Third Trial, Third Hung Jury: Jessica Mann Won't Testify Again

After eight years and three trials that never reached a verdict, the third-degree rape charge against Harvey Weinstein in the Jessica Mann case is officially done. Manhattan prosecutors dropped it Thursday because Mann, the accuser, has decided she’s had enough—and honestly, who could blame her.

This isn’t a statement about Mann’s credibility. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made that crystal clear, saying the dismissal reflects the toll this process has taken on her, not any doubt about her story. She testified in front of two grand juries and three trial juries over nearly a decade. That’s a staggering amount of public, adversarial examination of one of the most traumatic moments of her life. The first trial, in 2020, resulted in a conviction that was later overturned. Last year’s second trial convicted Weinstein on a different charge—one count of criminal sexual act against another accuser—but the jury deadlocked on Mann’s rape allegation. His third trial, which ended in May with yet another mistrial, saw the same result: jurors couldn’t agree.

At some point, the question stops being whether the evidence is strong enough and becomes whether it’s humane to keep asking a survivor to relive her trauma in open court. Mann has made her choice, and the prosecution respects it.

This doesn’t mean Weinstein walks free. He’s been incarcerated since 2020 and is currently serving a 16-year sentence stemming from his Los Angeles rape and sexual assault conviction. His legal team is already preparing sentencing materials and plans to challenge what they call an excessive sentence, citing his record as a model inmate over nearly seven years.

But for Mann, this chapter closes. Whatever happens next in Weinstein’s appeals process, she won’t be required to step into a courtroom again to defend her account of what happened in that hotel room in 2013. That’s something.