Exclusive: After opting not to retry Harvey Weinstein, Manhattan DA urges legislators to step up for sex assault survivors

By Elizabeth Wagmeister, Linh Tran, Rachel Clarke, CNN

New York (CNN) — Nearly a week after opting not to retry movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on a rape charge, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told CNN in an exclusive interview Wednesday that legislators will have to act to help survivors of sexual assault get their justice.

Bragg wants prosecutors to be able to include testimony about previous “bad acts” against defendants so that all accusers’ voices can be heard. That’s what his office did when it won a conviction of Weinstein in 2020, in a seismic moment for the #MeToo movement and survivors of sexual abuse.

The New York Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 2024, ruling that testimony of witnesses who said Weinstein used his Hollywood influence to take advantage of them was “erroneously admitted.”

Last month Bragg dropped any plan for a fourth trial on a rape charge when the accuser said she could not endure going to court again.

“We’re hard at work with members of the legislature to address and change the law,” Bragg said. “We didn’t get it done this year, but we tried, and we’ll be back again next year trying to change the law … to allow for more evidence like that to come in.”

Coordinated bills introduced in the New York State Assembly and Senate would amend state criminal law to allow evidence of other crimes or acts to prove matters such as motive, intent and planning. Neither received votes in committee or on the floor this session, according to the state legislature website.

Future cases could be at risk without changes, Bragg said, and the system did not honor the survivors of Weinstein’s alleged assaults who testified, though they were not part of specific charges against him.

“We had survivors who came forward, testified, opened themselves up to 12 strangers in the jury box and the eyes of America, and that testimony was set aside.” Bragg said. “Our system said, ‘That’s not relevant here.’ I understand how that’s hurtful, poignantly so, and in the legal circles that hasn’t gotten enough attention.”

Bragg did initiate a new prosecution on three charges related to three accusers after Weinstein’s conviction was overturned.

In the retrial, Weinstein was convicted of one criminal sex act charge but acquitted of another. The judge declared a mistrial on the rape charge when the jury refused to keep deliberating. The rape charge went to a third trial but the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was again declared.

Bragg decided not to try Weinstein for the fourth time after consulting with accuser Jessica Mann, who did not wish to testify again.

Mann, who waived the anonymity CNN and others generally give to those making accusations of sexual assault, wrote a letter to the court saying, “It was clear to me at this last trial I could no longer endure going through this.” She said taking the stand to detail her accusation that Weinstein raped her in a New York hotel in March 2013 brought “deeper re-traumatization and additional trauma.”

“In the process of court I have been fragmented, silenced, defamed and traumatized,” she wrote.

Bragg said Mann’s letter was “sobering and heartbreaking.”

“I thought it was great to hear her in her own voice,” he told Wagmeister. “So much of this process is lawyers talking, a judge talking, we hear from jurors, we hear from witnesses, and to have her unfiltered … I thought that was important. The decision on whether to do this again, she was at the center of it.”

He said his office was focused on survivors. “Jessica Mann has testified three times at trial, twice at grand jury — very, very challenging, and that’s an understatement. And so, yes, she was at the center of this decision.”

Bragg told CNN he thinks of all survivors when he sees the courthouse where Weinstein and many others have been tried.

“Those cases I think are important, the high-profile ones, and I think they may lead to more survivors coming forward, and in that way they play an incredibly important role, not just for individual accountability, but more broadly,” he said. “I do think, though, that we don’t have enough discussion about the people whose names who aren’t heard, the survivors who endure the same types of struggles, who show up time and time again to testify, are cross-examined, made to repeat themselves, don’t feel like they have a voice in the system, and no one knows their name.”

RAINN, which campaigns against sexual violence and runs a hotline for survivors, says 98% of perpetrators are never held fully accountable through the criminal justice system.

While encouraging more people to report crimes to law enforcement, Bragg said a trial may not always be the best answer.

“We are here to support survivors, however they choose to go forward,” he said. “There’s no one standard response, right? Someone’s response to this trauma is deeply personal, and we are here to support them through however they’re experiencing it, and we do that every day.”

The Manhattan DA’s office said in April it was investigating an allegation of sexual assault against former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a day after CNN reported that a former staffer for the California Democrat accused him of having sex with her when she was unable to consent. Swalwell has denied the woman’s allegations. Bragg would not comment on that case or whether his office was investigating Sean “Diddy” Combs, as is happening in Los Angeles, in the wake of his federal conviction on charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.

Prosecutors are planning to ask for a 20-year sentence for Weinstein when he is sentenced for forcing a sex act on a production assistant, the one charge that led to conviction in the retrials.

But Bragg said there would be no victory lap.

“It is impossible to define a win on the back of all that trauma and all that harm,” he said. “There are no winners here, but I think there are lessons learned, I think there’s accountability, I think there’s support … One positive development is that the courage of survivors who have the power to come forward, given who he was at that time. I think that laid groundwork for other survivors to come forward.”

New York was the first to prosecute Weinstein, who produced the 1999 Oscar Best Picture winner “Shakespeare in Love,” and was once most of the most powerful men in entertainment. The conviction and sentence of 23 years under Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance Jr. was hailed as a turning point in the #MeToo movement that began in 2006 for women and men who had survived sexual assault and harassment, especially at the hands of more powerful people.

Weinstein remained incarcerated despite the New York appeal as he had also been convicted and sentenced in Los Angeles to 16 years for rape and sexual assault in 2023. An appeals court upheld that conviction last month but ordered the trial judge to resentence him, The Associated Press reported.

On Wednesday, a spokesman said Weinstein was in a hospital prison ward having had “trouble breathing,” though he was “OK.”

Weinstein has always denied the sexual assault allegations.

“We believe this is the result that should have been reached from the outset, had the grand jury been presented with the full scope of the emails, text messages, and other private communications,” his spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said in a statement last week.

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This story was reported by Elizabeth Wagmeister and Linh Tran in New York, and written by Rachel Clarke in Atlanta. Alisha Ebrahimji contributed.