Weinstein Trial Four: When Does Justice Become Theater?

Becca Hartwell: Welcome to Star Witness. I'm Becca Hartwell. Miles: And I'm Miles. And And okay, today's episode, I've been waiting to dig into this one. Becca Hartwell: Same. Okay, so get this. Three trials. Three! One charge, one accuser, and still no verdict. Miles: According to CNN and NPR, on May 15th, Judge Curtis Farber declared a mistrial in Harvey Weinstein's rape retrial after the jury deadlocked nine to three in favor of acquittal. Becca Hartwell: Nine to three—third time this exact charge has gone to trial. Miles: Third time; and now there is a June twenty-fourth hearing where DA Alvin Bragg has to decide do you go for a fourth. Becca Hartwell: I mean, plot twist: Harvey's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, fresh off the Diddy case, called this a win. Miles: Sure, a mistrial is definitely the definition of winning. Becca Hartwell: Right? But here's the thing. We're going to walk through it all. The 2020 conviction, the 4-3 appeals court ruling that ripped it apart, and how we ended up back here. Miles: And the evidence questions are real. Jessica Mann testified for five days for the third time, and a juror named Josh Hadar still said he thought parts of her story were fabricated. Becca Hartwell: That is where this episode gets heavy. Because Mann's own statement after the mistrial? Trial about facing unbearable public scrutiny for a greater good is something we need to sit with. Miles: And then there's the bigger question hanging over all of it. Is a fourth trial justice, or is it punishment? Becca Hartwell: That's exactly the argument we're having today, so let's get into it, starting with the hook and what happened on May 15th. Okay, so get this. May 15, 2026, Judge Curtis Farber is sitting in a Manhattan courtroom, and the jury sends back a note. According to CNN, it reads, we feel that no one is going to change where they stand. Miles: Wow. Becca Hartwell: Nine hours of deliberations over three days. Mistrial. Miles: Third time, Becca. Third time on the same single charge, the same accuser. Becca Hartwell: same exact charge, and the split per CNN, 9 out of 12 jurors wanted to acquit. Miles: That's not a close call. Becca Hartwell: Right. And one of those jurors, Josh Hadar, walks out and tells reporters that the testimony had a lot of inconsistencies and that he couldn't get past reasonable doubt. Miles: So here's where it gets interesting, though. This juror also sat his vote was for not guilty partly because he felt felt parts of Mann's account might have been fabricated. That's a different thing than just uncertainty. Becca Hartwell: Hard distinction to sit with. Miles: Very. Becca Hartwell: Meanwhile, Weinstein, 74, gets wheeled out of court expressionless. His attorney, Marc Agnifilo, tells the press, quote, it's not the win he wanted, but it's a win. Miles: Outstanding. Becca Hartwell: And then Jessica Mann releases a statement saying the mystery is Speaker 3: solved. Becca Hartwell: Mistrial," quote, "doesn't in any way detract from the truth I told." She has testified about this now across three separate trials, Miles, three times on the stand. Miles: I've seen cases fall apart for all kinds of reasons, but the same charge collapsing three times? That's not just bad luck-something structural is breaking down here. Becca Hartwell: Which is the whole question. And Newsweek flagged the stakes clearly. D.A. Bragg is now facing a decision that is basically a trap: retry and risk a fourth deadlock or walk away and effectively close one of the defining Me Too criminal cases without a verdict. Miles: A hearing is set for June 24th. PBS News reported Bragg will consult Mann before deciding whether to pursue a fourth trial. Becca Hartwell: June 24th, mark. Miles: So where does that leave us right now? Becca Hartwell: It leaves us asking how we got here, because this isn't the beginning of the story-not even close. And to understand why a jury keeps deadlocking on this specific charge, you have to go all the way back to who Harvey Weinstein was before any of this and what it took just to get him into a courtroom. So here's how you build that kind of untouchable power. Miramax, over a hundred Oscar wins, a major Democratic donor who got standing ovations at the same parties where people whispered about him for decades. Miles: The whispering is the part that gets me every time. Seth MacFarlane cracked a joke about Becca Hartwell: Yeah. Miles: it at the 2013 Oscars on live television in front of everyone, and it still took four more