Harvey Weinstein gets 23 years in prison for rape
Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein was slammed Wednesday with a 23-year prison sentence for raping an aspiring actress and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant.
Justice James Burke handed down the stiff sentence – which is six years short of maximum penalty — to the fallen Hollywood kingpin inside a rapt 15th-floor Manhattan Supreme courtroom.
Weinstein, 67, was convicted last month of two felony counts — third-degree rape for a 2013 attack on one-time aspiring actress and hairdresser Jessica Mann and criminal sexual act in the first degree for forcibly performing oral sex on former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi in 2006.
Burke told Weinstein that he is certifying the disgraced movie mogul as a sex offender before he sentenced him to 20 years in prison on the criminal sex act charge and three years in prison on the rape count. The sentences will be served consecutively.
“I will say that although this is a first conviction, it is not a first offense,” said Burke.
All six accusers including Mann, Haleyi and “The Sopranos” actress Annabella Scirorra who testified against the disgraced movie mogul during the landmark #MeToo-era rape trial attended the sentencing and were seated in the front row next to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance.
Haleyi gasped and the women hugged and cried in the courtroom as Weinstein was hit with the lengthy sentence.
Supporters lined up in the hallway of the courthouse ahead of the sentencing and afterwards clapped as the band of women entered and exited the courtroom.
Some shouted “justice” as the accusers walked out after the sentencing.
Actress Rosie Perez — who was called by the defense during the trial and recalled for jurors the moment Sciorra whispered her over the phone that she was raped — sat in the second row during the sentencing next to lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents some of the accusers.
At the start of the sentencing, Weinstein, wearing a navy blue suit with his hands in cuffs, was wheeled into the courtroom. His handcuffs were removed after he entered.
Weinstein, who did not testify during the trial, spoke to the court ahead of his sentencing in a rambling address.
“First of all, to all the women who testified, we may have different truths. I have great remorse for all the men and women going through this crisis right now in our country,” said Weinstein.
Referring to the #MeToo movement, Weinstein said, “You know, the movement started basically with me, and I think what happened, you know, I was the first example, and now there are thousands of men who are being accused and a generation of things that I think none of us understood.”
Weinstein said he had “wonderful times” with his accusers.
“I’m totally confused and I think men are confused,” Weinstein said, adding, “I’m worried about this country in a sense too.”
“I really feel remorse of this situation,” Weinstein said. “I feel it deeply in my heart.”
The disgraced king of Hollywood claimed he “had no great powers in this industry” and said that Miramax, a company Weinstein co-founded, “at the height of its fame was a small firm.”
“I wasn’t about power. I was about making great movies. I was a perfectionist, and I think I drove myself crazy.”
Weinstein said that if he could “do it over again,” he would “care less about the movies and care more about my children, family and other people and friends.”
Both Mann and Haleyi delivered emotional victim impact statements before Weinstein was sentenced.
“What he did not only stripped me of my dignity as a human being and woman, but crushed by confidence faith in my professional future. It diminished any confidence and faith in people and myself,” said Haleyi, who had tearfully testified that Weinstein invited her to his Soho apartment, where he held her down and forcibly performed oral sex on her on July 10, 2006.
She said Weinstein “had crushed a part of my spirit and he made me feel well, awkward and insecure” and that the past couple of years “have been excruciating.”
“I have lived in fear and paranoia on a daily basis in fear of retaliation, paranoid my every move was being tracked and monitored having learned of the methods Harvey Weinstein has used to intimidate and silence people,” Haleyi said.
Mann, who completely broke down and hyperventilated on the witness stand when she testified last month, told the judge during her victim impact statement that “those were the screams of a terrified young woman reliving experiences of horrific violence against her body. Those were the screams that will forever haunt those who witnessed me.”
Mann testified that Weinstein raped her on March 18, 2013, inside the DoubleTree hotel in Midtown Manhattan after he injected an erectile dysfunction drug into his penis.
She claimed Weinstein raped her another time later that year in Los Angeles, but Weinstein was not charged in that alleged incident.
“I had to endure his penis raping me on his time,” Mann said during her victim impact statement. “I wish I had been able to fight him while he raped me.”
Mann said Weinstein’s crimes were “crimes against humanity — not just crimes against me.”
“Rape is not just one moment of penetration. It is forever … the impact will last a lifetime,” said Mann, who added, “I ask to be given the gift of knowing exactly where Harvey is at all times, so that I can truly live.”
She also told the judge that Weinstein had “threatened my father with an old-school Mafia bat beatdown.”
The seven-man, five-woman jury who oversaw the historic trial found the once-powerful Tinseltown tycoon guilty in a mixed verdict on Feb. 24 following five days of grueling deliberations.
