Danny Masterson is in search of to overturn the verdict in his 2023 jury trial, which ended with him being convicted on two counts of rape by power or concern and sentenced to 30 years in jail. The actor claimed “basic flaws” led to an unfair trial that featured shifting accounts of what occurred from the three plaintiffs and arguing that it was meant as a authorized assault on the Church of Scientology.
On Thursday, attorneys for the That ’70s Present star filed a 242-page appellant’s opening temporary demanding an overturning of Masterson’s responsible verdict — the fruits of a weeks-long, high-profile jury trial that concluded in September 2023. The allegations within the submitting by protection attorneys Cliff Gardner and Lazuli Whitt state that the jury’s view of the proof was skewed by the ladies’s narratives of the assaults, the courtroom’s exclusion of serious exculpatory proof and rulings by the decide overseeing the trial.
“It’s true, after all, {that a} defendant shouldn’t be entitled to an ideal trial. He’s, nevertheless, nonetheless entitled to a good one,” Gardner and Whitt wrote within the submitting. “Danny Masterson acquired neither. Reversal is required.”
Masterson, a longtime member of the Church of Scientology who has earned the excellence of “untouchable” standing within the church, was accused by every of the three girls of rape throughout encounters that date again 20 years. All three of the plaintiffs within the trial are former Scientologists who detailed their assaults to the courtroom, explaining that they felt woozy after being handed a drink by Masterson. Why they have been now coming ahead with their accusations, almost 20 years later, is defined by the truth that Scientology forbids followers to inform authorities about acts dedicated by one other Scientologist. The plaintiffs stated that that they had seen threats from their former church since every separated.
The Church of Scientology reacted after the responsible verdict earlier this 12 months, stating: “The Church was not a celebration to this case, and faith didn’t belong on this continuing as Supreme Courtroom precedent has maintained for hundreds of years.”
Within the submitting, Whitt and Gardner additionally level to the mistrial within the first go-round for Masterson over these allegations, which ended with a deadlocked jury in 2022. After the mistrial was declared, a survey of the jurors confirmed that two holdouts believed Masterson to be responsible whereas 10 voted “not responsible.”
The attorneys additionally declare within the submitting that there was “no bodily proof supporting the state’s idea [of rape],” making the state of affairs “a pure credibility contest.”
Due to this fact, the case is a matter of a well-known man’s phrase versus that of a trio of girls whose names are anonymized in courtroom.
But all three did have encounters on the instances in query with Masterson, who maintains his innocence and says that the entire encounters have been consensual. This can be a far cry from the plaintiffs’ accounts. Plaintiff N. Trout instructed authorities that Masterson had raped her so violently that she vomited whereas Jane Doe #1 detailed how Masterson held a gun as he raped her and suffocated her with a pillowcase.
Masterson, after being handed his 30-years-to-life jail sentence, was briefly despatched to Corcoran State Jail however is now an inmate on the decrease safety California’s Males’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.
