A California appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s 2022 rape and sexual assault conviction, but ordered a resentencing, a day after prosecutors in New York dropped a separate rape charge against the former film producer because the accuser said she could not endure another trial. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal leaves the core guilty verdicts intact while requiring the trial judge to recalculate the 16-year prison term. In Manhattan, the district attorney’s office formally dismissed a count of third-degree rape after Jessica Mann, a stylist and actor, submitted a statement saying the eight-year legal process had “caused more harm than benefit” and that she could no longer “bear to go through this.”

The California panel found that the trial judge did not violate Weinstein’s constitutional rights, rejecting defence arguments that the court had improperly limited cross-examination of the accuser, Evgeniya Chernyshova, about Facebook messages that the defence claimed would have shown a prior sexual relationship and undermined her credibility. The judges ruled that the excluded evidence fell under the state’s rape shield law and that Weinstein was still able to present his defence through other material. However, the panel agreed with the California attorney general that the original sentence could not stand because the sentencing judge had considered Weinstein’s New York convictions as an aggravating factor — convictions that were later overturned by New York’s highest court. Weinstein’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said the defence was “disappointed” and would seek review in the California Supreme Court, while acknowledging that “the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”

In New York, the decision to withdraw the rape charge brought an end to a prosecution that had remained unresolved after Weinstein’s landmark 2020 conviction was overturned in 2024 and two subsequent retrials ended with hung juries on the count involving Mann. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg stated that his office believed Mann’s account and praised her “courage and extraordinary bravery,” but accepted that she could not testify a fourth time. Weinstein’s attorney, Jacob Kaplan, said outside court that the charges “should never have been brought from the beginning” and that Weinstein was relieved. The former producer, 74, remains convicted of a separate sexual felony in New York — the assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley — and is awaiting a September sentencing at which prosecutors are seeking a 20-year term.

The California conviction stems from the 2013 assault of Chernyshova, an Italian model and actor, at a Los Angeles film festival. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison, a term he would serve only after completing any New York sentence. The resentencing date in California has not been set, and Weinstein’s legal team has signalled it will petition the state Supreme Court for further review. The New York rape charge is now dismissed with prejudice, leaving the assault conviction as the active case in that jurisdiction. Weinstein remains in custody.