By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein faces sentencing and a possible retrial in his New York City sex crimes case, but when they’ll happen — and whether he’ll be back in front of another jury — is still up in the air.
Manhattan Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday he could sentence Weinstein on Sept. 30 — but only if there’s no retrial on a rape charge that the last jury failed to reach a verdict on.
Weinstein, 73, was convicted in June of forcing oral sex on TV and movie production assistant and producer Miriam Haley in 2006. The charge carries a possible sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
At the same time, the jury acquitted him of forcing oral sex on another woman, one-time model Kaja Sokola, but couldn’t decide a charge that he raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in 2013.
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Manhattan prosecutors told Farber that they’re ready to take Weinstein to trial for a third time on the rape charge, which is punishable by up to four years in prison. That’s less time than Weinstein has already served.
Mann is on board to testify again, they said.
Prosecutors requested a January trial date, citing witness availability and their own caseload. Farber balked at that, saying a January date is too far away and conflicts with another, unrelated trial he’s already scheduled. He proposed having the trial in the fall.
“The case needs to be tried this year,” Farber said.
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala agreed, telling Farber he’d prefer a trial at “the earliest the court can accommodate us.”
Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said she would ask Mann and other witnesses about their availability for a trial in the fall.
If a fall trial happens, it would likely put Weinstein’s high-profile #MeToo case back in court as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is in the final throes of his reelection bid.
Bragg, a first-term Democrat who made prosecuting sex crimes cases a priority, has expressed satisfaction with Weinstein’s conviction on a criminal sex act charge in the Haley assault and has been resolute in wanting the Oscar-winning studio boss retried on the Mann rape charge.
“The jury was not able to reach a conclusion as to Ms. Mann, and she deserves that,” Bragg said in June. “This work, first and foremost, is about the survivors and that’s why we’re prepared to go forward.”
Aidala told reporters outside court that, in his view, it’s on prosecutors to resolve the rape charge — either by dropping it and clearing the way for sentencing, or promptly taking it to trial again.
Weinstein sat in court in a wheelchair while wearing a blue suit and black-rimmed glasses. The “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” producer is committed to fighting the rape charge at another trial, Aidala said, though the lawyer didn’t rule out the possibility of reaching a deal with prosecutors to end the case.
For now, the trial date remains unresolved, leaving Weinstein’s possible Sept. 30 sentencing in limbo.
At Weinstein’s first trial in 2020, jurors convicted him of raping Mann and forcing oral sex on production assistant and producer Miriam Haley.
Then an appeals court overturned those convictions and sent the case back for retrial because of legal issues involving other women’s testimony.
This spring, a new jury convicted him again of sexually assaulting Haley and acquitted him of doing the same to another woman who wasn’t part of the first trial. But amid fractious deliberations, the majority-female jury got stuck on the charge related to Mann.
Mann has testified that she also had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein, but that she told him “I don’t want to do this” as he cornered her in the hotel room. She said he persevered with advances and demands until she “just gave up.”
Weinstein already stands convicted of sex crimes in California. He denies all of the allegations against him.
