A jury found Danny Masterson guilty of two counts of rape Wednesday at his Los Angeles retrial. The “That ’70s Show” actor faces up to 30 years in prison.
The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.
Masterson was led from the courtroom in handcuffs and will be held without bail until he is sentenced. No sentencing date has yet been set, but the judge told Masterson and his lawyers to return to court Aug. 4 for a hearing.
His wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, wept as he was led away. Other family and friends sat stone-faced.
“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of the women, whom Masterson was convicted of raping at his home in 2003, said in a statement.
A second woman, a former girlfriend, whose count left the jury deadlocked, said in the statement: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, I am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.”
A spokesperson for Masterson declined comment, but his attorneys will almost certainly appeal.
Masteron, 47, was charged in 2020 with raping three women at his Los Angeles home between 2001 and 2003. His first trial for the case ended in a mistrial last November, with jurors deadlocked on all three counts. In January, a request to throw out the case was denied and a retrial was confirmed. The retrial lasted about three weeks. Masterson’s defense attorneys declined to call any witnesses, and Masterson did not testify.
“We want to express our gratitude to the three women who came forward and bravely shared their experiences,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement after the verdict Wednesday. “Their courage and strength have been an inspiration to us all.”
Here’s everything to know about Masterson’s trials.
What happened in Danny Masterson’s retrial?
The Church of Scientology, which the women claimed impacted how they reported the alleged assaults, played an even larger role in the second trial than it did in the first.
The judge allowed a former member of the church’s leadership to testify as an expert on the institution’s policies about going to police, and a courtroom controversy broke out during the trial over a Scientology attorney apparently having possession of trial evidence.
The women testified that church officials kept them from going to authorities as soon as they would have about Masterson. The church has denied having any policies forbidding members from reporting other members to law enforcement.
Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo also allowed the prosecution to state directly that Masterson drugged each of the victims. Olmedo only allowed secondary evidence of it at the first trial. Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there is no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion.
“The defendant drugs his victims to gain control. He does this to take away his victims’ ability to consent,” Deputy District Attorney Ariel Anson told the jury in the trial’s closing arguments May 16. “You don’t want to have sex? You don’t have a choice. The defendant makes that choice for these victims. And he does it over and over and over again.”
Masterson’s attorney asked for a mistrial over the issue’s inclusion. The motion was denied, but the issue is likely to be a major factor in any potential appeal.
One woman, a model who had begun dating Masterson in 1996 and alleged the actor raped her in their bed in November 2001, testified that about a month after the rape, she and Masterson went to dinner at a restaurant they frequented near their home. She said she drank one or two glasses of wine with dinner, then had no memory between getting up to leave and waking alone and in pain in bed well into the next day.
She said when she sought to explain the pain, Masterson admitted that he’d had sex with her while she was unconscious. “He started laughing at me,” she testified. “I asked him if I was unconscious the whole time, and he said ‘yeah.'”
Masterson’s attorney, Philip Cohen, told jurors during his closing arguments that inconsistencies in the women’s stories that he said Anson downplayed are essential and should make it easy for jurors to have a reasonable doubt of Masterson’s guilt.
“She did a very nice job of ignoring many of them,” Cohen said. “What she views as little inconsistencies are at the heart of trying to determine, ‘Is somebody, reliable, credible, believable enough for a criminal conviction?’”
What was Danny Masterson on trial for?
Masterson was charged with three counts of rape by three women, all who are tied to the Church of Scientology. Masterson is a member, and the three women are former members. He pleaded not guilty.
Beyond the longtime girlfriend who claimed Masterson raped her in 2001, another woman, a friend of Masterson’s who had been born into Scientology, claimed the actor took her upstairs from the hot tub at his Los Angeles home one night in 2003 and raped her in his bedroom.
The third woman said Masterson raped her on a night in 2003 after texting her to come to his house. She testified she had set boundaries and was clear there was to be no sex.
Police revealed that they were investigating Masterson in 2017. Accusations that Masterson stalked the women he allegedly raped or assaulted rose in 2019 before the actor was arrested and charged in 2020 by the district attorney in Los Angeles County. The next year, a judge found that there was enough evidence to try Masterson. His arraignment was postponed multiple times amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
What happened at Danny Masterson’s first trial?
A judge declared Masterson’s first trial a mistrial on Nov. 30, 2022, after jurors, who were leaning strongly toward acquitting him, were deadlocked following the monthlong trial. Fewer than half of the jurors voted to convict Masterson on any count after the trial.
Opening statements were read Oct. 18, 2022. Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller described alleged accounts of the women becoming woozy and passing out before regaining consciousness to find Masterson having sex with them.
And while Masterson’s defense attorney urged jurors not to consider the actor’s affiliation with Scientology and its relationship to the case, Mueller argued it helped explain why the women waited so long to report the incidents.
Who is Danny Masterson?
The 47-year-old is best known for his role in the sitcom “That 70s Show.” The actor played Steven Hyde in the show that had a long run starting in 1998 and ending in 2006.
Masterson was more recently in “The Ranch” alongside former “That 70s Show” co-star Ashton Kutcher. “The Ranch” ended its television run in 2018 after Masterson was cut from the show when allegations of assault arose in 2017.
Masterson married Bijou Phillips in 2011, and they share a daughter, Fianna Francis Masterson, who is 9 years old.
