Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted Monday of three counts of sexual assault in Los Angeles and acquitted of another. The jury failed to reach a verdict on three other counts, the Wall Street Journal reports. Weinstein, once one of the most powerful men in the movie business, was convicted of forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration with a foreign object, and rape, all against the same woman. He was acquitted of sexual battery by restraint against a different woman. The charges that didn't result in a verdict involved sex acts against two additional women. Weinstein was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual assault in 2020 in New York. He was acquitted of charges related to predatory sexual assault.
He could face decades in prison in California. He was sentenced to a 23-year term in New York. The jury will hear arguments Tuesday that could help determine the length of his California term. One accuser whose charge against Weinstein wasn’t decided by the jury was Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. She said Weinstein "will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs.” Weinstein saw his empire collapse after allegations of sexual harassment puiblished in 2017 by the New York Times and the New Yorker. The articles led to the #MeToo movement as women shared stories of sexual assaults in the workplace and beyond. In the California case, Weinstein, 70, argued that there was no physical evidence, that two of the accusers were lying and the other two were reframing consensual relationships to capitalize on the #MeToo movement.
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