Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape, sexual assault in Los Angeles trial

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was found guiltyon three counts of rape and sexual assault by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury on Monday.

Weinstein, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence for sexual assault in New York, was convicted of the 2013 rape and sexual assault of one of the four women who testified against him during the trial. He was also acquitted of one count, and the jury could not reach a verdict on the counts remaining, the Associated Press reported. Weinstein pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the trial.

The jury began deliberations on Dec. 2 and reached its decision more than two weeks later on Dec. 19.

This is Weinstein's second sexual assault trial in recent years. In 2020, a New York jury found him guilty of committing a first degree criminal sex act and third degree rape against two women. He was granted a chance to appeal his conviction by a New York City judge in August. If that conviction is upheld, he would serve the remaining 21 years of his sentence. If it is overturned, he faces up to 24 years in prison in California.

While delivering her closing arguments on Thursday, Martinez described Weinstein as a "predator" who lured unsuspecting women into his hotel rooms before masturbating at them, groping them, or raping them, per the Associated Press. "Hotels were his trap," she said. "Confined within those walls, victims were not able to run from his hulking mass. People were not able to hear their screams, they were not able to see them cower."

Alongside his four accusers, 44 witnesses testified in the five-week-long trial, including an additional four women who also testified to Weinstein's propensity for committing such heinous acts. "These are eight women who do not know each other," Martinez told the jury, per the outlet. "They all describe the same conduct by the same man."

In his closing speech, Weinstein's attorney Alan Jackson told the jury that the claims against the media mogul were nothing but "smoke and mirrors," per AP. Jackson said that the two women who accused Weinstein of rape and sexual assault engaged in "100 percent consensual" sexual activity with him in 2005 and 2010 in order to further their careers, but were "desperate to relabel" their interactions following the #MeToo movement.

Jackson added that the other two accounts, made by women who claimed Weinstein sexually assaulted them in 2013, "simply never happened," the outlet reported. "They played the game. They hate it now, unequivocally," Jackson said. "But what about then? What about before the 2017 dogpile started on Mr. Weinstein?"

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