Analysis of Harvey Weinstein’s Sex Assault Verdict: Mixed Results as Juror Issues Threat in Court

Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of sexually assaulting his former assistant but not guilty of forcing oral sex on a teenage model.

The disgraced movie mogul was convicted of first-degree committing a criminal sexual act on Wednesday afternoon and faces years longer in jail.

Weinstein’s retrial on rape and sexual assault charges before a New York Supreme Criminal Court jury in Manhattan lasted well over a month.

The ailing 73-year-old protested his innocence in an interview with the Daily Mail from his cell in Bellevue Hospital last week, and vowed revenge. 

He was accused of sexually assaulting production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006, aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013, and model Kaja Sokola in 2006.

A jury of five men and seven women unanimously found Weinstein guilty of sexually assaulting Haley but not guilty of forcing oral sex on Sokola.

The jury is still deliberating on whether Weinstein raped Mann and has not reached a unanimous decision even after nearly five days of deliberation. They will continue the deliberation until a decision is made.

Weinstein’s mobility is severely restricted to the point that he needs to be wheeled in and out of the courtroom by court officers in a wheelchair. He struggles to move his legs while being wheeled, and there are concerns that he might not live to see the outcome of his appeals.

Almost every day since the trial wrapped up last Thursday morning has been filled with high drama in the jury room, coming to a head at the last moment.

The jury foreman repeatedly complained he was being bullied for refusing to change his position and requested to speak with Judge Curtis Farber in private.

‘He said words to the effect of ‘I can’t go back in there with the other jurors’,’ Farber explained later.

The foreman was sent to wait in a separate room, where he penned a note saying, ‘I need to talk to you about a situation’.

When briefly brought into court, the foreman said he wanted to speak in private. He, the judge, prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers then went behind closed doors.

The discussion was closed to the press and public, but Farber later said the foreman had expressed that he didn’t want to change his position – whatever it may be – and was being bullied.

‘He did indicate that at least one other juror made comments to the effect of ‘I’ll meet you outside one day’, and there’s yelling and screaming,’ the judge said.

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala told the court the man said he was concerned for his safety after his fellow panelist talked about meeting him outside and added, ‘you don’t know me’.

‘I don’t think the court is protecting this juror. Period,’ Aidala said, going on to ask for a mistrial.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, however, said the foreperson hadn’t seemed afraid or apprehensive, just ‘stubborn.’

‘He said he’d made up his mind, he didn’t want to change it, and people were pressuring him to change it. That’s what jury deliberations involve,’ the prosecutor said.

The foreman also complained on Monday about how heated the jury room discussions were, and accused other on the panel of being unfair.

‘I feel like they are attacking, talking together, fight together. I don’t like it,’ he told the judge.

He believed the jury was tasked only with considering ‘what happened at the time, in the moment’ of the crimes alleged by the prosecution, but others ‘are pushing people, talking about his past.’

‘I feel it is not fair taking the decision about the past,’ the foreperson said. He added that others pushed people ‘to change their minds,’ when he thought they instead should seek to answer one another’s questions and ‘let that person make a decision.’

Weinstein’s camp claimed the dramatic jury deliberations were themselves grounds for appeal and implied the foreman was railroaded.

‘This trial was fair until we got to the jury deliberations,’ Weinstein’s PR consultant Juda Engelmayer said.

‘More than one juror had complained that other jurors had preconceived notions and are using their beliefs of Harvey’s life as evidence of guilt. The foreman said he was threatened by other jurors.

‘We believe there are serious appellate issues, and they will be explored.’

Haley was the first of the three women to give evidence in the first week of the trial back in April, accusing Weinstein of forcing oral sex on her in 2006.

She testified that she went to meet Weinstein on the sidelines of the 2006 Cannes film festival to ask for a job, but left in tears after he creepily asked for a massage/

But she accepted a three-week basic assistant job Weinstein arranged for her on his company’s reality show Project Runway in June 2006.

Haley said she accepted an invitation to visit Weinstein’s Manhattan apartment one early evening because it would have been odd to decline.

But when she got there, he lunged to kiss her. She said she leaped up and rebuffed him, but he grabbed her and forcibly backed her into a bedroom.

Then, Haley said, he pinned her down on a bed and performed oral sex on her, ignoring her pleas that she didn’t want it.

Haley said she was again lured to Weinstein’s hotel room under work pretenses, where he promptly maneuvered her to the bedroom.

