Oh, how the monster has fallen. The former kingmaker of Hollywood, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, has been sentenced to 23 years in prison — two decades for a criminal sexual act in the first degree and three years for rape in the third degree.
Weinstein, an obese 67-year-old, will surely die in prison, but what he ought to really fear is the fate worse than death itself: the punishment that will definitely come after. But more than an individual instance of retribution, Weinstein’s sentencing marks an extraordinary beginning of the #MeToo movement’s legal revolution.
The verdict marked a radical transformation of the justice system, one that grants more credence to corroborating witnesses contemporaneously than carefully trained liars. Now his sentencing tells every would-be predator that the scales of justice do not bend for the privileged or the powerful but for the righteous.
To be clear, the Weinstein case, from start to finish, was an aberration in itself. Weinstein was once the pinnacle of power, an uber-wealthy producer with political connections so strong that Hillary Clinton herself pulled strings to keep the story of his predation out of the news. Furthermore, he continued to use his apparatus of silencing, from private investigators to outright spies, to monitor journalists and jurors during his trials just as he had done to his victims for a quarter century prior.
As a reaction, the public outrage posited an undeniable check on whatever juror or judicial recalcitrance there might have been.
So that Weinstein finally saw justice doesn’t mean that the 6% of rapists who actually end up in jail will as well. But it does show how differently courts may adjudicate these sorts of cases in the future.
None of the rape charges in the New York trial involved forensic evidence, but the jury still found him guilty anyway. Why? Witnesses were allowed to testify about Weinstein’s “prior bad acts,” even if his crimes against them surpassed the statute of limitations, and even more importantly, there were contemporaneously corroborating witnesses.
Why does this matter? Sexual assault, even with the presence of a rape kit, is notoriously difficult to prosecute without direct witnesses. Spontaneous outcry, and witnesses attesting that the victims told them about their assaults near the times the crimes occurred, was grounds enough for conviction.
That marks extraordinary progress.
Between these witnesses, that of the victims themselves and the establishment of a pattern of behavior, there’s not anyone on the planet who cannot see that due process established Weinstein’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
All the money and power in the world couldn’t stop Weinstein from facing nearly a quarter century behind bars. If it couldn’t stop his fate, what other predators will finally face their rightful punishments?
