Weinstein’s Life Behind Bars Is Hospital Jails and TV Fights

A Powerless Weinstein Faces Hard Time: Best Not to Fight Over TV

Patricia Hurtado

10 Mar 2020, 10:28 PM IST

(Bloomberg) -- On Wednesday, fallen Hollywood power broker Harvey Weinstein will learn his fate from a New York state judge who could send the 67-year-old rapist to prison for almost three decades.

Here, legal experts sketch out Weinstein’s likely future.

What kind of time is Weinstein looking at?

The former movie mogul was convicted last month of a criminal sexual act, which carries a prison term of five to 25 years, and third-degree rape, for which he could get as long as four years. Because they are separate crimes involving different victims, New York State Supreme Court Justice James Burke could impose the two terms consecutively.

“I think Weinstein is looking at at least 10 to 25 years,” said Mark Bederow, a New York criminal defense lawyer and former state prosecutor in Manhattan. Both crimes are serious offenses, Bederow said, “plus he’s Harvey Weinstein,” a “public pariah,” and “there are dozens of other women he’s also accused of attacking. In a real world, it will be hard for the judge to ignore all the background noise.”

What will that time be like?

“New York state prisons are terrible,” Bederow said. “It’s not like the federal system. There are no tennis courts, no open plans and rolling lawns. It’s not like what you see in the movie ‘Goodfellas,’ where they’re making pasta sauce. Think ‘The Shawshank Redemption.’ Think high prison walls, guard towers and small crowded cells.” Bederow said that “for someone who’s lived the life Weinstein has, it’s going to be shocking.”

Weinstein’s Life Behind Bars Is Hospital Jails and TV Fights

Jeff Lichtman, a New York criminal defense lawyer who represented the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, offered some guidance.

“I tell clients: Keep to yourself, don’t talk about your case, don’t fight over the television, try not to get involved in political divisions inside prison,” Lichtman said. “Read books and try to get into a segregated population, preferably.”

What have prosecutors asked for?

Without specifying a term, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi on Friday told the judge in a letter that Weinstein deserved a sentence reflecting “a lifetime of abuse toward others, sexual and otherwise,” dating back to the 1970s. She alleged 16 instances of sexual harassment and assault for which he was never charged, and cited numerous other accounts of violence and intimidation.

Illuzzi said Weinstein had hurled staplers at staff, pushed people to lie for him, threatened to castrate a board member, told one victim he could send men with baseball bats after her father, put a journalist in a headlock and knocked his own brother, Bob Weinstein, unconscious at a business meeting. Prosecutors will ask Burke to consider Weinstein’s “total lack of remorse” and the need to deter him and others from similar conduct.

Burke can weigh it all, including uncharged crimes, said Lisa Linsky, the former chief of the Westchester County district attorney’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Bureau, now in private practice.

“The life history and contributions an offender has made to society generally are taken into account by a sentencing judge,” Linsky said. “Here, Weinstein has a lifetime of bullying and threatening, violent behavior that lacked compassion and empathy for the women he assaulted.”

What are Weinstein’s arguments for leniency?

Weinstein’s lawyers on Monday filed their own sentencing request with the court, asking for five years in prison.

“Mr. Weinstein’s life has been destroyed,” they wrote to Burke, referring to a fall “perhaps unmatched in the age of social media.” Their client has lost his livelihood and, given his age and health, doesn’t deserve “a de facto life sentence,” they argued.

Weinstein, who had a heart blockage cleared last week, according to a spokesman, and is recovering from a back surgery last year, is being held in an infirmary in New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex.

The defense noted that he was cleared of the more serious of two rape charges as well as two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carry terms as long as life in prison. Despite that and the absence of prior convictions, they said, any prison term “will no doubt prove much more difficult for Mr. Weinstein than for most other inmates” because of his notoriety.

Criminal defense lawyer Maurice Sercarz said the defense could argue for a break because the system isn’t set up to “differentiate between a young kid with a record of violence and gang affiliation and someone who’s 67, uses a walker and just had heart surgery.” Any sentence served in the state prison system “is going to be very hard time for Weinstein,” said Sercarz.

Where will Weinstein serve his time?

From Rikers he will be sent to the Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, a maximum-security prison where inmates from New York City receive a medical assessment by state correction officials before they’re assigned to a prison in the state. While Burke may recommend a facility -- such as one of the institutions with residential medical units, which include Coxsackie, Bedford Hills and Fishkill -- it will be up to state authorities to determine where Weinstein serves his time.

The length of the sentence Burke imposes may also be a factor in determining whether Weinstein goes to a maximum- or medium-security facility, state officials said.

What happens to the sexual assault charges in Los Angeles?

On the first day of his trial, Los Angeles prosecutors unveiled their own sex crimes indictment against Weinstein, with charges that carry a prison term as long as 28 years. Weinstein could be moved to a Southern California lockup to face trial there, Bederow said.

The case is People v. Weinstein, 450293/2018, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey