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UPDATE, 1:34 p.m.: Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence trial has a jury.
After several hours of whittling down the initial pool of 39 people in the Manhattan Criminal Court room today and yesterday, six jurors and two alternates have just been selected. Three men and three women will judge assault and harassment charges against the Creed III actor.
The deputies are a man and a woman.
The trial won’t start tomorrow.
Instead, Majors, the attorneys, Judge Michael Gaffey and the jury returned at 10 a.m. ET on December 4 to hold their opening statements. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
If found guilty, Majors could face up to a year in prison for the March 25 incident against her ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari.
While the jury and possibly Majors will not be in court Friday, Judge Gaffey, prosecutors and the defense team will be present. “So we’ll come over tomorrow morning,” the judge told the lawyers at 10:30 this afternoon. “Any motions that both sides want to make, make them tomorrow,” he said, promising to decide this Monday, “and we will deal with all other matters on Friday.”
BEFORE, 10:48 a.m.: In the words of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, some significant “known unknowns” emerged today in the domestic violence trial of Jonathan Majors.
As jury selection continued Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom, the judge in the Loki actor’s criminal assault and harassment case is bringing some matters to light and keeping others from public view.
Kicking off the second day of Majors’ repeatedly delayed trial, Judge Michael Gaffey ruled Thursday morning that the jury will hear that his accuser, Grace Jabbari, was arrested over the same incident.
Shortly thereafter, Judge Gaffey also issued a separate ruling on the evidence in the case that was sealed, and he tightly sealed the ruling. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office suffered a setback today, only confirming that it was “a sealed decision.” Sources have told Deadline that the sealed documents in question contain information about possible past incidents involving the actor in both the US and the UK. Majors pleaded not guilty months ago to the March incident and faces up to a year in prison if convicted.
After rejecting various media organizations’ attempt to unveil the evidence, which the judge described as “prejudicial and inflammatory”, Priya Chaudhry, the Majors’ usually very vocal lead lawyer, had nothing to say on the matter as the court proposed Recently took a lunch break. Notably, Chaudhry and his co-counsel Seth Zuckerman smiled at the defense table as the judge made his decisions about what should be made public and what should be kept secret.
At around 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, the judge ordered spectators out of the 100 Center Street courtroom for the second straight day. When Gaffrey reopened the courtroom to the press and public about half an hour later, he declared the key question of two closed-door hearings this week “resolved” and selected the jury from a pool of about 40 people, he promised finally began that there would be no further public lockouts.
As present as he was yesterday, Majors stood cross-legged facing the jurors before the break, taking notes and watching them as they individually answered questions from the questionnaire. Like yesterday, Majors had a Bible in front of him on the defense table. When Judge Gaffey introduced Majors to the jury earlier, the actor stood to look at her, folded his hands near his heart and gave a brief bow in her direction.
Today, Majors returned to the courtroom wearing a wide-brimmed fedora hat over a black button-down coat and a dark double-breasted suit. His girlfriend, Harlem actress Meagan Good, accompanied him and held his hand as they briefly left the courtroom with Majors’ two lawyers and a man wearing a coat and hat.
While ex-girlfriend Jabbari is scheduled to testify for the district attorney’s office, it is unclear whether Majors will take the stand in his own defense. Almost since the day their client was arrested by the NYPD in late March after responding to a 911 call and showing up at the scene of a visibly assaulted Jabbari, Majors’ lawyers have been trying to flip the script on the British citizen in the case to make him the perpetrator. Although Chaudhry filed a countersuit against Jabbari in June — which resulted in police automatically issuing her an investigative badge, or I-Card — the DA’s office has consistently said it would not respond to allegations that Major’s ex -Girlfriend said this was the antagonist of the March 25 incident.
Jabbari already cooperated with prosecutors and turned himself in late October 25 at the NYPD’s 10th Precinct in Manhattan. Within hours, the DA’s office released a statement saying, “She has formally declined to prosecute the case against Grace Jabbari because it lacks prosecutorial merit.”
Later today, Judge Gaffrey said the jury would hear about Jabbari’s arrest last month. “This is a situation where I think it is information that should be presented to a jury,” he told the assembled lawyers, media and majors today. “The jury should know about this.” At the same time, as prosecutors have claimed, Jabbari is allowed to testify that “she knew nothing about this warrant” and that “she came and surrendered immediately” when she found out she was wanted.
The judge explained that prosecutors could cross-examine the NYPD detective who recommended Jabbari’s arrest: “I will give the people a full and fair opportunity to cross-examine the detective and his motives,” he noted.
Once selected today or tomorrow, six jurors and an alternate will hear the case. However, at this rate, it is unlikely that much will happen on this matter until next week.
The scheduled first day of the trial was spent almost entirely in pre-trial arguments over what information should be made public – with today’s ruling concluding that part of the matter. Judge Gaffey closed the courtroom to spectators on Wednesday afternoon to allow the defense to argue behind closed doors that evidence already under seal should be kept completely out of the case file – arguments that were clearly persuasive.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office had sought to include potential past incidents under a New York legal standard known as the Molineux rule, which sometimes allows prior, unindicted allegations of criminal behavior in a new trial. Molineux played a major role in prosecuting Harvey Weinstein for rape.
NYPD officers who responded to the scene on March 25 after Majors himself called 911 found Jabbari with bruising, swelling, cuts and a broken finger. Majors was arrested and released after a hearing, and he remains subject to a protective order to avoid contact with Jabbari. After claims by Majors’ defense attorneys about institutional racism in law enforcement failed, the actor filed his countersuit, claiming that Jabbari actually initiated the violence. Majors postulated that Jabari became angry that another woman was texting him as they drove in a car through Lower Manhattan that spring night.
Citing text messages between the couple and surveillance camera footage related to the incident, defense attorney Chaudhry described her client as a victim of escalating domestic violence at the hands of a controlling and abusive partner. Chaudhry also called her client the target of a “witch hunt.”
Chaudhry previously represented Jen Shah of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” in a federal fraud case and defended writer-director Paul Haggis in a civil rape lawsuit brought under New York’s recently expired Gender Victim Protection Act violence was used.
Chaudhry said in court Wednesday that she had collected evidence that Majors was the victim in the case, but the prosecutor refused to consider it even though police had called for Jabbari’s arrest. In another controversy among many on the matter, lead prosecutor Kelli Galaway responded that her office had reviewed the information provided by Chaudhry.
After his arrest in March, Majors was dropped by both management company Entertainment 360 and publicist The Lede Company in April. Although the “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” actor appeared as villain Kang in the second season of Disney+’s “Loki,” various advertising campaigns have been made with the majors represented by WME, such as one for the Texas Rangers MLB team , as a result of his arrest. As major roles dried up, the likelihood of an Oscar campaign from Searchlight Pictures for his acclaimed performance in the Sundance debut “Magazine Dreams” became increasingly remote, a suspicion that was quietly confirmed on October 27 when Deadline reported, that the film had lost its release date of December 8th and was not postponed by the Disney-owned company Searchlight.