Harvey Weinstein was kept from the courtroom due to chest pains, cutting short the first day of deliberations at his rape retrial.
The tense scene unfolded on Wednesday after jurors sent a note to the judge asking to review evidence in the case, about four hours after they began deliberations. Jurors asked to look again at part of the cross-examination of Weinstein accuser Jessica Mann.
Weinstein attorney Marc Agnifilo told Judge Curtis Farber that court officers told him “Mr. Weinstein is having chest pains” and they’re “not going to bring him to court.”
Agnifilo said he was “very hesitant to waive my client’s appearance” during a “critical” moment in the case.
“I want him here, but he’s having chest pains,” Agnifilo said.
Farber then sent jurors home for the day due to “circumstances beyond our control.”
Weinstein’s legal team didn’t elaborate on his condition.
Weinstein, 74, is being retried on a rape charge that ended in a hung jury last year. Regardless of the verdict in the latest trial, he’s facing up to 25 years from a separate sexual assault conviction at last year’s trial and 16 years for a California conviction.
The former movie mogul has attended the trial in a wheelchair. At a pretrial hearing in January, Weinstein told Farber that he feels he’s on a “slow march to my death.”
The case is People v. Weinstein, N.Y. Sup. Ct., trial 5/13/26.