What the Courtroom Was Like as Harvey Weinstein Was Sentenced to 23 Years for Sex Assaults

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Hours after being sentenced to 23 years in prison, disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized for chest pains.

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Earlier Weinstein had been transferred to Rikers Island, and was then taken to Bellevue Hospital Center to be evaluated, CNN reported, citing a statement from his spokesman Juda Engelmayer. 

Weinstein was convicted last month of third-degree rape and first degree criminal sexual assault based on the testimony of actress Jessica Mann and former production assistant Miriam Haleyi.

The two women gave powerful victim’s impact statements before the sentencing on Wednesday. 

“He crushed part of my spirit,” Haleyi said. “If he was not convicted it would have happened again and again. There are women who are safer because he is not out there.” 

“It is time people who rape other people pay with their life and the life they took,” Mann said.

Weinstein also addressed the court in a rambling statement widely viewed as a denunciation of the #MeToo movement.

“I was the first and now there are thousands of men who are being accused. In this generation, none of us understood,” he said. 

When the sentence came down, there was an audible gasp inside the courtroom. The six women who testified against Weinstein were sitting in the front row and started embracing one another and sobbing. Weinstein was then handcuffed to his wheelchair, wheeled out of the courtroom and bussed to Rikers Island..

Outside court, women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred held up a sign that said: “This is what justice looks like,  20 + 3 years.” 

Weinstein’s attorney expressed outrage at the lengthy sentence, calling it “obscene” and vowed to appeal.

Weinstein is set to be eventually transferred to a medical unit at Fishkill Correctional, 73 miles north of New York City.

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