Celebrity
Danny Masterson Rape Case Ends in Mistrial After Jury Deadlock
A judge declared a mistrial in the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson on Wednesday after jurors deadlocked following the monthlong trial in which the Church of Scientology played a supporting role.
Prosecutors allege that Masterson raped three women, including a former girlfriend, in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003 and that the church kept them quiet for years. Masterson, 46, pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer stated that all acts were consensual.
“I find the jurors hopelessly deadlocked,” Judge Charlaine Olmedo declared after the jury foreman stated that the court could do nothing to move them closer to a unanimous decision. She scheduled a retrial in Los Angeles Superior Court for March.
Olmedo had ordered jurors to take Thanksgiving week off and continue deliberating after they said they couldn’t reach an agreement on Nov. 18. A jury of six women and six men resumed deliberations on Monday after two jurors were diagnosed with COVID-19 during the break.
According to the foreman, the jury voted seven times on Tuesday and Wednesday without deciding on any of the three counts. Two jurors supported conviction on the first count, four on the second count, and five on the third count.
As a result, prosecutors and the three women who said they were seeking long-overdue justice and gave emotional and graphic testimony over several days suffered a significant setback.
“Masterson has evaded criminal accountability for his deplorable acts,” two of the alleged victims in the case said in a statement. However, we are determined to continue our fight for justice.”
At the time, all three women were church members, and Danny Masterson is still one.
Two of the women and one of their husbands are suing Masterson, the Church of Scientology, its leader, David Miscavige, and others for allegedly stalking, harassing, and intimidating them after they attempted to expose Masterson.
Masterson walked out of the courtroom with his wife, actress and model Bijou Phillips, without speaking to reporters. Members of his showbiz family, his sisters-in-law, actor Mackenzie Phillips, singer and actress Chynna Phillips, and her husband, actor William Baldwin, accompanied him to court for several days.
The proceedings took place amid a flurry of #MeToo-related cases on both coasts, including Harvey Weinstein’s trial in Los Angeles, just down the hall from Masterson’s. In New York, Kevin Spacey won a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by actor Anthony Rapp, and in a civil case there, a jury ordered director and screenwriter Paul Haggis to pay $10 million.
But, as with the Haggis trial, the specter of Scientology overshadowed the #MeToo implications, despite the judge’s insistence that the church not become a de facto defendant.
According to Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller, the church attempted to silence the women, which is why the case took two decades to reach trial.
Masterson’s lawyer, Philip Cohen, claims the church was mentioned 700 times during the trial and claims it became an excuse for the prosecution’s failure to build a credible case against Masterson, a prominent Scientologist.
According to Karin Pouw, a church spokesperson, Mueller misrepresented church doctrine and beliefs, and Jane Does make false claims about Scientology.
“There is absolutely no truth to any of the testimony that the church harassed or stalked the Jane Does,” Pouw said.
Cohen stated that he would file a motion to dismiss the case based on the jury’s decision. He stated that jurors provided additional beneficial insights after the mistrial ruling, but he refused to discuss what they told him.
“As a lawyer, you always wonder if what you’re doing in court every day is making any inroads… with the jury,” Cohen explained. “We made inroads.”
The district attorney’s office expressed disappointment with the outcome and said it would consider its next steps. It praised the women for “stepping forward bravely and recounting their harrowing experiences.”
Jurors were led out of the courtroom without speaking to reporters.
Masterson did not appear in court. Cohen did not present any defense testimony, instead focusing on inconsistencies in the accounts of the three accusers, whom he claimed changed their stories over time and spoke with each other before going to the police.
During closing arguments, Cohen stated, “The key to this case was not when they reported it.” “That’s what they said when it was reported, what they said after reporting it. And what they said in court.”
Masterson, according to Mueller, was a man “for whom ‘no’ never meant ‘no.'”
Masterson allegedly served two women drinks, causing them to become woozy or pass out before being violently raped. One woman said she thought she would die as Masterson covered her face with a pillow.
An ex-girlfriend claimed she awoke to find Masterson having sex with her against her will. According to the defense, her claims were undermined because she later had sex with him after they split up.
Cohen told jurors that if they believed Masterson “actually and reasonably believed” the women consented to have sex, they could acquit him.
Mueller countered that no one would believe the acts described were consensual, reminding jurors that one woman told him “no,” pulled his hair, and tried to get out from under him repeatedly.
Mueller warned jurors not to be swayed by defense speculation and said contradictions in the victims’ testimony were signs of authenticity rather than scripted accounts.
The charges stem from when Masterson was at the pinnacle of his career, starring as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” from 1998 to 2006. The show, which made Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, and Topher Grace stars, is getting a Netflix reboot with “That ’90s Show.”
Masterson re-joined Kutcher on the Netflix comedy “The Ranch” but was fired when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.
Retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce destroyed a Penn State football fan’s phone after the alleged heckler called his brother, Travis Kelce, a fag.
