L.A. prosecutors decline to retry Weinstein following December deadlock
L.A. prosecutors announced Tuesday that Harvey Weinstein will not be retried on rape and sexual assault charges after a jury deadlocked in December. The charges were formally dismissed Tuesday.
After 10 days of deliberation, a Los Angeles jury found disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein guilty of one count of rape on December 19, 2022.
Weinstein, 70, was charged in Los Angeles with seven sexual assault counts involving four women: three counts of forcible rape, two counts of sexual battery by restraint, one count of forcible oral copulation, and one count of sexual penetration by a foreign object. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In addition to the one count of rape, Weinstein was found guilty of forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count relating to one of the four victims.
The jury did not reach a verdict on charges relating to two other alleged victims, one of whom was Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. With no verdicts relating to the allegations from these two women, the court declared a mistrial.
As a result of the decision, the charges were formally dismissed Tuesday. Weinstein was sentenced in February to 16 years in prison for the charges on which he was convicted for sexually assaulting a model-actress in a Los Angeles hotel room a decade ago.
He was acquitted of a sexual battery charge brought forth by a massage therapist who treated Weinstein at a hotel in 2010.
Weinstein is already serving a 23-year prison sentence for his convictions for sexually assaulting two women in New York. Weinstein's sentence in Los Angeles will be served consecutively to his sentence in the New York case.
The former Hollywood mogul and co-founder of the entertainment company Miramax — which produced movies like "Pulp Fiction" and "Shakespeare in Love" and which became ground zero for a litany of sex abuse allegations that came to light with the rise of the #MeToo movement — originally faced 11 charges in Los Angeles that, when taken together, could have amounted to a 65-year prison sentence had the jury found him guilty on all counts.
