The first day of jury deliberations in Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape retrial was cut short Wednesday after the 74-year-old ex-producer reported chest pains while waiting in a courthouse holding area, his lawyer said. The health scare, which occurred outside the presence of jurors, led Judge Curtis Farber to send the panel home earlier than planned.
Weinstein was not in the courtroom when defense attorney Marc Agnifilo told the judge around 3 p.m. that court officers had informed him Weinstein was experiencing chest pains. “He wants to be here, but he’s having chest pains,” Agnifilo said before leaving the courtroom. Prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers agreed to step out so that jurors, who were not in the room at the time, would be less likely to speculate about Weinstein’s absence when Judge Farber told them only that “unforeseen reasons” required ending the day early.
At the time, the jury had been deliberating for about four hours and had just sent a note with two requests: to rehear a brief portion of accuser Jessica Mann’s testimony in which she said she was “spacing out” during cross-examination, and to review a lengthy prosecution timeline of emails and other evidence. Jurors are scheduled to return Thursday to receive the requested materials and resume deliberations.
Weinstein has a history of health problems during court proceedings. When he was first jailed in 2020, he was taken from the courthouse by ambulance for heart palpitations and high blood pressure. In 2024, he underwent emergency surgery to remove fluid from his heart and lungs after being rushed from New York’s Rikers Island jail to a hospital. He told a court in January that his health is “deteriorating” in the troubled jail.
The current charge — one count of rape in the third degree — centers on Mann’s allegation that Weinstein subjected her to unwanted sex in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 after she repeatedly told him no. Mann, now 40, testified that she and Weinstein had a consensual relationship but that the hotel encounter was nonconsensual. Weinstein’s lawyers argued the sex was consensual and emphasized that Mann continued seeing him afterward and expressed warmth toward him.
Mann told jurors she was mired in complicated feelings and had been “normalizing everything” until 2017, when a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein propelled the #MeToo movement. Weinstein has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.
Those allegations led to criminal convictions in New York and California. A New York appeals court overturned his 2020 conviction on charges involving Mann and another accuser, ruling that the trial judge had improperly allowed testimony from women whose claims were not part of the case. A retrial last year ended with jurors unable to reach a verdict on Mann’s portion of the case, leading to the current second retrial. Weinstein chose not to testify in the nearly three-week trial, five days of which consisted of Mann’s testimony.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Mann has agreed to be identified publicly.