LOS ANGELES (AP) — “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson was led out in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and could get 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty on two of three counts of rape at his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

Masterson’s wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, gasped when the verdict was read and wept as he was taken into custody, while a group of family and friends who sat stone-faced behind him throughout both trials.

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, 47, 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.

“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 knew as a fellow member of the church and 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.

After a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, prosecutors retried Masterson, saying he forcibly raped three women in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades.

“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.”

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, going through their instructions in his closing argument, “You should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room.

Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.

Remini said on Twitter that the two guilty verdicts in the retrial are “a relief. The women who survived Danny Masterson’s predation are heroes. For years, they and their families have faced vicious attacks and harassment from Scientology and Danny’s well-funded legal team,” she posted. “Nevertheless, they soldiered on, determined to seek justice.”

The alleged harassment, which the church denies engaging in, is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by two of the accusers.

Founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.”

The church vehemently denied having any policy that forbids members from going to secular authorities.

Next week the judge who oversaw the criminal case will hold a hearing to determine how a lawyer who represents the Church of Scientology had evidence that the prosecution had shared with the defense. The evidence involved links that the lawyer accidentally included in an email to Mueller.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve been sexually abused.

Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional.

The two women whose testimony led to Masterson’s conviction said that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them. He knew both from social circles in the church.

The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years whose count left the jury deadlocked, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him.

The issue of drugging also played a major role in the retrial. At the first, Olmedo only allowed prosecutors and accusers to describe their disorientation, and to imply that they were drugged. The second time, they were allowed to argue it directly, and the prosecution attempted to make it a major factor, to no avail.

“The defendant drugs his victims to gain control,” Deputy District Attorney Ariel Anson said in her closing argument. “He does this to take away his victims’ ability to consent.”

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there is no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion. His 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.

These charges date to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” — the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace.

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post ‘That ‘70s Show’ star Danny Masterson found guilty of 2 rape counts, is led from court in handcuffs appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After a month-long trial and nine days of deliberations, Los Angeles jurors on Monday found Harvey Weinstein guilty of the rape and sexual assault of just one of the four accusers he was charged with abusing.

But the three guilty counts involving an Italian actor and model known at the trial as Jane Doe 1 still struck a major blow against the disgraced movie mogul, and provided another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.

Weinstein, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York that is under appeal, could get up to 24 years in prison in California when he’s sentenced.

He was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving the woman who said he appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a Los Angeles film festival in 2013.

“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get that back. The criminal trial was brutal and Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand, but I knew I had to see this through to the end, and I did,” the woman said in a statement after the verdict. “I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”

Weinstein was acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by a massage therapist who treated him at a hotel in 2010.

The jury was unable to reach a decision on counts involving two accusers, notably rape and sexual assault charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A mistrial was declared on those counts.

Weinstein looked down at the table and appeared to put his face in his hands when the initial guilty counts were read. He looked forward as the rest of the verdict was read.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict.

“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”

Siebel Newsom’s intense and dramatic testimony, in which she described being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005, brought the trial its most dramatic moments. But only eight of the 12 jurors agreed to find Weinstein guilty of those counts.

Jurors were deadlocked 10-2 on a sexual battery count involving Lauren Young, the only accuser who testified at both Weinstein trials. She said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her and masturbated in front of her.

Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of years-old allegations, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges.

The women’s stories echoed the allegations of dozens of others who have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod starting with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A movie about that reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to see it.

It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, emphasizing that none of the four women went to the authorities until after the movement made Weinstein a target.

Defense lawyers said two of the women — including the one he would be found guilty of raping — were entirely lying about their encounters with Weinstein. They said the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later reframed.

Defense attorneys said during the trial that if Siebel Newsom hadn’t reached her later prominence she would be “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.”

“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson said in his closing argument.

He urged jurors to look past the the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence.

“‘Believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried,’” Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. “Well, fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.”

All the women involved in the charges went by Jane Doe in court. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, as the women named here did.

Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to give context and corroboration to those stories. Four were other women who were not part of the charges but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought to the stand to establish a pattern of sexual predation.

Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial even ended when prosecutors said a woman he was charged with raping twice and sexually assaulting twice would not appear to testify. They declined to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lench dismissed those charges.

Weinstein’s latest conviction hands a victory to victims of sexual misconduct of famous men in the wake of some legal setbacks, including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, held simultaneously and just down the hall from Weinstein’s, ended in a mistrial. And actor Kevin Spacey was victorious at a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month.

Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case is set to be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, also likely to be appealed, means he will not walk free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out.

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape in Los Angeles trial appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

NEW YORK (AP) — A prosecutor who had been leading a criminal investigation into Donald Trump before quitting last month said in his resignation letter that he believes the former president is “guilty of numerous felony violations” and he disagreed with the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to seek an indictment.

In the letter, published Wednesday by The New York Times, Mark Pomerantz told District Attorney Alvin Bragg there was “evidence sufficient to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” of allegations he falsified financial statements to secure loans and burnish his image as a wealthy businessman.

“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” Pomerantz wrote.

Pomerantz and his former co-leader on the Trump probe, Carey Dunne, resigned on Feb. 23 after clashing with Bragg over the future of the case.

Both were top deputies tasked with running the investigation on a day-to-day basis. Both started on the probe under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg asked them to stay when he took office in January. Both Vance and Bragg are Democrats.

In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Vance had directed his deputies to present evidence to a grand jury and seek an indictment of Trump and other defendants “as soon as reasonably possible.” No former president has ever been charged with a crime.

“I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest,” Pomerantz wrote.

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, said in a statement Wednesday night that the investigation into Trump is continuing and that a “team of experienced prosecutors is working every day to follow the facts and the law. There is nothing we can or should say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”

A message seeking comment was left with Trump’s lawyer.

Trump has called the investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

The Associated Press requested copies of Pomerantz and Dunne’s resignation letters under New York’s open records law, but the district attorney’s office rejected the request Feb. 25.

In its rejection, the office said: “The criminal matter both individuals were assigned remains pending; as such, the public release of the letters which reflect internal deliberations and opinions about an on-going investigation will likely interfere with that investigation.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office started investigating Trump in 2019, first examining hush-money payments paid to women on his behalf and then expanding into an inquiry into whether the president’s company misled lenders or tax authorities about the value of its properties.

So far, the three-year investigation has resulted only in tax fraud charges against Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, and its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg relating to lucrative fringe benefits such as rent, car payments and school tuition.

Pomerantz, a former mafia prosecutor, was brought out of private practice by Vance to add his expertise in white collar investigations to the Trump probe. Dunne argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a successful, multiyear fight for Trump’s tax records.

After taking office in January, Bragg said he was proud of the continuity that Dunne and Pomerantz had brought in running the high-profile investigation as he took over the D.A.’s office from Vance, who retired after a dozen years in office.

Also in January, New York Attorney General Letitia James claimed in court filings in a parallel civil investigation that her office had uncovered evidence the Trump Organization used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of assets to get loans and tax benefits.

Trump has given his Statement of Financial Condition — a yearly snapshot of his holdings — to banks to secure hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans on properties such as a Wall Street office building and a Florida golf course, and to financial magazines to justify his place among the world’s billionaires.

His lawyers have argued that the statements were accurate, and that any attempts to spin disagreements about the value of real estate into a crime were politically motivated.

Some legal experts had said that Manhattan prosecutors faced a potential hurdle in proving that Trump or his company intentionally falsified financial statements.

In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Trump should be prosecuted “without any further delay,” noting that much of the evidence related to before Trump was president, that the investigation had already been prolonged by the tax return battle and other fights.

Waiting to see if more damning evidence could be found would likely be unfruitful, he wrote, and would only “raise additional questions about the failure to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his criminal conduct.”

“No case is perfect. Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice,” Pomerantz wrote.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Ex-prosecutor: Trump ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’ appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.