Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape in Los Angeles trial | CBC News

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.

After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York.

Weinstein, 70, was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury was hung on several counts, notably charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The jury reported it was unable to reach verdicts in her allegations and the allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those counts.

Weinstein was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman.

“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing argument last week. “It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.”

Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of assaults Weinstein’s accusers said happened from 2005 to 2013, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the centre of the charges.

The accusers included Newsom, a documentary filmmaker, whose intense and emotional testimony of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial its most dramatic moments.