Back in December, Harvey Weinstein was convicted on three counts related to one woman the jury found he had raped in Los Angeles in 2013. Today, he was sentenced in that case and the BBC reports he begged for mercy.
Ex-film mogul Harvey Weinstein begged for leniency in a Los Angeles court moments before he was given an additional 16 years in prison for rape…
“Please don’t sentence me to life in prison,” the disgraced Hollywood star told the court. “I don’t deserve it.”…
His attorneys – who had sought a three-year sentence for Weinstein – asked the judge to take into account his deteriorating health, his children and his “generous” donations to charity.
Weinstein sat in court looking away for most of the time and did not react when the sentence was read, which came after the judge rejected a motion by defence lawyers for a new trial.
Weinstein wasn’t facing life. The maximum seems he was facing seems to have been 24 years though some reports say 18 years. Clearly he was arguing that he doesn’t have much time left and that a long sentence for him would be a life sentence. Weinstein, who is 70, is already serving a 23 year sentence for his conviction in New York. regardless of what sentence he received today he was unlikely to live long enough to ever be released.
Meanwhile, his victim, whose identity was concealed, also spoke before the sentencing.
On Thursday, only the woman identified as Jane Doe 1 was allowed to give a victim statement in court. Crying at times and comforted by her daughter, she said she thought for years that she had done something wrong and became “heartbroken, empty and alone.”
“Inside, I have fallen apart,” she said. “He had broken me into a million pieces.”
While he was convicted on three counts last year related to Jane Doe 1, there were several other victims that were part of that trial. He was acquitted on one count and the jury couldn’t reach a decision on several others including two counts that involved Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the governor of California’s wife. Weinstein’s attorneys was particularly harsh toward Siebel Newsom during the trial.
During his cross-examination of Ms. Siebel Newsom, Mark Werksman, a lawyer for the defense, accused her of reframing her experience with Mr. Weinstein as negative only after the explosion of the #MeToo movement in 2017. At one point, he told jurors that Ms. Siebel Newsom was “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead.”
Over two days of testimony, Ms. Siebel Newsom said that she was raped by Mr. Weinstein in 2005 in his Beverly Hills hotel room after she agreed to meet him to discuss her career. She said that she had not come forward earlier because she had tried to ignore the incident as “a way of putting away my sadness, my fear, my trauma, so I could move forward with my life.”
The defense also pointed out that she’s made numerous contacts with Weinstein after the incident.
His attorneys pulled up a binder of emails she had sent over the years, questioning her continued communication with Weinstein, and she explained that she stayed in touch with Weinstein because he was so powerful, so she felt she had to stay in his good graces for professional purposes. The defense repeatedly noted that her husband accepted Weinstein’s political donations. During closing arguments, one of Weinstein’s attorneys said Siebel Newsom was lying on the stand. “What you saw was an act,” he told the jury. “It was a theatrical, overly dramatized performance.”
Today, after the sentencing, Siebel Newsom released a video statement about her experiences including the trial.
“What Harvey Weinstein did to me was the worst. His assault was excruciatingly traumatic,” Siebel Newsom said in the video. “And for years, he walked away unfettered, while I spent years nursing my wounds. I’ve tried all sorts of therapies trying to make sense of it all, trying to heal the physical manifestations of trauma. We break women by ignoring the very real ramifications of sexual assault and violence against them.”
She continued, “This entire process has been one of the hardest experiences of my life. But the most important takeaway is that we all have a role to play in healing this culture in which violence against women is the norm.”
Here’s the full video:
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