Weinstein Will Be Resentenced in California Rape Case


A California appellate court on Friday rejected a bid by Harvey Weinstein to overturn a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles, but ruled that the disgraced film producer would have to be resentenced by the lower court.

The decision, unanimously issued by a three-judge panel on the California Second District Court of Appeal, came a day after a New York judge dismissed a rape charge against Mr. Weinstein at the request of prosecutors.

Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said in a statement Friday that Mr. Weinstein would continue to appeal the California conviction because “significant legal issues deserve further consideration.”

“We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the court’s conclusions,” she said. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court.”

Mr. Weinstein, 74, once one of the most powerful figures in show business, has been entangled in criminal cases for years, facing several trials in New York and California after scores of women claimed he had used his position as a Hollywood power broker to abuse and sexually assault them.

Juries have deadlocked and a conviction has been overturned, but Mr. Weinstein remains behind bars on Rikers Island in New York. He has been in jail or prison since 2020 and is to be sentenced in September for a criminal sexual act in New York. Manhattan prosecutors have asked for a 20-year sentence.

Friday’s opinion in California stemmed from a prosecution in Los Angeles Superior Court in January 2020, focused in part on allegations that Mr. Weinstein had raped a woman identified as Jane Doe 1 in a hotel room in February 2013. Prosecutors called 44 witnesses, including four women who said they had been assaulted by Mr. Weinstein. Their accounts were not tied to the charges, but their testimony was allowed to show a pattern of abuse.

He was convicted in December 2022 of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object, but he was acquitted on four other counts. At his sentencing, Mr. Weinstein argued that the case against him was not solid and did not justify a long prison term, and asked the judge for leniency.

“I tried all my life to bring happiness to people,” he said in court. “Please don’t sentence me to life in prison. I don’t deserve it.”

He ultimately was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Mr. Weinstein appealed the California conviction last year, arguing that he did not receive a fair trial.

Writing on behalf of the California appeals court panel, Justice Michelle C. Kim rejected that claim and upheld the guilty verdict.

Judge Lisa Lench of Los Angeles County Superior Court had based her sentence, in part, on Mr. Weinstein’s prior sexual assault conviction in New York. That has since been overturned, so Justice Kim determined that Mr. Weinstein was entitled to a new sentencing in Los Angeles.

The day before in New York, a state judge threw out the third-degree rape charge that Mr. Weinstein had faced after prosecutors decided not to pursue a fourth criminal trial against him. The Manhattan district attorney’s office moved to drop the charge after a mistrial in May, when a jury could not reach a verdict on whether Mr. Weinstein had raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013.



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