Harvey Weinstein found guilty of sex crime at retrial in New York, acquitted on one charge
Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of committing a sex crime by a jury in New York, more than a year after the state Supreme Court overturned his 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges.
A jury of seven women and five men returned a partial verdict on Wednesday, finding Weinstein guilty of a first-degree criminal sexual act. The jury acquitted him on a second count of first-degree criminal sexual act, and it did not reach a unanimous verdict on a count of third-degree rape. Jurors will continue to deliberate on the third-degree rape count on Thursday, NBC News reported.
This time around, the charges stemmed from allegations that Weinstein raped aspiring actor Jessica Mann in 2013 and that he forcibly performed oral sex on two others, former 'Project Runway' production assistant Miriam Haley and former model Kaja Sokola in 2006. Sokola's accusation was not included in Weinstein's first trial.
The jury on Wednesday found him guilty of committing a criminal sex act against Haley; it found him not guilty on the charge related to Sokola; and it will continue to deliberate on the rape charge as it relates to Mann.
Weinstein has maintained that all of the sexual encounters were consensual. He did not testify in this trial or during his 2020 trial.
Weinstein's conviction comes more than five years after he was convicted of felony sex crimes at his first Manhattan trial, which was a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Then, in early 2023, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of sex crimes in Los Angeles. He was ordered to serve those sentences consecutively, essentially ensuring that the once-powerful entertainment mogul, now 73, would spend the rest of his life in prison.
But his New York conviction was overturned by the state's high court in April 2024, after the justices determined in a 4-3 ruling that he did not get a fair trial. Almost immediately after, Manhattan prosecutors said that they would seek a retrial.
Since then, Weinstein has been languishing in New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail, with his attorneys saying that the facility's conditions have exacerbated his health issues.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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