- Harvey Weinstein was sentenced in Los Angeles on Thursday.
- His sentencing follows his December conviction, where jurors found him guilty of rape in a mixed verdict.
Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years behind bars in a Los Angeles courtroom on Thursday, almost exactly three years from the date he was first convicted of rape in a landmark New York trial.
Weinstein's second sentencing brings to an end two of the most high-profile rape trials stemming from the 2017 #MeToo movement. On Thursday, Judge Lisa Lench ruled that Weinstein would serve 16 years in a Los Angeles County prison, where he has been held since his extradition from Wende Correctional Facility in New York in July 2021.
The 70-year-old will now serve a cumulative 39 years behind bars for his rape convictions — effectively the rest of his life.
"Please don't sentence me to life in prison," he said Thursday before the sentencing. "I don't deserve it. There are so many things wrong with this case. I maintain that I'm innocent. I never raped or sexually assaulted Jane Doe 1. I never knew this woman, and the fact is she doesn't know me. This is about money."
In December, after a months-long trial and ten days of juror deliberations, Weinstein was found guilty of all three counts of sexual assault and rape related to Jane Doe 1, including forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by a foreign object, and forcible rape.
Of the seven charges from the four charging witnesses levied against him, the jury convicted Weinstein on three of them — all tied to Jane Doe 1 and none of the other accusers. The jury was hung on all counts related to Jane Doe 2, and Jane Doe 4, who was identified as Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and acquitted Weinstein on a count of sexual battery related to Jane Doe 3.
His attorneys appealed his 2020 New York conviction, which is currently before a New York Supreme Court judge.
Weinstein was sentenced three years from his NY conviction
Judge Lisa Lench also rejected Weinstein's appeal for a re-trial on Thursday, which his attorneys filed under claims that Jane Doe 1 misrepresented to jurors her romantic relationship at the time of the rape, per Variety.
Los Angeles prosecutors formally charged Weinstein in July 2021 and alleged that he used his power as a Hollywood producer to sexually assault women in a case stemming from allegations by four women who accused the one-time mogul of abusing them in expensive LA hotels between 2004 and 2013.
Throughout the trial, the accusers took to the stand and recounted harrowing experiences with Weinstein, prosecutors throughout the case asked the accusing women to describe Weinstein's genitalia in an effort to prove the women saw him naked.
His team denied the women's accounts and questioned their memories intensely on the stand.
Siebel Newsom was among the charging witnesses in the case and testified against Weinstein in an emotional episode mid-trial. In a statement sent to Insider after his conviction, Siebel Newsom said that Weinstein "will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs."
Gloria Allred, who represented three accusers in the criminal trial, had asked Judge Lench in February to allow all victims beyond Jane Doe 1 to deliver impact statements at the sentencing but was denied and filed another last-ditch motion ahead of Thursday.
"If they are not permitted," Allred said at a February hearing, according to Variety. "It could result in an unjust sentence. That is our concern — so that the court should be able to hear the entirety of the alleged scope of the defendant's conduct in order to protect the people of California and elsewhere to adequately punish the defendant and to deter such conduct in the future, whether or not there is ever a conviction of a crime."
New civil claims from Jane Doe 1 will tail Weinstein
On February 9, the woman identified as Jane Doe 1 in the criminal trial sued Weinstein for sexual battery, emotional distress, and negligence in a civil lawsuit filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court, according to court documents. The lawsuit is seeking undisclosed punitive damages.
The suit claims that Weinstein raped her in a hotel room in February 2013 during the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, rehashing three charges that the former producer was convicted of during the criminal trial. During testimony in late 2022, Jane Doe 1 told a jury that Weinstein showed up unannounced to her hotel room late at night and forced his way inside where he sexually assaulted her.
"After he was done raping her, he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and left," Jane Doe 1's attorneys said in the new civil complaint.