Weinstein, 70, who is two years into a 23-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, could serve up to 24 years in prison in California
After a trial that lasted a month and nine days of deliberations, a Los Angeles jury on Monday found Harvey Weinstein guilty of raping and sexually assaulting only one of the four women who accused him of abusing them.
Weinstein, 70, who is two years into a 23-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, which has been appealed, could serve up to 24 years in prison in California when convicted.
He was found guilty of rape, forced oral sex and another sexual misconduct charge involving the woman who said he showed up uninvited at her hotel room door during a 2013 Los Angeles film festival.
“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get it back. The criminal trial was brutal and Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand, but I knew I had to see it through and I did,” the woman said in a statement after the verdict. “I hope Weinstein never gets out of prison in his lifetime,” she noted.
Weinstein was acquitted of sexual assault by a massage therapist in 2010.
Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on rape and sexual assault charges against Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A mistrial was declared for these charges.
“Harvey is obviously disappointed with the verdict. He knows what happened and what never happened,” Weinstein spokeswoman Judah Engelmeier said in an email, saying there was a strong basis for an appeal of the convictions. “Harvey is grateful for the jury’s work on the other counts and is determined to continue his legal actions to ultimately prove his innocence.”
“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars, where he belongs,” Sibel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used intimidation tactics to humiliate and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that as a society we have work to do.”
Sybell Newsom’s intense and dramatic testimony, in which she described being raped by Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005, provided the trial’s most dramatic moments. But only eight of the 12 jurors agreed to find Weinstein guilty of those charges.
Weinstein’s latest conviction gives a victory to victims of celebrity sex abuse in the wake of a number of “bad decisions,” including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year.
The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, which was held at the same time and just down the hall from Harvey Weinstein’s trial, ended in a mistrial. And the actor Kevin Spacey won a civil sexual assault lawsuit in New York last month.
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