The disgraced Hollywood producer was convicted on a separate criminal sex act charge

Former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein in Manhattan criminal court during his rape and sexual assault re-trial in New York. Photo / Curtis Means, Pool, AFP

In Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault retrial, a final rape charge ended in a mistrial today NZT after the jury foreman refused to return to the jury room because he felt he was threatened by other jurors, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The judge, Justice Curtis Farber, said the jurors he spoke to didn’t understand why the foreman had left, and they didn’t describe “anything that rose to the level of threats”, according to the New York Times.

“Sometimes jury deliberations become heated,” Farber said, according to the report.

“I understand this particular deliberation was more heated than some others. That’s unfortunate.”

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the alleged rape of former aspiring actress Jessica Mann at a hotel in 2013.

Lawyers are now scheduled to meet on July 2 to discuss a new trial date for Weinstein’s final charge. The verdicts on Weinstein’s two other charges still stand.

Weinstein was convicted of one count of first-degree criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on former production assistant Miriam Haley at his apartment in 2006.

He was acquitted on a separate criminal sex act charge involving Kaja Sokola, a former model who testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 2006 when she was 19.

The mistrial wasn’t the first time juror drama rocked the case.

Last week, a juror complained to the judge that other jurors were talking about and treating another member of their group unfairly, behaviour he called “playground stuff”, according to AP.

The jury foreman then complained to the judge on Tuesday that some jurors were trying to sway others by bringing up details from Weinstein’s past that were not part of the charges against him, according to AP.

Then yesterday, before the verdict was announced, the foreman complained once again about the fighting in the jury room, saying the yelling - including comments directed towards him - made him “feel afraid inside there”, AP reported.

The decision comes more than a year after Weinstein’s 2020 conviction was overturned.

In the 2020 trial, Weinstein was found guilty of a first-degree criminal sex act on Haley and the third-degree rape of Mann.

But in April 2024, his conviction was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals, which suggested a retrial because prosecutors had called women to the stand whose accusations were not the basis for the charges.

The decision to overturn his conviction was deemed an upset for the #MeToo movement, which was supercharged in 2017 after stories from the New York Times and the New Yorker reported that Weinstein had sexually abused and harassed women for years.

This inspired more women to come forward against the mogul and other powerful men across entertainment.

Weinstein has been imprisoned in New York after receiving a 16-year sentence after a 2022 trial for a separate case in California.

In that case, he was convicted of rape, forced oral sex and sexual misconduct. He is appealing that case.