years before any of it landed in. It in print? Becca Hartwell: Because Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at The New York Times finally got it on the record in October twenty seventeen. Five days later, Ronan Farrow's New Yorker piece drops, and then Miles: Wow! Becca Hartwell: more than one hundred accusers come forward. Miles: The dam breaks. Becca Hartwell: The dam breaks, and at the center of the New York criminal case is Jessica Mann. She testified that she met Weinstein at a party, thought she'd just been discovered. Gave him her number! Miles: That framing is so specific and so awful! Becca Hartwell: Right! And then March eighteenth twenty thirteen Manhattan DoubleTree Hotel." According to US News, she testified he slammed the door, grabbed both her arms when she wouldn't undress and she was begging him to stop. Miles: The DoubleTree's overnight manager even filed a concern report that morning because she looked "discontent. At check in, a hotel employee flagged it. Becca Hartwell: Weinstein had checked in under the alias Max Postal. Miles: Of course he did. Becca Hartwell: So, twenty twenty: conviction; criminal sex act; third degree rape; twenty three years. Miles: Felt like a reckoning, genuinely. Becca Hartwell: And then, April 2024, New York's Court of Appeals, 4-3, overturns it. According to CNN's reporting, the ruling found the original trial judge allowed witnesses to testify about uncharged bad acts, women whose allegations had nothing to do with the charges Weinstein actually faced. Miles: So the conviction didn't fall because of anything Weinstein did or didn't do in that hotel room. It fell on an evidentiary call. Becca Hartwell: A "four three" decision-one vote! Miles: I've seen markets hinge on thinner margins than that, and it always feels wrong when it happens. Becca Hartwell: Meanwhile he still had Speaker 3: to work. Becca Hartwell: has a 2022 California rape conviction—16 years and he's sitting at Rikers Island right now appealing that one too. Miles: The same evidentiary problem that torched New York is exactly what his California lawyers are arguing. And that's where we need to go next, because understanding why that 2024 ruling said what it said tells you everything about why this case keeps collapsing. Speaker 4: So here's the thing about that 4-3 ruling. The legal logic on its own terms, it actually holds. Miles: Walk me through it. Speaker 4: Okay, so the court said the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged. Judge Burke let three women, Tarale Wulff, Lauren Young, Dawn Dunning, testify about things Weinstein allegedly did to them. None of that was part of the actual charges. Miles: Right, so the jury hears all that and it's like... Speaker 4: He's a pattern bad actor, and now you're supposed to set that aside. Miles: Which nobody can actually do. Speaker 4: Exactly. According to CNN's coverage of the overturn, the majority wrote that "testimony served only to establish defendant's propensity to commit the charged crimes"--propensity evidence. You can't convict someone for who they are, only for what they did in the specific case. Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. Miles: I get the principle, I do, but here's where I keep getting stuck. Look, the error was made by the judge, not by the prosecutors, not by the survivors. Speaker 4: Right. Miles: And the consequence falls entirely on the women who have to get back on the stand. Jessica Mann is testifying for the third time because James Burke made a bad evidentiary call. Speaker 4: And that's the part I can't fully argue away. The dissenting judge, Madeline Singas, said it herself, forgotten are the women who bear the psychological trauma of sex. Sexual violence and the scars of testifying again and again; three judge dissent against a four judge majority. Miles: That's not a landslide. That's a coin flip with someone's life on one side. Speaker 4: And it gets messier. CNN reported that Weinstein California conviction, the sixteen year sentence out of Los Angeles, used the same type of prior bad acts witnesses, his teams already appealing it. Miles: So the New York overturn isn't just a New York problem. Problem. Speaker 4: It hands the California defense a playbook. Now, California law actually allows this testimony more broadly than New York does, so the appeal may not succeed out there, but the argument exists now in a way it didn't before. Miles: I've seen how this plays out: you establish the precedent, you file the motion, and suddenly a conviction that felt settled is very much