Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.
After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York.
Weinstein was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury hung on several counts, notably charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The jury reported it was unable to reach verdicts in her allegations and the allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those counts.
He was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman.
“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing argument last week. “It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.”
Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of assaults Weinstein’s accusers said happened from 2005 to 2013, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges.
The accusers included Newsom, a documentary filmmaker whose husband is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her intense and emotional testimony of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial its most dramatic moments.
Jurors reached a verdict Monday at the Los Angeles rape and sexual assault trial of Harvey Weinstein.
Weinstein and lawyers for both sides are headed to the courtroom, where the verdict will be read.
Jurors got the case Dec. 2 and deliberated for nine days over a span of more than two weeks. After a monthlong trial, they had to make decisions on two rape counts and five other sexual assault counts against the 70-year-old former movie mogul.
The allegations involved four women and dated from 2005 to 2013.
If convicted on all counts, Weinstein could get a sentence of 60 years to life in prison.
Whatever the result, he won’t be walking free. He still has more than 20 years left on a New York prison sentence after a rape and sexual assault conviction there.
Prosecutors urged jurors to believe the accounts of the four women, each of whom gave dramatic and emotional testimony about the allegations.
Weinstein’s attorneys emphasized the shortage of physical evidence in the case, and asked jurors to set aside the emotional impact of the testimony to focus on the changes several of the women’s stories had gone through in their conversations with authorities.
Weinstein pleaded not guilty and denied engaging in any non-consensual sex.
The trial came just after the fifth anniversary of the blockbuster stories about Weinstein that made him a lightning rod for the #MeToo movement. (AP)
