After much speculation that Jonathan Majors would testify at his own misdemeanor assault trial, his defense team today closed their case without the Marvel actor testifying.
Majors faces charges of third-degree assault with intent to cause bodily harm, third-degree assault with reckless bodily harm, second-degree aggravated harassment and second-degree harassment in connection with an alleged fight between him and his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari that spilled over in March to the streets of Chinatown.
The actor, who has maintained his innocence from the start, faces up to a year behind bars if found guilty of the charges.
Leaving the courtroom Wednesday afternoon, arm-in-arm with current girlfriend Meagan Good — who attended the trial daily — Majors, carrying a gold-leaf Bible and a binder of trial notes in the other hand, flashed a brief smile to reporters who snapped photos of the couple before exiting through a side door. .
During four days of testimony last week, Jabbari told the jury that her boyfriend of more than a year and a half often flew into “anger and aggression” easily during their relationship, and that on March 25 they got into a physical altercation, which led to his arrest.
Describing that night, Jabbari said that after a night out, the couple were in a rental car returning to the penthouse they shared when she claimed to have seen a text message from another woman on Majors’ phone.
She said that she snatched the phone from his hands, and that in response Majors allegedly twisted her right arm, and as she bent her body “just trying to protect herself”, she claimed that she felt a “very strong blow to the head” “he caught me. ”
The next day, Jabbari went to the hospital and was treated for a hairline fracture on her middle finger and a cut on her ear.
Jonathan Majors March 12th.
Jon Kopaloff/Getty
Jonathan Majors could face up to a year in prison if convicted of assault and harassment, a judge says
The twelfth and last prosecution witness left the session on Wednesday morning. Majors’ attorneys then launched a three-witness defense that ended at the end of the day, starting with Detective Ronnie Mejia, who arrested Jabbari in a counterclaim alleging domestic abuse against the actor in October.
During the hearing, a 10th Precinct detective said he took Majors’ counter-statement during a FaceTime call at his station three months after the alleged incident because the actor was out of state at the time, allowing Majors’ defense attorney, Priya Chaudhry, to write a domestic report. incident on his behalf (which is against NYPD protocol) because: “It has been brought to my attention that this is an important case.”
Prosecutors declined to prosecute Jabbari, and information related to that arrest was excluded from the trial, with the judge calling the details of the cross-report “highly unusual.”
The defense also called Dr. Tammy Weiner as an emergency medicine expert to testify about Jabbari’s injuries, which the defense says occurred in the hours after the couple’s fight — when Jabbari went to Loosie’s Night Club with strangers who bumped into her during the incident.
“I was just trying to suppress the sadness that I felt deep in my heart,” Jabbari testified earlier about the decision.
On the deposition, Weiner, who never met Jabbari and was not a doctor at Bellevue Hospital, where Jabbari was treated in March, testified about inconsistencies with Jabbari’s claims and injuries, based on photographs and X-rays of the injuries. Among her claims were that Jabbari’s bleeding ear should have bled more and that she would have expected swelling of the ring finger — the latter of which was stricken from the record because the judge could not recall whether there had been testimony regarding Jabbari wearing the ring. (According to photos in evidence obtained by PEOPLE, Jabbari’s injured finger did not have a ring on it, although she was wearing a ring on her other finger in photos taken later of her injuries.)
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Grace Jabbari and emergency responders documented her injuries in photographs entered into evidence, including this one with a fractured middle finger.
Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
Jonathan Majors assault trial: Opening statements on race and alleged ‘abuse’
Less than 40 minutes after prosecutors finished presenting their case and the defense called its first witness, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office released evidence from the trial, which was closed to the public until Wednesday. Among the 17 released exhibits in the trial were text messages between the pair, in which Majors appears to admit to physically assaulting Jabbari on another occasion unrelated to this trial, as well as audio from Majors’ 911 call that led to his arrest.
A portion of that 911 call was briefly played again in court Wednesday by Majors’ defense, which brought in his agent Elan Ruspoli of WME to testify as their third and final witness.
Ruspoli, who said he got a call from Majors that morning in March in which the actor told him he couldn’t get into his locked bedroom, where Grace was unconscious, said Majors called him with “fear, concern.” in the voice, adding that the actor sounded “about the same” as he did in the 911 call.
The defense ended its case on Wednesday afternoon, after the agent left the session.
The assault trial, which began in late November, will continue until Thursday the twelfth with closing arguments from both sides, followed by deliberations by the six jurors selected to hear the misdemeanor case.
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Source: HIS Education