Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced 70-year-old former Hollywood Film producer, was just sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison which will all but ensure that he will spend the rest of his life stuck in a prison cell.
This most recent sentencing choice was made public this past Thursday morning in Los Angeles, close to two months after he was originally found guilty on three counts of rape and sexual assault, as reported by Variety. Weinstein is currently carrying out a prison sentence of 23 years in New York in the wake of convictions for rape and sexual assault from a 2020 guilty conviction.
These most recent convictions seem to be coming from an accuser referred to as Jane Doe #1 who is a European model that testified she was raped by Weinstein at Mr. C Hotel in the wake of the L.A. Italia Film Festival back in 2013.
The jurors made the determination that Weinstein was guilty of forcible rape along with additional charges in relation to Jane Doe #1, not guilty of sexual battery for Jane Doe #3, and came back with a hung jury for counts related to Jane Doe #2 and California’s first lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Weinstein also ended up acquitted of an allegation of sexual battery issued by a different woman. Jurors finally found a verdict after close to 41 hours of deliberations over the course of 10 days back in December 2022. The film producer chose to plead not guilty to all seven counts. He was facing a total of 24 additional years in prison.
Meanwhile, Weinstein’s legal team has been doing battle in order to get their client a new trial and a new jury for his sex crimes conviction from 2020. The court of appeals for New York elected to hear the appeal from Weinstein.
Prosecutors argued that Weinstein was a hardcore sexual predator who utilized his power over women while on the other hand, the defense’s legal team offered up the counter-argument that the women engaged in “transactional sex” to set up their careers in Hollywood and did so willingly.
Weinstein was firstly a kingpin of the entertainment industry and is known to be the co-founder of Miramax. His legend status degraded back in 2017 when an increasing number of women came forward to hurl accusations at the producer of sexual misconduct in what would end up evolving into the #MeToo movement. The story following the insane rise followed by the catastrophic downfall of Weinstein ended up being turned into a feature film titled, “She Said.” (2022).
