Los Angeles County Superior Court for rape and other charges. He is appealing that conviction.
Despite mention of a potential plea in New York, Weinstein maintained his innocence on Thursday, the Associated Press reported, telling the court: “I know I was unfaithful, I know I acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”
amNewYork Law reached out to Aidala for comment and is awaiting a reply.
