LA – After a jury found Danny Masterson guilty on two of three counts of rape in his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a significant part, “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs on Wednesday. He faces a prison sentence of 30 years to life.
Masterson’s wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, who had sat stony-faced throughout both trials, gasped when the conviction was pronounced and sobbed as he was brought into custody.
After debating for seven days over two weeks, the jury of five men and seven women decided. On the third count, which claimed Masterson had sexually assaulted a previous girlfriend, they could not reach a decision. The verdict had received an 8-4 vote in favor.
Masterson, 47, will remain behind bars until his sentence is rendered. There is no established date for sentencing.
“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, and sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behaviour,” said one of the women, who Masterson knew as a fellow churchgoer and was found guilty of rape at his home in 2003.
In the statement, a second woman, a former girlfriend whose count caused the jury to reach a deadlock, said: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, I am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.”
Masterson’s representatives declined to comment, although it is almost clear they will appeal.
Prosecutors retried Masterson in December after a deadlocked jury resulted in a mistrial. They said that between 2001 and 2003, he drugged and brutally raped three women at his Hollywood Hills home. All three women were church members then, and they claimed he utilized his status there to evade punishment for many years.
The three women bravely came forward and revealed their stories, and for that, we are grateful, said Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in a statement following the verdict on Wednesday.
Masterson’s attorneys cited no witnesses, and he declined to testify. The defense asserted that the acts were consensual and worked to undermine the women’s accounts by calling attention to changes and contradictions that they claimed indicated coordination between the parties.
Masterson, 47, will remain behind bars until his sentence is rendered. There is no established date for sentencing.
In his closing argument, defense attorney Philip Cohen reminded the jury of their instructions and said, “You should consider not believing anything the witness says if you find that a witness in this case intentionally lied about something.
The Church of Scientology had a major impact in the first trial, but it may have been even more influential in the second trial. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo permitted expert testimony on church policy from a former member of the leadership of Scientology who has since become a well-known adversary.
In a statement following the verdict, the Church said that the “inclusion of religion in this trial was an unprecedented violation of the First Amendment and impacted the due process rights of every American. The Church was not a party to this action, and according to centuries-old Supreme Court tradition, religion had no place in this legal process.
The accusers said on the witness stand that they were intimidated by certain Scientologists in the courtroom due to the high tension between current and former Scientologists.
Leah Remini, an actor and former church member who has emerged as its most prominent critic, occasionally attended the trial and held one of the accusers close to her during closing statements.
According to Remini, the two guilty convictions in the retrial are “a relief,” she wrote on Twitter. Heroes are the ladies who escaped Danny Masterson’s harassment. They have endured violent attacks and harassment from Danny’s well-funded legal team and Scientology for years, she wrote in her post. However, they persisted in their quest for justice.
Two of the accusers have filed a civil action regarding the alleged harassment.
Masterson, 47, will remain behind bars until his sentence is rendered. There is no established date for sentencing.
Scientology states, “There is not a scintilla of evidence supporting the scandalous allegations that the Church harassed the accusers.”
L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in 1953 with many Hollywood-based adherents. The judge set restrictions on how much the prosecution may discuss the Church and mostly allowed it to be used as an excuse for why the women delayed so long to contact the police.
The women stated that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were informed that they had not been sexually assaulted, were required to participate in ethics training, and counseled against reporting a member of such high standing to criminal enforcement.
Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller’s closing statement to the jury stated, “They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against.” They were taught by science that there is no justice for them.
“Testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” during the trial, according to the Church, were “uniformly false.”
“The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement,” the statement read.
Olmedo will hold a hearing the following week to establish how a lawyer for the Church of Scientology obtained information that the prosecution had sent to the defense. Links that the attorney unintentionally included in an email to Mueller served as the basis for the evidence.
People who claim they have been sexually abused are not routinely named by The Associated Press.
In this case, the testimony was explicit and intense.
According to the two women whose evidence resulted in Masterson’s conviction, he served them drinks in 2003, causing them to get drunk or pass out before he viciously raped them.
The third witness, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years, said she awoke to discover him raping her and had to yank his hair to stop him. Her testimony caused the jury to reach a deadlock.
Olmedo only let the ladies describe their state in the first trial but enabled the accusers and the prosecution to directly state that Masterson drugged the women in the second trial.
There were no drug-related charges against Masterson, and there was no toxicology data to support the claim.
The allegations were made when Masterson was at the height of his fame, appearing as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” from 1998 to 2006, the program that launched the careers of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, and Topher Grace.
On the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” Masterson reconnected with Kutcher, but the project was canceled when an LAPD investigation became public in December 2017.
SOURCE – (AP)
