The jury in the trial of Harvey Weinstein found him guilty of first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape on Monday.
The disgraced Hollywood mogul, 67, was charged with five sex crimes, including rape and predatory sexual assault. The jurors in New York found him not guilty on the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault, which could have resulted in a life sentence. Weinstein faces a possible sentence up to 29 years in prison.
Jurors asked last week if they could be hung on two counts of predatory sexual assault while making a unanimous decision on the other charges. The presiding judge, James Burke, dismissed the question, saying, “Any verdict you return on any counts must be unanimous, so I will ask you to resume your deliberations.”
After the verdict was announced, Weinstein was handcuffed and is being sent to jail. He will be sentenced on Wednesday, March 11.
The case against Weinstein was based on three allegations: raping an aspiring actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013, forcibly performing oral sex on another woman at his apartment in 2006, and raping and forcibly performing oral sex on Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra in her apartment in the mid-1990s.
“We are thrilled that the jury has found Weinstein guilty and are confident that our client Tarale Wulff played a significant role in that outcome,” said a statement from Wigdor LLP and Kevin Mintzer. “All of the survivors who participated in the criminal trial should be applauded for bringing about some sense of justice. We are also grateful to the entire team at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office that worked tirelessly in preparing and presenting this case. We are now even more confident that Weinstein and his enablers will be found liable in the civil courts and we will continue to object to the one-sided civil settlement that has been proposed.”
Weinstein also faces charges in Los Angeles after he was indicted in January, just after the first trial got underway. In that case, he is accused of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in back-to-back nights during the week of the Oscar Awards in 2013.
Weinstein was arrested after more than 90 women came forward and accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault in 2017. Many of the women’s claims about the Hollywood mogul had already reached the statute of limitations, and thus he could not face charges from those accusations. In addition to dismantling his career in film, the public allegations helped spur the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to speak out about their experiences with sexual harassment or assault.
