Harvey Weinstein Sentencing Delayed As He Seeks New Trial in Los Angeles
Harvey Weinstein Update – Credit: Etienne Laurent-Pool/Getty Images
Harvey Weinstein won a six-week reprieve on Monday for his Los Angeles rape conviction, after his lawyers said he plans to file a motion for a new trial.
The disgraced movie mogul, 70, was due to be sentenced on Monday for raping and sexually assaulting an Italian actress in 2013 at a Los Angeles hotel, but Judge Lisa Lench postponed the day of reckoning to February 23 to give him time for his defense to prepare. their argument for another trial.
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“We’re going to file by January 31st,” Weinstein’s attorney Mark Werksman tells Rolling Stone, declining to elaborate on possible reasons for the motion for a new trial.
“He’s hanging in there,” Werksman says of his client. “You’ll see us find a way to reverse this conviction.”
Judge Lench said Monday that she would hear Weinstein’s plea for a mistrial at the Feb. 23 sentencing hearing and proceed with her sentencing if his motion is denied.
Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence outside New York after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in Manhattan in 2020, faces up to 18 years in prison for his conviction in Los Angeles.
Weinstein was convicted on December 19 of rape, forcible oral intercourse and sexual penetration from a foreign object for his February 2013 attack on an Italian actress at the Mr. C on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. Jurors heard during the nearly two-month trial that Weinstein broke into the victim’s hotel room and raped her while she was in town for an annual festival celebrating Italian films.
A jury that deliberated for 10 days failed to reach verdicts on rape and oral sex charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and a sexual assault charge involving accuser Lauren Young.
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Weinstein was acquitted of allegedly sexually assaulting masseur Juls Bindi at a Beverly Hills hotel in May 2010.
Los Angeles prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek a retrial on the charges that ended in trial.
Siebel Newsom, who publicly identified herself as Jane Doe 4, testified during the trial that Weinstein invited her to the Peninsula Hotel in 2005 with the promise of discussing her acting career. She said he cornered her in a suite and forced her to perform multiple sexual acts over her apparent protests.
Young, who also testified in Weinstein’s previous case in New York, said Weinstein assaulted her in a hotel room at the Montage Beverly Hills in February 2013.
Many of Weinstein’s accusers cheered his conviction last month despite the one-sided verdict, calling it an insurance policy against his release in the event his conviction in New York is overturned on appeal.
“I am grateful that he will have more time [in prison]. The stress for me and the other survivors was knowing if he was free, he would do it again. So the knowledge that he can’t do it anymore is the greatest gift to all of us,” Louisette Geiss — a songwriter, former actress and Weinstein accuser who served as a new witness for Siebel Newsom’s complaint during trial in LA.Guri.
“We were all concerned that he would somehow walk away from 23 years in New York because you look at Bill Cosby,” she said, referring to the shocking decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s conviction.
“Once we all knew that Cosby would be free after the horrible and despicable things he did, every survivor began to feel that it was possible and believable that Weinstein could get out. That’s why each of us took the time to get up and do it again,” Geiss said.
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