Jonathan Majors on Jan. 20, 2023.Photo:Arturo Holmes/2023 Getty
Arturo Holmes/2023 Getty
At 2:52 p.m. Monday, thesix-person juryinJonathan Majors’assault and harassment trialfiled into the Manhattan courtroom andpronounced the actor guiltyof some of the charges.
By 4:33 p.m. Disney had publicly distanced themselves from their former Marvel villain, saying Majors would not reprise his role as Kang the Conquerer andousting the actor from their Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And the fallout from the conviction could keep coming, with more potential legal trouble in the actor’s future.
Majors wasconvictedof misdemeanor assault in the third degree, recklessly causing physical injury as well asharassment in the second degree, which is a violation. But those charges were based on a singlealleged fightbetween him and hisformer girlfriend,Grace Jabbari, in New York City on March 25.
Evidence presented — and precluded — from the trial, as well as reported allegations from dozens of people who know the actor, suggests that additional allegations of abuse could be forthcoming.
In June,Rolling Stoneran a report that alleged Majors had physically and/or emotionally abused two of his former partners.
“No one is surprised that this is coming out,” one source told the outlet. “It always felt like it was a matter of time because his behavior never changed. He’s kind of a bad dude, and now it’s just catching up with him.”
The outlet did not name the women, saying that one former partner had feared retribution if she spoke out. In a statement at the time, one of Majors' attorneys said, in part, that the actor “vehemently deniesRolling Stone’s falseallegations that he physically, verbally or emotionally abusedanyone, let alone any of his past romantic partners.”
Jonathan Majors leaves court on Dec. 15, 2023.John Nacion/Getty Images
John Nacion/Getty Images
But victims’ rights attorneyMichelle Simpson Tuegel, who represented victims of Olympic gymnast sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar, says Majors’ conviction could turn the tide.
“High-profile abuse verdicts like Monday’s often serve as a catalyst for other survivors to come forward,” Tuegel says, adding that often after one person shares their experience with a jury and receives validation of that experience from a guilty verdict, others step forward “with their own experiences of abuse against public figures whether it be Majors or someone in a similar position of visibility and power.”
Noting “theintense public scrutiny” of Jabbarileading up to and during the trial, Tuegel says: “When a survivor endures this process and comes out on the other side with a verdict in their favor, it emboldens other survivors and is a real encouragement that accountability against abusers is possible.”
Heather Cucolo, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in sexual violent predator law, tells PEOPLE that while there are “only a few instances in which evidence of prior bad acts can be introduced at a subsequent trial,” future cases would not be out of the realm of possibility.
Over four days of testimony at the start of trial, Jabbari told the jury that Majors, her boyfriend of more than a year and a half, had often slipped into “rage and aggression”during their relationship, and that in March they had gotten into a physical altercation, leading to his arrest.
Grace Jabbari on Dec. 5, 2023.Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo
Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo
Describingthat night, Jabbari said that after an evening out, the couple wasinside a hired carheading back to the penthouse they shared, when she claims she sawa flirtatious text message from another womanon Majors’ phone. She said she took the phone from his hands and that in response Majors had allegedly twisted her right arm. As she curled her body “just trying to protect myself,” she said she felt “a really hard blow against my head" that “took me aback.”
Then in a cross-examination, which presiding Judge Michael Gaffey had saidlacked specificity, one of Majors’ lawyers, Priya Chaudhry, drilled Jabbari about why the morning after the incident the woman had told emergency personnel that she did not remember how she had become injured.
Prosecutors successfully argued that Chaudhry had opened the door to a set of alleged text messages between Majors and Jabbari from September 2022 — months before the attack and therefore previously ruled inadmissible.
In the messages, Majors calls himself “a monster and horrible man” andappears to admit to physically attacking Jabbariandthreatening to kill himselfif she went to the hospital for an injury to her head.
Jonathan Majors in court on Nov. 29, 2023.Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo
Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo
The judge reminded the jury that the text messages were not to be considered as evidence of abuse in their case, which centered only on allegations from that March 25 night.
“The text messages were bad for Majors,” said former federal prosecutorNeama Rahmaniin a press release following the verdict. “It was tough for the defense to attempt to argue that he never harmed Jabbari, when at the same time the text messages showed that he was clearly worried about being accused of domestic violence. That’s not easy.”
Additional details of that September incident were precluded from trial, including the existence of medical records for Jabbari’s alleged head injury, which were noted in the prosecutor’s 115-page response to a defense motion filed the month before trial.
Beyond the confines of the courtroom, such text messages — which were released to the public the same day prosecutors rested their case and the defense launched their own — may haveput the accusations in the context of a pattern.
“The evidence presented throughout this trial illustrateda cycleof psychological and emotional abuse, and escalating patterns of coercion far too common across the many intimate partner violence cases we see each and every day,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a prepared statement provided to PEOPLE.
He added that the “jury determined that pattern of abuse and coercion culminated with Mr. Majors assaulting and harassing his girlfriend.”
And while any past instances of alleged abuse between Majors and Jabbari would unlikely find its way back into a courtroom, Monday’s conviction could impact the actor in any future cases that could spring up in the court system, says law professor Cucolo.
Should Majors be convicted in future cases, his criminal record could impact future sentencing, Cucolo tells PEOPLE.
“For most crimes, the law specifies a range of possible punishments, and a prior offense could elevate a crime that is ordinarily punished as a misdemeanor to a felony,” says Cucolo. “Therefore, if Majors was to be convicted in a subsequent case, his two misdemeanor convictions could lead to harsher criminal penalties and a longer prison sentence.”
Majors is slated to return to Manhattan’s criminal court to be sentenced in the Jabbari case Feb. 6.
With Disney dropping the hammer on Majors’ future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the actor managing additional fallout from dropped film projects even before conviction, Hollywood’s sentence seems to have been much swifter.
As Howard Breuer,CEO ofNewsroom PRand former PEOPLE reporter puts it: “After this conviction, he has a long road to showbiz redemption.”
Majors' lawyer Chaudhry said in a Monday statement that the actor “still has faith in the process andlooks forward to fully clearing his name.”
source: people.com
