Jonathan Majors in court on June 20.Photo:AP Photo/Steven Hirsh, Pool
AP Photo/Steven Hirsh, Pool
After much speculation thatJonathan Majorswould testify in his ownmisdemeanorassault trial, his defense team closed their case today without the Marvel actor taking the stand.
Majors is facingchargesof assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury, assault in the third degree recklessly causing physical injury, aggravated harassment in the second degree and harassment in the second degree, in connection with analleged fightbetween him and hisex-girlfriendGrace Jabbarithat spilled onto the streets of Chinatown in March.
The actor, who has maintained his innocence from the beginning,faces up to a year behind barsif convicted of the charges.
Leaving the courtroom Wednesday afternoon, hand-in-hand withcurrent girlfriendMeagan Good– who hasattended the trial daily– Majors, carrying a gold-leafed Bible and binder of trial notes in the other hand, smiled briefly at reporters photographing the couple before exiting out a side door.
Over four days of testimony last week, Jabbari told the jury that her boyfriend of more than a year and a half had often slipped into easy “rage and aggression,” during their relationship, and that on March 25 they had gotten intoa physical altercation, leading to his arrest.
Describingthat night, Jabbari said after an evening out the couple wasinside a hired carand heading back to the penthouse they shared when she claims she saw a text message from another woman on Majors’ phone.
She said she snatched the phone from his hands, and that in response, Majors allegedly twisted her right arm, and as she curled her body “just trying to protect myself,” she claimed she felt “a really hard blow against my head" that “took me aback.”
The following day, Jabbari went to the hospital and was treated for a hairline fracture to a bone in her middle finger and a cut to her ear.
Jonathan Majors on March 12.Jon Kopaloff/Getty
Jon Kopaloff/Getty
The prosecution’s twelfth and final witness left the stand Wednesday morning. Majors’ lawyers then launched a three-witness defense that ended at the close of the day, starting withDetective Ronnie Mejia, who arrested Jabbari in acounter-complaintalleging domestic abuse against the actor in October.
On the stand, the 10th precinct detective said that three months after the alleged incident, he had taken Majors’s counter-statement over a FaceTime call at his precinct because the actor was out of state at the time, allowing Majors’s defense lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, to write out the domestic incident report on his behalf (which is against NYPD protocol) because: “It was brought to my attention that this was an important case.”
Prosecutors havedeclined to prosecuteJabbari, and information regarding that arrest was precluded from trial, with the judge calling the particulars of the cross-filing “very unusual.”
The defense also called Dr. Tammy Weiner as an expert witness in emergency medicine to testify about Jabbari’s injuries, which the defense argues occurred in the hours after the couple’s fight– when Jabbariwent to Loosie’s Nightclubwith strangers who came upon her during the incident.
“I was just trying to suppress the sadness that I felt deeply in my heart,” Jabbari previously testified of the decision.
Grace Jabbari and emergency responders documented her injuries in photographs admitted into evidence, including this one with a hairline fracture to her middle finger.Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
Not 40 minutes after prosecutors rested their case and the defense called their first witness, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office released evidence from the trial which had been closed to the public until Wednesday. Among the 17 trial exhibits released weretext messagesbetween the couple, in which Majorsappears to admit to physically attacking Jabbarion another occasion that is not a part of this trial, as well as audio fromMajors’s 911 callwhich led to his arrest.
Ruspoli, who said he got a call from Majors that March morning in which the actor told him he could not get inside his locked bedroom, where Grace was unconscious, said Majors called him with “fear, concern” in his voice, adding that the actor sounded “near the same” as he did in the 911 call.
The defense rested their case Wednesday afternoon, after the agent left the stand.
source: people.com