In now-viral footage published on X (previously Twitter) on Saturday, Nov. 2, the retired Philadelphia Eagles great was seen accompanied by football fans outside Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., for the Penn State-Ohio State game.
As the individual capturing the tape lifted a fist to Jason, 36, and called his name for a fist bump, another man nearby hurled the homophobic slur at the retired Philadelphia Eagles star.
Hey, Kelce. How does it feel that your brother is a queer dating Taylor Swift?” the man questioned, referring to Travis, 34, who has been seeing Swift since 2023. Jason turned around seconds later, snatched the man’s phone, and crushed it to the ground.
“Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason,” the original X user who submitted the video remarked. “Wild scene in State College.”
“Kelce how does it feel that your brother is a f****t for dating Taylor Swift?”
Jason Kelce proceeded to slam this kids phone on the ground.
Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason. Wild scene in State College pic.twitter.com/3PEdZXWhSg
— Chives (@jarrett_daveler) November 2, 2024
Additional footage on X shows Jason smashing the phone on asphalt before picking it up and walking away. The phone’s owner, wearing a Penn State hoodie at the time of the incident, was shown in many videos strolling closely behind Jason and recording him before the conflict occurred.
Another footage published on X, which appears to have been filmed after Jason shattered the man’s phone, showed the hooded Penn State supporter trudging through a mob to pick up his phone off the ground.
“Give me my phone, bro,” he seemed to say to Jason.
The NFL alum seized the gadget first, then stood in front of the man and asked, “Who’s the fag now?” Others appeared to interfere.
The incident occurred while Jason was at Beaver Stadium for an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay. The Ohio State Buckeyes won Saturday’s game 20-13 over the Penn State Nittany Lions.
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Shaun White, the Olympic snowboarding champion, already has an impressive medal tally, but his surprise proposal to Nina Dobrev deserves a gold medal.
On Wednesday, the couple announced their engagement on Instagram. Dobrev posted photographs of the two hugging under an arch of white roses and showing off her five-carat Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring.
“RIP boyfriend, hello fiancé,” Dobrev said in the caption.
However, the photographs only tell half the tale, as Shaun devised an elaborate plan to surprise Dobrev with his proposal.
Shaun White’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold
According to a Vogue interview published Wednesday, Shaun said he assembled a team of people from the couple’s inner circle and Vogue personnel to trick Dobrev into thinking she had been invited to an intimate dinner party with Anna Wintour.
Dobrev accepted the invitation, joking that Shaun made it “look so legitimate.”
He even asked Dobrev’s stylist to outfit her in Chanel for the event.
Dobrev said she recognized what was happening when she entered the venue and saw White standing beneath the flowery arch.
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Shaun’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold
“I went into shock,” Dobrev admitted, later adding that White “said all the right things” before she agreed.
According to the publication, after Shaun proposed, the couple partied into the early morning hours with close friends and relatives.
“Best night of my life,” Shaun captioned his Instagram story on Wednesday.
The duo first became romantically involved in 2020, and they have since publicly recorded their relationship, globe vacations, and White’s Olympic farewell on social media.
SOURCE | CNN
Hollywood actress Teri Garr, known for her roles in classics like “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has passed away at 79. She died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” said publicist Heidi Schaeffer.
Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”
Throughout her career, the performer, often known as Terri, Terry, or Terry Ann, seemed destined for show business from a young age.
Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comic, and her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dancing classes at six and was performing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies by age fourteen.
She was 16 years old when she joined the road crew of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and she began starring in small roles in films as early as 1963.
In an interview from 1988, she described how she landed the role in “West Side Story.” After being rejected at her initial audition, she returned the following day dressed differently and was accepted.
Teri Garr, a comedian
Teri Garr then found steady work as a movie dancer, appearing in the chorus of nine Elvis Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout,” and “Clambake.”
She has also appeared on various television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare,” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert performance “T.A.M.I.,” and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”
Her breakthrough role was as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller The Conversation. This led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who offered her the Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant role in Young Frankenstein if she could speak with a German accent.
“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once said.
The film established her as a great comic performer, with New Yorker film writer Pauline Kael calling her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on screen.”
Her big smile and off-center appeal helped her land roles in “Oh, God!” with George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife), and “Tootsie,” in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and discovers he has dressed up as a woman to revive his career.
A gift for spontaneous humor
Teri Garr, best known for comedy, has shown in films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, and The Escape Artist that she can also tackle drama.
She had a gift for spontaneous humor, frequently playing David Letterman’s foil during early guest appearances on N.B.C.’s “Late Night With David Letterman”.
Her appearances grew so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing that rumors of romantic involvement circulated for a while. Years later, Letterman acknowledged those early appearances with helping the program become a success.
During those years, Garr began to experience “a little beeping or ticking” in her right leg. It started in 1983 and expanded to her right arm, but she thought she could handle it. By 1999, her symptoms had gotten so bad that she saw a doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
After disclosing her diagnosis, Garr became a spokesman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, giving hilarious remarks at events in the United States and Canada.
Source: AP
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