Harvey Weinstein | File Photo
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison for the rape of a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel room a decade ago.

The sentence was handed down by a Los Angeles court. Mr. Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence for his separate 2020 conviction in New York for sex crimes.

It increases the likelihood that the Academy Award-winning “Shakespeare in Love” producer, 70, will spend the remainder of his life in prison — though he is appealing in both cases.

In December, he was convicted by a Los Angeles jury of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object of a European actress whose identity was not revealed.

The court heard explicit accounts of meetings between the previously influential movie producer and several young women who were attempting to find a foothold in Hollywood.

Prosecutors said Mr. Weinstein exploited and abused women for years, and long enjoyed impunity because of his then-powerful position in the industry.

The women would have risked losing their future Hollywood job prospects if they had publicly accused Mr. Weinstein at the time, prosecutors said.

Mr. Weinstein was ultimately convicted in the Los Angeles case of assaulting one woman, but acquitted of sexual battery involving a second.

The jury did not reach a verdict on charges relating to the alleged assaults of two other women, one of whom was identified by her lawyers as Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the now-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers had filed a defense motion requesting either a new trial or a reduced verdict, alleging they were precluded from admitting important evidence about the rape victim — including Facebook messages with an alleged lover which the judge deemed irrelevant — and that their cross-examination was limited.

But Judge Lisa Lench denied the motion, and sentencing went ahead.

In New York last June, Weinstein lost his first appeal against his criminal verdict and sentence in the state’s intermediate appellate court.

But he has also further appealed that case to the higher New York Court of Appeals.