Harvey Weinstein case: Jury reaches verdict in Los Angeles trial

LOS ANGELES — Jurors have a reached a verdict in the sexual assault and rape trial of Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles.

The decision is expected to be announced in court Monday afternoon.

The 70-year-old former movie mogul was on trial for two rape counts and five sexual assault counts. The charges involve accusations from four women spanning from 2005 to 2013. The jury heard from 49 witnesses in more than four weeks of testimony.

Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction in New York and could be sentenced to more than 60 years in prison in California if convicted on all counts.

Jurors got the case Dec. 2 and deliberated for nine days over a span of more than two weeks, following a monthlong trial.

Whatever the result, Weinstein won’t be walking free. He still has more than 20 years left on a New York prison sentence after a rape and sexual assault conviction there.

Prosecutors urged jurors to believe the accounts of the four women, each of whom gave dramatic and emotional testimony about the allegations.

“You have irrefutable, overwhelming evidence of the nature of this man, and what he did to these women,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson told the jurors in his rebuttal to the closing argument delivered by the defense a day earlier.

Prosecutor compares Weinstein to wolf, predator in closing arguments

Weinstein’s attorneys emphasized the shortage of physical evidence in the case, and asked jurors to set aside the emotional impact of the testimony to focus on the changes several of the women’s stories had gone through in their conversations with authorities.

In his closing, Weinstein’s defense attorney Alan Jackson emphasized the absence of physical evidence of the assaults, none of which were reported to authorities until years later.

He told jurors two of the accusers were clearly lying, and the other two had reframed “transactional” and “100% consensual” sexual acts with Weinstein as assaults after he became a magnet for the #MeToo movement in 2017.

“Regret is not rape,” Jackson said.

Weinstein pleaded not guilty and denied engaging in any non-consensual sex.

The trial came just after the fifth anniversary of the blockbuster stories about Weinstein that made him a lightning rod for the #MeToo movement.