A Los Angeles jury on Monday discovered Harvey Weinstein guilty of rape, delivering a verdict that additional condemns the disgraced film titan whose therapy of girls helped spur the #MeToo motion.
The determination all however assures that Weinstein, who’s 70, in poor well being and serving a 23-year jail sentence in New York for different rapes, will spend the remaining of his life behind bars. He is scheduled to be sentenced in the Los Angeles case early subsequent 12 months however should full his present jail sentence earlier than being transferred to California.
Following a bitter trial that stretched over a month, jurors deliberated for greater than 9 days earlier than returning to convict Weinstein of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a international object. The costs had been primarily based on the account of a girl who accused Weinstein of attacking her in a Beverly Hills lodge room in 2013.
“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night. I will never get that back,” the lady mentioned in a press release. “But I knew I had to see this through to the end … I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”
Weinstein confirmed little emotion because the verdicts had been learn in a downtown courtroom, urgent his arms to his head. He didn’t testify at both of his trials. On Monday, his protection attorneys declined to remark exterior the courtroom.
The jury both acquitted Weinstein or couldn’t attain a verdict on costs he raped or assaulted three different girls in Beverly Hills lodge rooms between 2004 and 2013. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench declared a mistrial on the fees over which the jury was deadlocked.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón mentioned a call has not been made about whether or not to retry Weinstein on the fees over which the jury deadlocked.
“I want to thank the survivors in this case, who exhibited extraordinary bravery in a case that put them in the national spotlight. Reporting sexual assault is never easy. Subjecting oneself to at times brutal cross-examination can be re-traumatizing and extraordinarily painful,” he mentioned.
For now, Weinstein faces as much as 18 years in jail. At a listening to on Tuesday, nonetheless, prosecutors will argue to jurors that they need to discover aggravating components had been at play in the crimes. If the panel does so, Weinstein could possibly be sentenced to as much as 24 years behind bars.
Weinstein’s authorized troubles in L.A. started on the eve of his Manhattan trial in January 2020, when prosecutors right here introduced an preliminary set of costs towards him primarily based on the claims of two girls. More costs would comply with.
It was one of these first accusers, an Italian mannequin recognized in court docket as Jane Doe 1, on whose allegations the jury convicted Weinstein. Weinstein, she mentioned, had barged into her room on the Beverly Hills lodge she was staying in whereas attending a movie pageant to brutally assault her.
In a 2017 interview with The Times, the lady mentioned she and Weinstein had spoken briefly earlier in the night on the Los Angeles Italia Film, Fashion and Art Fest. Later, she mentioned, he confirmed up “without warning” in the foyer of her lodge — which stunned her as a result of she didn’t inform him the place she was staying. She mentioned she refused his entreaties to go as much as her room together with her and left him in the foyer, however that he quickly was knocking on her door.
“He … bullied his way into my hotel room, saying, ‘I’m not going to [have sex with] you, I just want to talk,’” the lady instructed The Times. She mentioned Weinstein quickly turned aggressive, bragging about his energy and affect.
“He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do,” she mentioned. “He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me.”
The girl reported the assault to Los Angeles police in October 2017, not lengthy after articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker detailed sexual misconduct allegations towards Weinstein that helped spark the #MeToo motion and ended the profession of one of Hollywood’s strongest figures.
The second girl, Lauren Young, accused Weinstein of luring her to a lodge suite with a proposal to debate a screenplay she’d written after which groping her in a toilet whereas he masturbated. Young first detailed her alleged assault during the New York trial, the place she was amongst a number of girls who testified about “prior bad acts” by Weinstein that weren’t half of the fees towards him.
On Monday, jurors instructed Lench that they had been deadlocked on the sexual battery cost primarily based on Young’s accusation as a result of two jurors wouldn’t vote to convict Weinstein.
More than 100 girls have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct since 2017. The Miramax co-founder, who was as soon as celebrated because the power behind many iconic movies together with “Pulp Fiction,” “Good Will Hunting” and “The English Patient,” has now been erased from the movie business’s collective reminiscence. The studio that bore his identify is gone and the awe he as soon as instilled has been changed by disgust.
Following the preliminary costs, Weinstein was indicted last year on a number of further counts of sexual assault. Among that new group of accusers was Jennifer Siebel Newsom, now Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spouse, who alleged that Weinstein raped her throughout a gathering that was alleged to be about her nascent appearing profession. The jury couldn’t attain a verdict on the fees stemming from Siebel Newsom’s allegations with eight in favor of convicting Weinstein and 4 opposed.
During two days of emotional testimony last month, Siebel Newsom mentioned a gaggle of Weinstein’s aides left her alone with Weinstein in a lodge suite. They mentioned international movie tasks, however he appeared disinterested and retreated to a toilet, she recalled. He emerged in a gown and began masturbating, she testified. For the subsequent 45 minutes, she mentioned, Weinstein repeatedly tried to coerce her into intercourse, claiming a quantity of different A-list actresses had slept with him to advance in Hollywood.
“I’m shaking. I’m crying. He knows this is not consent at all,” she testified.
After Monday’s verdict, Siebel Newsom mentioned the previous Hollywood kingmaker would “never be able to rape another woman.”
“Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors,” mentioned Siebel Newsom, who was known as a “bimbo” by one of Weinstein’s legal professionals in his opening assertion. “This trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”
In her closing argument, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marlene Martinez instructed jurors the assault on Siebel Newsom was one of a number of that confirmed Weinstein had a predatory methodology. He used the promise of profession development to get girls alone, and after an assault would prepare extra conferences with the ladies or provide them movie roles, Martinez mentioned. The follow-up conferences or provides, she argued, had been finished to protect towards rape accusations by making it seem the ladies willingly traded intercourse for skilled assist.
“For this predator, hotels were his trap,” Martinez mentioned. “Confined within those walls, victims were not able to run from his hulking mass. People were not able to hear their screams.”
Weinstein has denied all wrongdoing. His protection attorneys, Mark Werksman and Alan Jackson, argued the assaults alleged by Jane Doe 1 and Young by no means occurred. The attorneys acknowledged Weinstein had sexual relationships with Siebel Newsom and Juls Bindi — a masseuse who alleged that Weinstein groped her and masturbated in entrance of her in 2010 — however Werksman described their interactions as “transactional.”
Bindi, they mentioned, was provided a ebook deal by Miramax’s publishing arm after their encounter. Siebel Newsom stayed in contact with Weinstein about future movie tasks and later solicited Weinstein, a high-level donor to Democrats, for contributions to her husband’s campaigns. The jury Monday cleared Weinstein of the cost associated to Bindi.
The protection attorneys additionally argued that many of the ladies had been opportunists, taking benefit of the wave of anger towards highly effective, abusive males that fueled the #MeToo motion to rewrite what had been consensual “casting couch” relationships as rape.
Jackson mentioned the prosecution’s case was constructed off emotion fairly than reality. No witnesses might corroborate the assaults, he mentioned. And whereas the allegations towards Weinstein could have helped make the phrase #MeToo ubiquitous, Jackson reminded jurors that social actions weren’t proof.
“I don’t know how to say it more gentle than this, but fury does not make fact,” he mentioned. “Tears do not make truth.”
Gloria Allred, the well-known girls’s rights lawyer who represented Young in the Los Angeles case, mentioned “justice was won” on Monday and famous the outcomes might show essential if Weinstein wins an enchantment of his New York conviction subsequent 12 months.
“Even if the New York conviction remains intact, the women whom Harvey Weinstein victimized in Southern California deserved to have their day in court,” she mentioned.