Jurors acquitted Weinstein of the top two charges of predatory sexual assault — which each carried a life sentence — and rape in the first degree involving Mann.
The predatory sexual assault charges hinged in part on the allegations of Sciorra, who claimed Weinstein raped her 27 years ago at her Gramercy Park apartment.
“Each of these ladies represent the strength and fortitude of every moral person who stands up and says, ‘Enough,’” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told the court ahead of the sentencing.
Weinstein, the prosecutor said, “enjoyed the wealth” and “had the resources and he held the dreams of many people in his hands.”
“How did he use that power,” Illuzzi-Orbon said. “He got drunk on the power.”
As Illuzzi-Orbon asked the judge to give Weinstein the maximum sentence, she said Weinstein “has been using and abusing people his entire life.”
Weinstein faced a minimum of five years in prison.
His team of high-powered lawyers filed legal documents late Monday pleading with the judge to give Weinstein — who has diabetes and who used a walker throughout the duration of the criminal trial following back surgery — the minimum five-year sentence on the claim that he likely won’t survive behind bars any longer than that.
The minimum sentence would essentially be “a de facto life sentence,” Weinstein’s attorneys wrote in a letter to Burke.
Defense attorneys Arthur Aidala and Donna Rotunno spoke Wednesday on behalf of their shamed producer client, who is behind flicks like “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” to ask the judge for leniency.
Aidala began by saying that the average sentence on the rape count is 8.5 years.
“We did our research and we did our homework and what we came up with is what the court not only knows, but in other cases has agreed,” Aidala said.
Rotunno went on to say that it was “never a possibility” for Weinstein to have “a fair trial.”
“But Mr. Weinstein came in with the forces of the media. The forces of the world pushing against the chance for him to ever have a real impartial jury in this case,” Rotunno said.
Rotunno said Weinstein “is a sick man … Mr. Weinstein has a history of heart disease in his family.”
“When you look at the allegation in this courtroom, we see one very small side of who Mr. Weinstein really is,” she said. “What we don’t see is the other side and the other things he has done… because he built careers and was known as someone who did that, everyone wanted a piece of.”
Weinstein had been remanded into custody following last month’s guilty verdict.
His attorneys have said they will appeal the filmmaker’s conviction.
Weinstein, a father of five, was transferred to the North Infirmary Command on Rikers Island last week after spending nearly two weeks at Bellevue Hospital Center, where he underwent a heart procedure.
He will be transferred out of the city’s jail system and to the state prison system “in the near future,” according to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
According to the agency, individuals with special medical needs are ultimately placed in a state facility that “not only meets their medical needs, but also their mental health and security needs.”
He is now expected to be transferred out of the city’s jail system and to the state prison system.
Haleyi, Mann and Sciorra took the stand over the course of the trial, as well as three “prior bad acts” witnesses — model Lauren Young, waitress Tarale Wulff and aspiring actress Dawn Dunning — who all testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted them.
Sciorra told the jury that Weinstein barged into her Gramercy Park apartment in the winter months of 1993 and 1994, held her down by her wrists and violently raped her before ejaculating on her heirloom nightie.
Weinstein’s defense team had argued that the accusers had consensual sex with the movie titan that they later regretted and only “relabeled” as rape for the jury.
The former Hollywood powerbroker has maintained his innocence from the onset of the case, pleading not guilty to all of the charges and claiming that all of his sexual encounters were consensual.
Since 2017, when the New York Times and The New Yorker published bombshell exposés into allegations of sexual abuse by the producer, he has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 90 women.
Newly unsealed court papers revealed Tuesday that Weinstein’s own brother, Bob Weinstein, emailed his sibling that year amid the landslide of allegations, telling him that he belonged in hell.
“F—k u Harvey Weinstein. I pray there is a real hell. That’s where u belong,” Bob Weinstein wrote in the Nov. 2, 2017, email to his older brother.
Meanwhile, Vance released a statement saying, “We thank the court for imposing a sentence that puts sexual predators and abusive partners in all segments of society on notice.”
“We thank the survivors for their remarkable statements today and indescribable courage over the last two years. Harvey Weinstein deployed nothing less than an army of spies to keep them silent,” Vance said. “But they refused to be silent, and they were heard. Their words took down a predator and put him behind bars, and gave hope to survivors of sexual violence all across the world.”
Weinstein, who turns 68 on Mar. 19, now faces a second sex crimes trial in Los Angeles.
Harvey Weinstein, who turns 68 on March 19, now faces a second sex crimes trial in Los Angeles.
As his Manhattan trial was about to get underway, Weinstein was hit with sex assault charges in LA stemming from two separate incidents on two days over 2013.
The accusations of Young — who testified at the Manhattan trial that Weinstein sexually assaulted her at the Montage Beverly Hills hotel — partially make up the basis of the criminal charges brought by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.