NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge declared a mistrial Friday in the retrial of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein after jurors reported for the second consecutive day that they were hopelessly deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous verdict on any of the counts before them, leaving the highest-profile sexual assault prosecution in New York in recent memory in legal limbo for the second time in less than eighteen months and forcing prosecutors to confront a consequential decision about whether to seek a third trial.
Justice Patricia Odom made the declaration shortly after 4 p.m. local time, following a morning session in which she instructed jurors to make one final attempt at deliberation before reporting their status. The panel of seven men and five women had been sequestered for nineteen days after a trial that lasted nearly eight weeks and featured testimony from nine prosecution witnesses and six for the defense, along with extensive documentary evidence introduced by both sides. After approximately forty-one hours of deliberation spread across nine working days, foreperson juror number three sent a handwritten note to the judge stating that further discussion was “not productive and would not lead to agreement on any count.”
Weinstein, 74, who appeared in court in a wheelchair and has maintained throughout all proceedings that all sexual encounters at the center of the allegations were consensual and involved no coercion, showed no visible reaction as Justice Odom read her ruling from the bench. His lead defense attorney, Raymond Caldwell, declined to answer questions from reporters who gathered outside the courthouse, saying only that his client was “grateful the process was allowed to run its full course” and that more formal comments would follow in the coming days.
Manhattan District Attorney Caroline Marsh said her office would decide within sixty days whether to seek a third trial. Speaking at a brief press conference on the courthouse steps attended by several dozen journalists and a small group of advocates, Marsh said her office’s commitment to the case had not wavered. “The survivors who came forward and testified in this courtroom, at great personal cost and under extraordinary public scrutiny, deserve a resolution,” she said. “We will not make this decision lightly, and we will not make it quickly. We will make it correctly.” She did not take questions before departing.
Legal observers who have tracked the case closely said the second mistrial placed prosecutors in an unusually difficult position that had no easy precedent in recent New York criminal law. Retrying a defendant three times on the same charges, while not prohibited under double jeopardy principles when prior trials end in hung juries, invites intense public scrutiny and requires prosecutors to weigh the psychological and evidentiary toll on witnesses against a realistic assessment of the likelihood of a different outcome before a new jury. “The question they have to answer is whether anything material has changed,” said Dara Kessler, a former federal prosecutor now teaching at Fordham University School of Law. “Two hung juries suggest the evidence, as presented, is not producing consensus. That is a signal, not just a setback, and experienced prosecutors know the difference.”
The charges in the retrial stemmed from allegations that were distinct from those underpinning Weinstein’s original 2020 New York conviction, which was overturned on appeal in 2024 on procedural grounds related to the admissibility of prior bad act witness testimony. That reversal, decided by a divided appellate panel, required the prosecution to begin again from the beginning, and the retrial commenced in February of this year before Judge Odom. A separate criminal conviction against Weinstein in Los Angeles, where he was found guilty and sentenced in 2023, remains in effect and is not affected by Friday’s ruling in New York.
Two of the women whose accounts formed the core of the prosecution’s case issued a joint statement Friday afternoon through their attorney, calling the mistrial devastating but pledging to continue pushing for accountability. “Justice does not expire,” the statement read. “We stood up in that courtroom and told the truth. We will continue to stand with every survivor who had the courage to walk through those doors, and we call on the district attorney to give those women the chance to see this through.” The statement did not reference the specific legal options available to the prosecution.
The declaration marked the latest chapter in a legal process that began in 2017, when widespread public allegations against Weinstein became a catalyst for a global conversation about sexual misconduct in professional and creative industries. That conversation, and the legal proceedings that followed across multiple jurisdictions, has unfolded over nearly a decade with no final resolution in New York, leaving advocates on all sides in a state of unresolved tension that Friday’s ruling did nothing to dispel.