New York prosecutors drop rape charge against Harvey Weinstein
New York prosecutors on Thursday dropped a rape charge against Harvey Weinstein after accuser Jessica Mann said she cannot endure a fourth trial. Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg read Mann’s written statement in court, in which Mann said the process had "stolen a decade of her life" and that she would not return to testify again. The charge concerns an allegation that Weinstein raped Mann in 2013; prosecutors had tried the count multiple times in New York with juries unable to reach unanimous verdicts in prior proceedings. Prosecutors said they continue to believe Mann’s account and her credibility as a witness but chose to dismiss the unresolved count rather than seek another retrial. Weinstein remains convicted on another New York sexual-felony charge and on separate convictions in California, and he remains incarcerated. The dismissal ends the prospect of a fourth New York trial on the 2013 accusation and leaves Weinstein’s existing convictions and prison status intact.
![[Weinstein’s victim], a hairstylist an actor, spent days on the witness stand at all three trials, telling jurors that Weinstein raped her in a Manhattan hotel in 2013 — and being questioned extensively about the complex relationship she had with him before and afterward. The Oscar-winning producer denied the charge and said everything that happened between him and [the survivor] was consensual.
In a letter that prosecutor Nicole Blumberg quoted in court Thursday, [the survivor] said she could “no longer endure going through this,” adding that the 8-year-old case has “put me through more harm than good.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v7e2mavuqgjnludex7csmdhn/bafkreibwnzpk2kh6ltdzvs2l6bx7xwuoqzegkzlldorlglrzlhnndqvz74)
