- Jurors found Harvey Weinstein guilty on three out of seven sexual assault charges after a Los Angeles trial.
- The jury deliberated for ten days in the drawn-out trial.
- The disgraced mogul is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York on rape charges.
A Los Angeles jury on Monday, December 19, found Harvey Weinstein guilty on three out of seven rape and sexual assault charges after a weeks-long West Coast trial.
Weinstein was found guilty of all three counts of sexual assault and rape related to Jane Doe 1, including forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by foreign object, and forcible rape.
The jury was hung on all counts related to Jane Doe 2, and Jane Doe 4, who was identified as Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Weinstein was acquitted on one count of sexual battery related to Jane Doe 3.
Jurors also agreed in an additional question that Weinstein had abused more than one victim.
Jurors deliberated for almost ten full days in the case and will return tomorrow for arguments on special findings.
Los Angeles prosecutors formally charged Weinstein in July 2021 following his extradition to Los Angeles, over a year after the disgraced producer was convicted on rape charges in New York. The Los Angeles trial, tailing off of the New York one, represented a peak in the coagulation of legal efforts that stemmed from the #MeToo movement in 2017.
Prosecutors alleged that Weinstein used his power as a Hollywood producer to sexually assault women in a case stemming from allegations by four women who accused the one-time mogul of abusing them in expensive LA hotels between 2004 and 2013.
Of the seven charges against him, the jury convicted Weinstein on three of them.
All four accusers testified against Weinstein throughout the case, as well as four “bad acts” witnesses who delivered emotional accounts of their own alleged experiences. Dozens of additional witnesses, including law enforcement officials, movie industry staffers, and friends of accusers also testified during the trial.
Weinstein has repeatedly denied assaulting the dozens of women who have accused him, claiming all the sexual encounters were consensual.
The decision comes after prosecutors dropped a fifth charging witness from the case midway through the trial, stripping the case of two counts of forcible rape and two counts of forcible oral copulation against Weinstein, and leaving jurors to deliberate on two counts of rape and five counts of sexual assault from the remaining four women.
The highest possible sentence on all charges was 60 years to life in prison, a much lower potential sentence than the 150 years he could have originally faced with the fifth charging witness.
Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following an east coast trial on rape charges. But the Los Angeles trial took on more significance after a New York Court of Appeals in August agreed to hear Weinstein’s appeal on his previous convictions.
Tearful testimony from accusers
California’s first lady, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was among the accusing women in the case and testified against Weinstein in an emotional episode mid-trial.
Siebel Newsom testified as “Jane Doe 4” in the Weinstein trial, but she publicly identified herself through her attorney to be one of the original five original accusers shortly before the trial got underway.
In opening statements, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, Mark Werksman, said Siebel Newsom would “be just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood” if she didn’t call herself a victim of rape in the #MeToo era.
The first woman to take the stand, an actress identified as Jane Doe 1, broke down in court as she delivered her testimony early in the trial.
“I wanted to die,” she said as she recounted her experience with Weinstein. “It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight. I just remember how he looked in the mirror, telling me to look at him. I wish it never happened to me.”
Prosecutors throughout the case asked the accusing women to describe Weinstein’s genitalia in an effort prove the women saw him naked. A woman identified as Jane Doe 2 described Weinstein’s body in graphic detail when she took the stand early in the trial.
Jane Doe 3, a massage therapist, described in her testimony how she confided in her “friend,” actor Mel Gibson, about an alleged incident with Weinstein in which she said he masturbated in front of her during a scheduled massage in 2010.
“He said, ‘Look at me, tell me how big my cock is,'” she testified. Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s attorneys lambasted the women and their memories—even using courtroom demonstrations that made some of the key witnesses uncomfortable.
In closing arguments late last month, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez emphasized that the women who testified did so even though they knew that they would be met with scrutiny and difficult questions from Weinstein’s lawyers.
“The truth is that, as you sit here, we know the despicable behavior the defendant engaged in. He thought he was so powerful that people would … excuse his behavior,” Martinez said, according to CNN.
Source: I N S I D E R
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