Danny Masterson is seeking to overturn the verdict in his 2023 jury trial, which ended with him being convicted on two counts of rape by force or fear and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The actor claimed “fundamental flaws” led to an unfair trial that featured shifting accounts of what happened from the three plaintiffs and arguing that it was meant as a legal attack on the Church of Scientology.
On Thursday, attorneys for the That ’70s Show star filed a 242-page appellant’s opening brief demanding an overturning of Masterson’s guilty verdict — the culmination of a weeks-long, high-profile jury trial that concluded in September 2023. The allegations in the filing by defense attorneys Cliff Gardner and Lazuli Whitt state that the jury’s view of the evidence was skewed by the women’s narratives of the attacks, the court’s exclusion of significant exculpatory evidence and rulings by the judge overseeing the trial.
“It is true, of course, that a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial. He is, however, still entitled to a fair one,” Gardner and Whitt wrote in the filing. “Danny Masterson received neither. Reversal is required.”
Masterson, a longtime member of the Church of Scientology who has earned the distinction of “untouchable” status in the church, was accused by each of the three women of rape during encounters that date back 20 years. All three of the plaintiffs in the trial are former Scientologists who detailed their attacks to the court, explaining that they felt woozy after being handed a drink by Masterson. Why they were now coming forward with their accusations, nearly two decades later, is explained by the fact that Scientology forbids followers to notify authorities about acts committed by another Scientologist. The plaintiffs said that they had seen threats from their former church since each separated.
The Church of Scientology reacted after the guilty verdict earlier this year, stating: “The Church was not a party to this case, and religion did not belong in this proceeding as Supreme Court precedent has maintained for centuries.”
In the filing, Whitt and Gardner also point to the mistrial in 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 showed that two holdouts believed Masterson to be guilty while 10 voted “not guilty.”
The lawyers also claim in the filing that there was “no physical evidence supporting the state’s theory [of rape],” making the situation “a pure credibility contest.”
Therefore, the case is a matter of a famous man’s word versus that of a trio of women whose names are anonymized in court.
Yet all three did have encounters at the times in question with Masterson, who maintains his innocence and says that all of the encounters were consensual. This is a far cry from the plaintiffs’ accounts. Plaintiff N. Trout told authorities that Masterson had raped her so violently that she vomited while 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 prison sentence, was briefly sent to Corcoran State Prison but is now an inmate at the lower security California’s Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.
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