Name: Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years on sex crime convictions
Uploaded: 2020-03-13T10:20:03.000Z
Duration: 7 min 22 s
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Harvey Weinstein is heading to prison Judge James Burke in New York City.

Weinstein was eligible for anywhere between five and 29 years in prison.

The former movie producer was convicted last month on a first degree criminal sexual act and third degree rape.

Let's get right to Ariel, Russia, whose live outside the Manhattan courtroom area Hi there, Diane.

This is seen as a severe sentence and perhaps a watershed moment for the me to movement.

Harvey Weinstein, sentenced to 23 years behind bars, 20 years for criminal sexual assault, three years for third degree rape.

Those sentences to be served consecutively.

He had been facing up to 29 bars, the judge showing very little mercy for Harvey Weinstein, saying that he will now be categorized as a sexual predator and as a sexual of prosecutors, had called Weinstein's criminality something that had been sustained over the course of many, many years and had been unchecked for decades.

Today he addressed the court for the first time.

We did not see him testify in his own defense during the trial.

But today he did speak today, and he said that he me to movement.

He likened it to the red Scare of the 19 fifties, saying that many men have been accused now just like him and without due process and fair trial.

He said that he barely showed any remorse.

Frankly, Diane, hardly any contrition from Harvey Weinstein as he faces now those 23 years are in a powerful moment.

Some of his accusers walked into court today, flanked by the prosecution Mimi Hayley and Jessica Man, the two women upon whom the testimony their testimony convicted Harvey Weinstein are those two charges, both of them delivering very emotional victim impact statements saying that those sexual assaults that occurred many years ago had had really had this lasting impact on their lives.

And this is truly a severe sentence, something Judge Burke handed down with a serious, serious conviction.

And Wei will see Harvey Weinstein to a processing facility where he will be evaluated Medically, there are three facilities here in New York where he could be housed.

Prisons in New York that could take care of him because he is 67 years old in relatively poor health.

And that is something that the defense had tried to focus on.

And now let's get some legal analysis on the sentence and the pending case in California.

Criminal defense attorney Julie Randleman joins me now on the phone.

Julie, what do you think about this sentence?

I admit I was probably the one that was not surprised.

My expectation was that he was going to give him anywhere between 15 and 20 with regards to the criminal sexual assault and that he was going to give consecutive time for the second accuser.

I think that the judge wanted to make sure that Harvey Weinstein and the public knew that he was separating those sentences to make sure he's held separately responsible for each of them.

And that's why I did it as a consecutive current.

I thought that was point telling in terms of how the judge felt about you know, the evidence, thank keyboard and the need for serious, serious jail time.

When it came to both of these cases, you may have expected it, but it sounds like that was not the general sentiment.

The general estimates seemed to becoming on the lower end of this range.

So what kind of a message do you think that this sends for other cases like this going forward?

Well, I think one of the thing that's interesting is that in a defense harped on the idea that he has no criminal record.

And I think one of the things that stood out, I assumed the judge was he had no criminal record arguably because he never got caught over all these years.

And I think that that is something that the judge considered when he made a determination as to what the appropriate sentence waas.

Now, how this reflects other cases where a defendant is Houston, literally.

I'm not sure because, you know, Harvey Weinstein is unique in the sense that he was able to get away with this for so many years.

Times are changing and We hope that people will be willing to come forward and will be heard by law enforcement much quicker.

And we know that he also has this pending trial in California.

What happens next, now that this sentencing is given in New York, so he's going to have to go to L.

And the question is, is he going to serve his New York time in L.

My guess is they're gonna bring him to L.

Because it's gonna be impossible to bring him back and forth, and he is then going to have to face child there.

Now, some people think that he's going to plead guilty because of what happened here.

I don't think there's a chance of that, because I think that he has a strong appeal once he gets to California, If he is convicted on the rape alone, he's looking at a maximum of eight years, and a judge there can give him concurrent time with what he's doing in New York or get him on additional eight years on top of the 20 years still reserving.

All right, Julie Randleman, we appreciate your analysis.

Julie and that we want to go back over the aerial.

Who's there outside the courtroom Aerial.

Having been in the courtroom when all this was happening, What was the tone like with the emotions, like in the courtroom, as Harvey Weinstein himself addresses the court, and then the victims get to hear the sentence come down?

Well, Diane, you can imagine the tension amount of emotion that led up to this event, culminating with Harvey Weinstein being sentenced to those 23 years behind bars.

Remember that the maximum here was 29 years, so very little difference there.

If you look at the degree of sentencing, we know that Harvey Weinstein declared himself quote, totally confused by this verdict by the me to movement, which he said appeared like McCarthyism as I mentioned as the Red Scare of the 19 fifties, saying that it's basically deprived other men, thousands of them, according to him, of due process.

Weinstein also casting himself, though as an empathetic character who was a father of several Children, saying that he will now not be able to be in contact with those Children and that he is essentially had this historic fall from grace since 2017 has been convicted in the court of public opinion but now has been convicted in this court of law.

It's a fall from grace, that's for sure, 23 years for Harvey Weinstein, and he still has another child's face in California.

If you've been covering it all for us, great work, Ariel, Thank you and thank you all for joining us.

That's all for us for this report, but we will have more on this story in all of today's top stories on ABC News live dot com will also be back here at noon for the latest on the Corona virus.

 Thanks for joining us, everybody stay safe. 