Disgraced former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 16 more years in prison by a Los Angeles judge on Thursday. He was indicted in December on three counts of rape and sexual assault. Separately, the 70-year-old is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York for rape and sexual assault — meaning it’s very likely Weinstein will now spend the rest of his life in prison.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench ordered the second sentence to run consecutively, meaning it would begin after Weinstein completes his 23-year sentence in New York.
The woman whose testimony provided the basis for her conviction was referred to during the Los Angeles trial as “Jane Doe #1”. The woman is a European model who was raped by Weinstein in February 2013 during a film festival in Los Angeles.
The former producer – once one of the most powerful men in Hollywood – was brought to trial in California on seven charges of rape and sexual assault involving four women between 2004 and 2013. The jury found him not guilty of one charge and could not decide about three other charges.
Weinstein was initially charged in Los Angeles with eleven counts of rape and sexual assault; By the time he went to trial, prosecutors had dropped four charges related to a woman identified in the case as “Jane Doe #5” because the state was “unable to proceed” with her charges.
The allegations against Weinstein by dozens of women – published by The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017 – were a driving force behind the #MeToo movement. During his New York sentencing in March 2020, Weinstein compared the #MeToo movement and his situation to the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s, during which Hollywood professionals were blacklisted for alleged support of communism.