Jurors deliberated for nine days before reaching a verdict and convicting Harvey Weinstein, 70, of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object.
Harvey Weinstein may spend the rest of his life behind bars after a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of rape on Monday.
Jurors deliberated for nine days before reaching a verdict and convicting Weinstein, 70, of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object.
All thee convictions stem from a 2013 incident during which Weinstein attacked a woman identified as Jane Doe #1 in court at a Los Angeles hotel room.
Among those who testified at the trial was California First Lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Jurors were deadlocked on the charges relating to her sexual assault allegations, and she released a statement about the outcome.
“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman,” reads the statement. “He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs. Harvey Weinstein is a serial predator and what he did was rape.”
Jane Doe #1 released a statement after jurors announced the verdict on as well, saying: "Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night. I will never get that back, but I knew I had to see this through to the end."
She later states: "I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”
Jane Doe #1 had spoken to the Los Angeles Times at the height of the #MeToo movement back in 2017 about the incident. “He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do,” said the woman, who in the piece is identified as an Italian model. “He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me.”
The jury remained deadlocked on the rape and assault charges pertaining to one other women, Lauren Young. Prosecutors will be able to retry Siebel and Young's cases.
Jurors also acquitted Weinstein of a sexual battery charge related to allegations made by a massage therapist.
Weinstein will be sentenced next month, with the charges he was convicted of carrying a maximum of 18 years in prison. Prosecutors are asking for a 24-year sentence however, arguing that there are aggravating factors at play.
Either sentence would put Weinstein behind bars until well after his 100th birthday.
Weinstein is already serving a 23-year prison sentence following his 2020 conviction in New York. There, a jury found him guilty of criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree.
The disgraced mogul was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criminal sexual act while the rape conviction resulted in a three-year prison sentence. Those sentences are to run consecutive, not concurrent.
Weinstein also faced charges of predatory sexual assault, one allegedly involving Mimi Haleyi and Anabella Sciorra and the second allegedly involving Jessica Mann and Sciorra.
In both cases, the jury came to a unanimous decision of not guilty on those charges, at which point they began to consider the lesser counts.
For Haleyi, that was criminal sexual assault, and the jury returned a guilty verdict.
The jury again came to a not guilty decision on the lesser count of first-degree rape in the case of Jessica Mann, but found Weinstein guilty of the lowest charge of third-degree rape.
Weinsten could not be charged with raping Sciorra due to the statute of limitations .
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision lists Weinstein's conditional release date as Nov. 9, 2039, which means he cannot start his sentence in California until he is at least 87 years old.
He has appealed the conviction in New York and the highest court in New York has granted a hearing on his challenge.
