Harvey Weinstein set to be sentenced for sexual assault after 6-year
legal odyssey
[September 23, 2026]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK
NEW YORK (AP) — 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. In a messy split
verdict, the jury acquitted him of forcibly performing oral sex on
another woman, Kaja Sokola, and could not reach a verdict on a rape
charge involving Mann.
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.
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Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday, June
25, 2026 in New York. (Adam Gray/Pool Photo via AP,File)
 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.
Haley, 49, is a former entertainment producer now working in
advertising.
Born in Finland and raised in Sweden, she said she met Weinstein
through a mutual connection and worked briefly as a production
assistant on a reality competition show that he produced, “Project
Runway.”
Haley said she accepted an invitation to visit Weinstein’s Manhattan
apartment because it would have been odd to decline since she was
scheduled to fly to Los Angeles the next day on his company’s dime
to attend a film premiere.
After she and Weinstein briefly chatted on his living room sofa, he
lunged to kiss her, she testified. She said she leaped up and
rebuffed him, but he grabbed her, forcibly backed her into a bedroom
and sexually assaulted her, ignoring her pleas to stop.
She recalled Weinstein asking, “Don’t you think we’re much closer
now?” after either the alleged assault or a subsequent occasion when
she says she had unwanted, but not forced, sex with him.
She also recalled telling him after the second encounter, “You know
you can’t keep doing this.”
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they
are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which
Haley, Sokola and Mann have done.
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