The powerful movie mogul who was once hailed as ‘god’ by Meryl Streep has crashed back down to earth to face an ignominious fate.
Suddenly, none of his wealth or power mattered a damn.
The man who once held the lives and futures of who knows how many would-be Hollywood actresses in his grubby little hands, dangling their fondest hopes in front of them for the ‘small’ price of their physical autonomy and personal dignity found himself in a reversal where his own life and future was now in the hands of a judge.
Harvey Weinstein, the once influential Hollywood producer, was sentenced to 23 years in a New York State prison on Wednesday after his conviction on felony sex crimes, capping a two-year plummet from grace over his sexual abuse of women.
…A Manhattan jury of seven men and five women found Mr. Weinstein guilty on Feb. 25 of raping an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, at a Midtown hotel in 2013, and forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant, Miriam Haley, in his Lower Manhattan apartment in 2006.
After five days of deliberations, however, the jury acquitted Mr. Weinstein of the most serious charges against him: two counts of predatory sexual assault, which required prosecutors to prove that he had committed a serious sexual assault against at least two women.
Those charges, as constructed by prosecutors, required the jury to find Mr. Weinstein had raped the actress Annabella Sciorra in the early 1990s at her Gramercy Park apartment. But some jurors doubted her account. — NYTimes
Weinstein’s attorneys asked for the minimum sentence. They argued that anything more than 5 years would be a de facto life sentence in light of his current health problems.
But the judge handed down 23 years.
It’s safe to say, he’s going to be locked away for the rest of his miserable life.
And there’s still another criminal case against him pending.
