Harvey Weinstein‘s lawyer told a Manhattan judge on Thursday that his client would consider a plea deal in relation to his rape charge, “if there was a court offer that would run concurrent” to the sentence he’s now serving, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Weinstein, who is awaiting a new trial after his 2020 conviction was overturned, has been serving time at New York’s Rikers Island since April 2024. Speaking directly to Judge Curtis Farber ahead of the trial’s March 3 start date, Weinstein described his stay at Rikers Island as a “march to my death,” according to THR, and that he’s “haunted by the thought that I will die here unseen and unheard.”
At the conclusion of a retrial in June, a jury found Weinstein guilty of one of three charges against him, a count of a criminal sexual act. The same jury found him not guilty of another like-titled charge but could not reach a verdict on a third charge of rape. That failure has led Weinstein to face a third trial for the same charge, a Class E felony charge of rape, which carries a maximum prison sentence of four years in New York.
“I know I was unfaithful,” Weinstein told the judge. “I know I acted wrongly. But I never assaulted anyone. Your Honor, I’m begging for a second chance.”
“We’re going to go to a trial for a third time on an E as in elephant felony,” Arthur Aidala, Weinstein’s lawyer, said, according to THR. “If his name was not Harvey Weinstein, this case would be disposed of.”
In August, Aidala told the court that the disgraced film mogul would not entertain a plea deal, as he didn’t want the “word rape associated with him.” Thursday’s proceeding was an about-face, as Aidala hypothesized about a scenario in which Weinstein would be accept it. Aidala told the judge, after speaking with his client and prosecutors, that Weinstein “wants additional time to think about [a plea].”
Additionally, on Thursday, Aidala asked Judge Farber to vacate the one criminal sexual act conviction from June, alleging a juror had claimed they felt bullied into a guilty verdict. The Judge denied the request.
Weinstein, 73, still faces a 16-year sentence in California.
The rape charge, going to trial for a third time in New York, relates to accusations from actress Jessica Mann. At the May 2025 trial, Mann told the jury she’d met Weinstein at a party in 2012 or early 2013 when she was 27. After meeting with him with hopes of launching her career, he requested a massage. She rebuffed his sexual advances but eventually performed oral sex on him on one occasion because he said he wouldn’t let her leave the room unless she allowed him to “do something,” according to The Associated Press. At a New York hotel in March 2013, she alleged that he pressured her into sex until she “just gave up.”
“Coming forward cost me everything: my privacy, my safety,” Mann said in a statement to Rolling Stone after the jury failed to reach a verdict on the charge. “I laid bare my trauma, my shame – everything I’d tried to bury just to keep living. Still, I stood up and told the truth. Again and again. Harvey hides behind PR firms, lawyers, spy agencies contracted to intimidate. I’ve had only my voice.”