not settled. Speaker 4: And from a purely structural standpoint, the retrial last summer Dahmer did produce a conviction on one count involving Miriam Haley, an acquittal on a second, and a deadlock on the man rape charge, which is why we're in this third stand alone trial at all. Miles: So even after fixing the evidentiary problem, they still can't close this one count. Speaker 6: Yeah. Miles: Speaker 4: Three tries, same charge, same result, which brings us right to the person at the center of it all. What Jessica Mann has actually faced across those three appearances in court. So with that legal scaffolding in mind, Mann still had to walk into that courtroom a third time and say it again. Miles: Five days on the stand. Five days. Speaker 4: Five days of testimony, often tearful, according to PBS News, and her core account never shifted. She met Harvey Weinstein in early 2013, said yes to some of what happened early on, and then March 18th at the DoubleTree. She told the jury, "I said 'No' over and over' and I tried to leave. Miles: That line—three trials, consistent! Speaker 4: Consistent every single time. Miles: So here's where it gets complicated. The defense had something new this time: a note Mann wrote two days after the alleged rape, March twentieth, her own phone's notes app. Speaker 4: Right, so I've thought about this a lot. Trauma doesn't always look like we expect it to. You don't necessarily write 'I was raped' in your private notes two days later. Miles: That's fair; and Mann's response was basically, "I didn't need to write it down," which is a completely human answer. Speaker 4: But the jury heard it differently. Miles: Juror Josh Hadar told reporters (and this is from PBS News) that Mann had an incredible memory on direct examination, but forgot a lot of things under cross, and he said that spoke to her credibility. Speaker 4: I mean, I get why juries land there, but think about what she's being asked to do. Recall specific details from 2013 across three separate trials under hours of hostile questioning each time. Miles: You'd forget things too. Speaker 4: Anyone would. Miles: And yet the system has to ask. That's what cross-examination is for. I'm not saying it's comfortable, but reasonable doubt means something. Something. Speaker 4: It means something; it doesn't mean a trauma survivor has to perform perfect recall to be believed. Miles: No argument there. What gets me is her statement after. CNN reported she said the mistrial doesn't in any way detract from the truth I told, and she called out the power of predators as the reason she faces unbearable public scrutiny. Speaker 4: She chose to testify three times; think about that. Three times. Miles: Yeah. Speaker 4: And what does the jury look like coming out of this room, that there were places they couldn't trust her word for it, which moves this whole thing the question isn't really about man anymore. Miles: It's about reasonable doubt, and what that standard actually does in a case where the accuser and defendant had prior contact. Speaker 4: Exactly. And that's the room we're walking into next. So here's what gets me about the jury breakdown. Sarae Perez, 25 years old, told reporters she studied feminism, knows Me Too inside and out, and still voted not guilty. Her words, there were places where we couldn't trust her word for it. Miles: Right. And that's the part people online are misreading. They're treating it as a betrayal. But I keep coming back to, is that reasonable doubt doing its job or is reasonable doubt without being applied differently in cases with prior sexual contact. Speaker 4: That's the question. NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos made the point that some jurors were likely predisposed to doubt Mann partly because she maintained contact with Weinstein after the alleged rape. The jury is majority male, according to PBS News, and Agnifilo's closing, a male juror was observed rolling his eyes at the prosecution's argument. Becca Hartwell: argument. Miles: Yeah, that landed on camera. Speaker 4: Wow. Becca Hartwell: Look, I'm not dismissing that, but Agnifilo's closing was something. He told jurors Mann maybe was lying and there's affirmative evidence the rape didn't happen. That's the whole case? Maybe? Miles: Maybe she's lying is not exactly a ringing defense. Becca Hartwell: No, and Agnifilo also represents Sean Combs and represented Luigi Mangione, so he's no stranger to high-profile, high-pressure closing. He knows what he's doing with that framing. Miles: Here's where I get stuck, though. Sarai