Yahoo Movies Jonathan Majors Denied Bid To Have Assault & Harassment Conviction Overturned
A New York judge decided today that Jonathan Majors will still be sentenced next week on his assault and harassment conviction.
Judge Michael Gaffey has denied the defense motion to set aside the verdicts and strip the guilty results against the Creed III actor that a jury delivered on December 18 last year. With this last Hail Mary effort now dead, Majors will be sentenced on April 8, as previously scheduled.
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The one-time Marvel star potentially faces up to a year behind bars.
Majors’ top lawyer Priya Chaudhry did not respond to requests for comment on the new ruling. If and when she does, this post will be updated. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined comment.
In his decision, Judge Gaffey took on each objection by the defense.
“Defendant first argues that his conviction of reckless assault in the third degree should be set aside because the court erred in submitting the count to the jury,” the judge wrote This Court disagrees. At the outset, contrary to Defendant’s contentions, the court submitted the count of reckless assault as an alternate theory to the intentional assault count, and not as a lesser included offense …there was a reasonable view of the evidence to support that Defendant acted recklessly”
“Defendant next contends that the court should not have submitted the reckless assault count to the jury without a justification charge,” Judge Gaffey says in the order. “This argument is wholly unpreserved, and as a result, this Court is without power to consider it.Certainly, on appeal, Defendant is free to request that the Appellate Term exercise its interest of justice jurisdiction and reach whether the court should have sua sponte charged justification, or alternatively, whether trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request such charge.”
“Finally, the trial evidence was legally sufficient to establish Defendant’s guilt of harassment in the second degree,” he noted. “Such evidence clearly established that Defendant subjected Ms. Jabbari to physical contact, and the jury reasonably could have inferred his intent from the conduct and surrounding circumstances.”
With Majors’ once stellar career in tatters now, Wednesday’s ruling from Judge Gaffey comes almost a month after the much accused Majors’ ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari sued him for defamation. Lawyers for Majors said at the time he would be filing counterclaims, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred.
Arrested on March 25, 2023, after the alleged assault on Jabbari in New York City, Majors was convicted late last year of reckless assault and harassment in his much delayed trial. Originally up against a total of four misdemeanor charges, Majors, who pleaded not guilty, was not convicted by the jury of three men and three women of intentional assault in the third degree and of aggravated harassment in the second degree against then-girlfriend Jabbari in the incident over a year ago.
Present in court every day of the trial but never testifying in his own defense, Majors always insisted he never attacked British dancer Jabbari after his girlfriend of almost two years discovered texts from another woman on his phone while the duo were being driven through the NYC night in March 2023. Attorney Chaudhry said Majors was the actual victim of abuse by Jabbari and racism by the NYPD. Before the trial began, the Magazine Dreams star took Jabbari to court and had the police issue a de facto warrant for the her arrest – – a move the DA’s office shut down pretty quickly.
In January of this year, a few weeks after his conviction, Majors told ABC News “my hands have never struck a woman.” A slew of allegations from other women since the trial ended, and detailed descriptions of a litany of assaults, violence and recriminations in Jabbari’s defamation action seems to say otherwise.
Despite that and his conviction, a smiling Majors showed up with Harlem actress Meagan Good last month at the 7th Annual AAFCA Special Achievement Awards luncheon in L.A. Good attended court with Majors almost every day of the trial last year.
Professionally, Majors has seen his career fall apart, with his management and PR firms dropping him soon after the incident with Jabbari and his arrest last year. Very soon afterwards, the Searchlight release of once Oscar-tipped Magazine Dreams was shelved. In the days following the trial verdict, Marvel cut loose the Loki actor who was to play Kang the Conqueror in the expanding MCU. While Majors has lost several film roles and ad campaigns, the actor’s agency WME has stuck with him so far.
Sean
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