The jury also hung on several counts, most notably the charges against Jennifer Seibel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Angels – Harvey Weinstein He was found guilty of rape in a Los Angeles trial on Monday in another moment of #MeToo reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.
After nine days of deliberations spanning more than two weeks, a jury of eight men and four women reached a verdict in the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old once-powerful movie mogul, who has two years left on a 23-year sentence. Rape and sexual assault convictions in New York.
Weinstein was found guilty of rape, oral sex and another count of sexual misconduct with a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury hung on several counts, particularly the charges against Jennifer Seibel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The jury said it was unable to reach a verdict on her charges and the other woman’s. A mistrial was announced on these counts.
He was also acquitted of a sexual battery charge by another woman.
“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing arguments last week. “It is time to bring the kingmaker to justice.”
Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of the assaults that took place from 2005 to 2013, Weinstein’s accusers said the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the allegations.
Among the accusers is Newsom, a documentary filmmaker whose husband is California Governor Gavin Newsom. Her intense and emotional testimony about being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial’s most dramatic moments.
The other was an Italian model and actor who said Weinstein showed up at her hotel room door uninvited during a 2013 film festival and sexually assaulted her.
Lauren Young, the only defendant to testify in both of Weinstein’s trials, said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he asked her at a hotel. Trapped in the bathroom, grabbed her and masturbated in front of her. his
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges against Young.
A massage therapist testified that Weinstein did the same to her after giving her a massage in 2010.
Martinez concluded that the women entered Weinstein’s hotel suites or let him into their rooms, having no idea what awaited them.
“Who would have suspected that such a titan of the entertainment industry would be a decadent rapist?” she said.
The women’s stories echo the allegations of dozens of others that have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod that began with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A film about the reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to watch it.
It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, stressing that none of the four women went to authorities until the movement targeted Weinstein. .
Defense attorneys said two of the women were completely lying about their encounters with Weinstein, and that the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later repeated.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, said in his closing arguments, “Sadness is not the same thing as rape.”
He urged the judges to look past the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence.
“‘Believe us because we’re crazy, believe us because we cried,'” Jackson said of the jurors being asked to do. “Well, anger doesn’t make reality. And tears don’t make truth.”
All of the women accused went to court through Jane Doe. The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, such as What the women named here have done.
Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to provide context and corroborate those stories. There were four other women who were not part of the allegations but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought in to establish a pattern of sexual harassment.
Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial ended when prosecutors said a woman accused of two counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault would not appear to testify. He refused to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lynch dismissed the charges.
Weinstein’s latest conviction marks a victory for victims of sexual misconduct by famous men following some legal setbacks, including the overturning of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That 70’s Show” actor Danny Masterson, which took place simultaneously down the hall from Weinstein, ended in a mistrial last week. And actor Kevin Spacey won a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month.
Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case will be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, which will be appealed, means he will not go free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out.