Harvey Weinstein appeals Los Angeles rape conviction

Harvey Weinstein, 72, appealed his conviction for sexually assaulting a model actress in a Los Angeles hotel room more than a decade ago. His attorneys filed in the Second District Court of Appeal on Friday a year after indicating their intention for a new trial in the 2022 Los Angeles case.

The model-actress is one of the four women involved in the case against Weinstein, who was found guilty of the sexual assault charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a Los Angeles courtroom in February 2023. Weinstein’s attorneys received a series of extensions over the past year from the court to allow them more time to prepare the documents.

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Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object in February 2013, on a woman identified only as Jane Doe No. 1. The jury at the time could not come to a unanimous decision on three other charges, including one related to Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

The jury acquitted Weinstein of a felony charge of sexual battery by restraint involving an alleged attack on a masseuse, Jane Doe No. 3 in 2010, but deadlocked on a lesser count involving the same woman. 

The judge noted that the misdemeanor count was not charged, and the prosecution said in December that it didn’t intend to move forward involving that alleged victim.

Prosecutors later said they did not intend to retry Weinstein on the counts on which jurors deadlocked. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

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In appealing the conviction, Weinstein is hoping for a similar outcome as the one he received in New York, where an appeals court in April overturned his conviction on rape charges in that state. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison for that conviction. New York prosecutors are expected to retry the case.