Jailed film producer Harvey Weinstein, 74, was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting his former assistant Miriam Haley, NBC News reported. Speaking in court, Weinstein again denied the accusations, but apologized to everyone he said he had “harmed through his actions.”
In 2017, Weinstein was accused by a number of women, including actresses with whom he worked, of sexualized violence, including rape, as part of the Me Too movement. First, the accusations were made in the media, and then the producer was arrested and put on trial in New York and California. He was sentenced to 23 and 16 years in prison, respectively, for a number of sex crime charges.
The first conviction, however, was overturned in 2024 by the New York Court of Appeals. The decision was explained by the fact that the judge made a “gross mistake” by adding to the case the testimony of other possible victims of the producer in those incidents that were not considered by the court at that time.
Miriam Haley's case was then re-examined in 2025 along with two other cases based on the testimony of actress Jessica Mann and former model Kaya Sokola. In the end, the jury found Weinstein guilty of the Haley episode and acquitted him of the Sokola-related charges. The panel failed to reach a final decision on Jessica Mann's rape charge, and the judge declared the trial null and void because the senior juror refused to deliberate. In court, he stated that he was threatened with physical violence by another member of the board if he did not take the side of the majority.
Judge Curtis Farber ruled on Wednesday, September 23, that after serving his new 15-year sentence, Weinstein will remain under administrative supervision in New York for an additional five years. He will also be placed on the sex offenders register.
“I am not a perfect person, but I am a person who has made mistakes,” Weinstein said in court, adding that he is “not violent.”
Haley previously told the court that in July 2006, Weinstein invited her to “come say hello” to his apartment in the SoHo district of New York. According to her, shortly after her arrival, the producer drove her into the bedroom, forced her onto the bed and forced her to perform sexual acts, the New York Times reports.
Weinstein rose to fame as the founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company, which produced a number of successful films in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, including Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and other films.
As Variety notes, now a court in California will have to re-determine Weinstein’s sentence in the case of rape and sexualized violence against former actress and model Evgenia Chernyshova. Judge Farber said it was up to the California court to determine whether Weinstein would serve this sentence simultaneously with the New York one or consecutively. A date for a new hearing has not yet been set.
Weinstein previously said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that due to his health condition, he was kept in the medical unit of Rikers prison separately from the bulk of prisoners. He spends 23 hours a day in his cell, and his only interlocutors in the colony are guards and nurses. The convict has serious medical conditions, including chronic myeloid leukemia (bone marrow cancer), heart disease, insomnia, thyroid problems, obesity and chronic back pain.