said reasonable doubt was actively on her mind. She wasn't ignoring the standard. She was applying it. The prosecution's problem is structural. Cases where the accuser and defendant had prior consensual contact are genuinely hard to prosecute. Becca Hartwell: Notably, as seen this dynamic play out in other high-profile cases, Cosby's conviction got overturned in 2021. One, and the argument from advocates is that these MeToo convictions keep hitting procedural walls. At some point you have to ask, is the system itself the problem? Miles: Or the system is working exactly as designed for every one except survivors. Sarae Perez "knowing Me Too" and still not convicting? That's not a failure of awareness, that's a structural gap between believing someone and meeting the legal bar. Becca Hartwell: Which is the honest argument for why the standard matters—you'd rather acquit ten guilty people than— Miles: Right; I know the principle; but two consecutive juries have now deadlocked on this exact charge. At some point the question isn't the standard, it's who gets the benefit of it. Becca Hartwell: Mm-hmm. And that question is sitting right on d'Abrera's desk. The June twenty-fourth hearing is two weeks out as this episode drops, and what— And what comes next is honestly complicated in ways I don't think the headlines are capturing. Miles: So here's the thing about June twenty-fourth: Bragg said his office will consult Jessica Mann before deciding anything. And that actually matters because, according to Newsweek, a fourth trial risks further deadlock and declining to retry gets read as abandoning the movement's most symbolic case. Becca Hartwell: Right. And the charge is a Class E felony, maximum four years. Weinstein is already incarcerated on the California conviction, so prosecutors are spending enormous resources on a charge that It's that even with a conviction, odds passing to his actual prison time. Speaker 4: That's the receipts right there. That's the part that gets me. Two consecutive juries deadlocked on this exact count, and Agnifilo publicly told reporters, nine to three for acquittal, and said he'd encourage prosecutors not to retry. When the defense is daring you to bring it again, that's a read worth taking seriously. Becca Hartwell: You'd be surprised how often that kind of confidence from a defense team reflects something real. Still-but, okay, does a fourth trial serve Jessica Mann or does it use her? Speaker 4: Honestly, I go back and forth. Mann's own statement said, quote, "I chose to testify in three trials because I am telling the truth." That's not a woman asking to be let off the hook. Becca Hartwell: Mm-hmm. Speaker 4: She's still in this. Becca Hartwell: But DA Bragg also said he'll factor in what happens at Weinstein's sentencing on the Miriam Haley conviction, so the calculus shifts depending on how much prison time is already secured. Speaker 4: Which is actually the smarter frame? The question isn't just retry or don't, it's what outcome serves accountability without treating Mann as a prop for the fourth time. Becca Hartwell: And that's what makes this genuinely hard: 2020 conviction, 2024 overturn, two mistrials, one separate conviction, one acquittal. Miles: Wow. Becca Hartwell: The record on this single charge is a mess. Speaker 4: A mess that the system created, not Mann. The judge's evidentiary error started this chain reaction. Becca Hartwell: So what should listeners watch for on June twenty-fourth? Speaker 4: Whether Bragg announces a fourth trial or drops the charge, and whether Mann is standing next to him when he does it-that tells you everything about who this decision is actually for. All right, that's a wrap on this one. Three trials, three times the same charge falls apart, and we still don't have a verdict. Becca Hartwell: Yeah, and that juror's note said it best: we feel that no one is going to change where they stand. That's not just a deadlock, that's something deeper. Speaker 4: The structural breakdown Miles kept coming back to, that's the thing I can't shake. And now D.A. Bragg has to decide at the June 24th hearing. Miles: whether a fourth trial actually serves Jessica Mann or just the institution. Becca Hartwell: That's the real question. Miles: If this episode got you thinking, leave us a review and tag us at Star Witness Pod. Drop a case you want us to cover in the comments. Becca Hartwell: New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you don't miss the verdict. Miles: Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Becca Hartwell: Take care, everybody.