She said she didn’t want sex but didn’t physically resist because she felt stupid for agreeing to meet him.

‘I made it clear at all occasions when he made advances that I didn’t want to go there,’ she said. The episode was discussed at trial but not part of the criminal case.

She told him after that time’ ‘You know you can’t keep doing this.’

Sokola, now 39, tearfully recounted how she was allegedly raped and molested by the disgraced movie mogul twice under the guise of helping her acting career.

She alleged in her testimony to a New York City jury that Weinstein held her down on a hotel bed and forced oral sex on her days before her 20th birthday in 2006.

‘He forced himself on my vagina – he raped me,’ she declared to the court, her voice rising with pent-up disgust and outrage.

Sokola earlier broke down on the stand, sobbing uncontrollably, as she told the jury about another time Weinstein allegedly abused her when she was just 16.

She told the jury he groped her vagina under her underwear, and forced her to touch his penis in 2002 after luring her to an apartment.

Weinstein was only criminally charged with forcing oral sex on Sokola in 2006, but she sued him in 2019 over the 2002 incident in a case that was settled.

Sokola testified that the 2006 incident took place when they were having lunch, along with her sister Ewa Sokola, and Weinstein told her he had a script for her to read and she should come with him upstairs.

Weinstein led her to a hotel room, and once they got inside he allegedly grabbed her by the left shoulder and pushed her onto the bed.

Kaja Sokola testified that Weinstein ripped off her boots, stockings, and underwear and pushed up her dress, then pinned her to the bed and forcibly gave her oral sex.

‘I kept saying please stop, I don’t want this – but he didn’t listen,’ she told the court.

Weinstein allegedly kept going until he was finished, then told her: ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

‘I wish I could forget [what he said], but I can’t,’ Sokola told the court.

Mann was the last of three accusers to testify in the case, and the one with arguably the most complicated history with Weinstein.

The jury asked for more details about their relationship during their deliberations and appeared to be having trouble agreeing.

Mann, a cosmetologist and hairstylist, said she met Weinstein at a party in late 2012 or early 2013, when she was 27 and had recently moved to Los Angeles to try to launch an acting career.

She said she wasn’t attracted to Weinstein and initially refused his first sexual advance, but eventually succumbed to him performing oral sex because Weinstein said he wouldn’t let her leave until she let him ‘do something’.

Although she felt confused and ‘defiled’, she then agreed to consensual encounters with the then-married man, she said.

Partly, she worried about the professional consequences of alienating a powerful producer who had just dangled the prospect of movie roles.

In March 2013, she traveled to New York with a friend. After the pals made plans for breakfast with Weinstein, he showed up early and got a room at Mann’s hotel, over her protests, she said.

Weeping and wiping her eyes on the witness stand, she said she went upstairs with Weinstein to try to avoid a public argument and told him, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ but he shoved the door shut as she tried to leave.

After Weinstein demanded she undress and grabbed her arms, she said, she ‘just gave up.’ 

Mann said he then had sex with her – after, she believes, injecting himself with an erection-promoting drug that she later found in the bathroom trash.

Over the ensuing months, she nudged him about a potential movie part — he arranged an audition, which went nowhere – and told him she appreciated ‘all you do for me,’ according to emails shown to jurors. 

She also sent him her new phone number, relayed a compliment she’d heard about him, and asked whether he’d be in Los Angeles for her birthday.

‘I compartmentalized the part of Harvey that was hurting me,’ she said, adding that he had ‘good sides.’ 

Flattery and friendliness ‘kept the peace,’ she said, while she tried to keep a subtle distance by politely declining some invitations or delaying get-togethers. 

Weinstein was convicted in 2020 of sexually assaulting Haley and raping Mann, but last year, the New York Court of Appeals astonishingly ruled that Weinstein did not receive a fair trial – and tossed out his 23-year sentence.

Mann and Haley restated their cases during the trial, and Polish ex-model Sokola was added to the mix, alleging Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006 when she was just 19.

His lawyers told the court the women consented to sex acts with Weinstein as a ‘quid pro quo’ to further their careers.

Weinstein was also jailed in Los Angeles for 16 years for rape, forced oral copulation, and third-degree sexual misconduct in 2022, and acquitted of four other charges.

His lawyers filed an appeal weeks after the verdict, which is being considered by the California Court of Appeal.

More to come.