Harvey Weinstein reports chest pain and court ends early as jury deliberates in his rape retrial
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein started feeling chest pains in a courthouse Wednesday as jurors deliberated in the former movie mogul’s closely watched rape retrial, his lawyers said, prompting the judge to end the first day of deliberations early.
Weinstein, 74, has a number of health problems and uses a wheelchair. He has been in prison since 2020. The ex-producer wasn’t in the courtroom, but rather was waiting elsewhere in the courthouse, when defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said court officers had told him that Weinstein was having chest pains.
Jurors had deliberated for less than four hours, and they had just sent a note asking to rehear part of accuser Jessica Mann ’s testimony and review a lengthy prosecution timeline of emails and other evidence.
Judge Curtis Farber sent them home about an hour earlier than normal, telling them only that there were “unforeseen reasons” for the change. Prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers also left the courtroom so jurors would be less likely to speculate about Weinstein’s absence.
“He wants to be here, but he’s having chest pains,” Agnifilo told the judge before ducking out of the courtroom.
Mann, 40, has testified that the two had a consensual relationship, but that Weinstein subjected her to unwanted sex in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 after she repeatedly said no. Lawyers for Weinstein have maintained that the encounter was consensual, and they have emphasized that Mann continued seeing Weinstein afterward and expressing warmth toward him. Mann has said she was mired in complicated feelings about him, herself and what had happened and that she was “normalizing everything.”
Her viewpoint changed in 2017, when a series of sexual misconduct allegations against the Oscar-winning Weinstein propelled the #MeToo campaign to hold people — especially powerful men — accountable for sexual misbehavior. Weinstein has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.
Some of those accusations later generated criminal convictions against Weinstein in New York and California.
An appeals court overturned his 2020 New York conviction on charges that involved Mann and another accuser. At a retrial last year, jurors failed to reach a verdict on Mann's portion of the case, leading to a second retrial this year. He is charged with one count of rape in the third degree.
The current jury heard nearly three weeks of testimony, five days of it from Mann. Weinstein decided not to testify.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. Mann, however, has agreed to be named.
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An earlier version of this story erroneously suggested that Weinstein left the courtroom after experiencing chest pains. Weinstein was not in court at the time.
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