NEW YORK: The first time Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to prison, reporters, advocates and the curious public crammed the courtroom to witness the disgraced Hollywood honcho’s #MeToo reckoning.
Hours later, the world began shutting down as the COVID-19 pandemic raged. Now, after an overturned conviction and two retrials, Weinstein is set to be sentenced again on Wednesday for one of the same crimes - more than six years after his first sentencing in March 2020.
Weinstein, 74, faces up to 25 years in prison for sexually assaulting a one-time TV production assistant, Miriam Haley, at his Manhattan apartment in 2006. He has already served more than six years as his case has cycled again and again through the criminal justice system. Haley gave her account of the assault at two trials.
"The unthinkable was happening,” Haley testified last year, dabbing her eyes.
Haley, who has also gone by the name Mimi Haleyi, is planning to speak at Weinstein’s sentencing, her lawyer, Gloria Allred, said. Weinstein will also address the court, his spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said.
The Oscar-winning "Pulp Fiction” and "Shakespeare in Love” producer was originally sentenced to 23 years in prison after a jury convicted him of assaulting Haley and raping an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, in 2013.
But New York’s highest court erased those guilty verdicts in 2024, ruling that Weinstein was prejudiced by testimony from other women whose allegations weren’t part of the case.
Tried for a second time last year, Weinstein was again convicted of first-degree criminal sex act for assaulting Haley.
After another retrial ended in a hung jury in May, Manhattan prosecutors dropped the rape charge rather than pursue a fourth trial after Mann said she could not bear to testify again.
That decision cleared the way for Weinstein’s sentencing.
Manhattan prosecutors have said they will ask for 20 years in prison - which would keep him behind bars until at least his late 80s.
Weinstein’s lawyers haven’t said what sentence they’ll seek. He denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone. Once he’s sentenced, he can appeal.
"I will be proven innocent. That I promise you,” Weinstein told The Hollywood Reporter in a jailhouse interview in March.
Weinstein is also awaiting resentencing in a separate rape case in Los Angeles. A California appeals court upheld the 2022 conviction but threw out his original 16-year sentence because the judge had considered his New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor.
After shuffling between state prison, where he tested positive for COVID-19 early in the pandemic, and New York City’s notorious Rikers Island complex, the ailing Weinstein is now housed at a medical unit for jail inmates at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
His health issues in recent years have included chronic myeloid leukemia, diabetes and walking difficulties that necessitate a wheelchair to get in and out of court, his lawyers said. Two years ago, he underwent emergency surgery to remove fluid on his heart and lungs.