Harvey Weinstein Is Sentenced to 23 Years in Prison
Harvey Weinstein, the once influential Hollywood producer,
was sentenced to 23 years in a New York State prison on Wednesday after his
conviction on felony sex crimes, capping a two-year plummet from grace over his
sexual abuse of women.
The sentencing marked a major milestone in the #MeToo
movement, which gained momentum after several women went public with their
complaints about Mr. Weinstein.
Women’s rights organizations and Mr. Weinstein’s accusers
had celebrated the producer’s conviction, calling it the start of a new era of
women’s empowerment.
Justice James A. Burke, who presided over the trial in State
Supreme Court in Manhattan, could have sentenced Mr. Weinstein, 67, to as
little as five years and as much as 29.
All six of the women who gave graphic accounts on the
witness stand of Mr. Weinstein’s sexual assaults had entered the courtroom
together, taking seats in the front row of the gallery, just behind the
prosecution’s table.
Next to them sat the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R.
Vance Jr. The rows behind Mr. Weinstein, who was in a wheelchair, were largely
empty.
A Manhattan jury of seven men and five women found Mr.
Weinstein guilty on Feb. 25 of raping an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, at a
Midtown hotel in 2013, and forcibly performing oral sex on a production
assistant, Miriam Haley, in his Lower Manhattan apartment in 2006.
After five days of deliberations, however, the jury
acquitted Mr. Weinstein of the most serious charges against him: two counts of
predatory sexual assault, which required prosecutors to prove that he had
committed a serious sexual assault against at least two women.
Those charges, as constructed by prosecutors, required the
jury to find Mr. Weinstein had raped the actress Annabella Sciorra in the early
1990s at her Gramercy Park apartment. But some jurors doubted her account.
The jury also determined Mr. Weinstein was not guilty of
first-degree rape in the 2013 attack on Ms. Mann. That charge required the
state to prove the use of force or a threat during the attack. The jury instead
opted to convict him of third-degree rape, which required prosecutors to prove
only that she did not consent.
Arguing for a lengthy sentence, prosecutors had pointed to a
long list of allegations from women who said Mr. Weinstein had sexually
assaulted them over four decades. The earliest allegation, prosecutors noted,
was from a woman who said he raped her on a business trip in 1978.
Joan Illuzzi, the lead prosecutor, said the litany of
assaults detailed in a sentencing memorandum “show a lifetime of abuse toward
others, sexual and otherwise” and a “total lack of remorse for the harm he has
caused.”
But defense lawyers said none of those allegations had been
proven. They pointed to Mr. Weinstein’s work raising money on behalf of
charities and his rapidly declining health as they pleaded for leniency.
“He lost everything,” his lawyers wrote in a letter to the
judge, pointing to his divorce and the loss of his company. “His fall from
grace has been historic.”
Reports about Mr. Weinstein’s sexual misconduct had been
circulating in Hollywood for decades, even as the producer won critical acclaim
for reshaping the independent film industry with Oscar-winners like
“Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction.”
But in late 2017, several of his accusers went public in
exposés published by The New York Times and The New Yorker. Since then, more
than 90 women have accused Mr. Weinstein of misconduct, including harassment,
inappropriate touching and sexual assault.
Recently unsealed court documents show that, in the weeks
after the articles were published, Mr. Weinstein and his team scrambled to come
up with a response.
The producer desperately sought support from wealthy friends
like Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, and Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and
former New York City major.
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