Jonathan Majors Found Guilty of Assault and Harassment in Split Verdict (original) (raw)

Jonathan Majors has been found guilty in his misdemeanor assault trial.

In a split verdict, Majors, 34, was found guilty of two charges: misdemeanor assault in the third degree, recklessly causing physical injury as well as harassment in the second degree, which is a violation. The actor was found not guilty of misdemeanor assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury and misdemeanor aggravated harassment in the second degree.

The charges were in connection with an alleged fight between him and his former girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, that spilled onto the streets of Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood in March.

Rising to face the actor, Foreperson Rebecca Martinez pronounced Majors “not guilty” of the first charge. Majors, who stood at the defense table, remained with his head down until she declared him guilty of the second. He watched her for the remainder of the charges. Then, each of the other five jurors — two other women and three men — each separately told the judge that they had agreed to the verdict.

The six-person jury came back Monday at 2:25 p.m. with a note: "We the jury have reached a verdict," following about six hours and 15 minutes of deliberations, which began Thursday.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Majors faces up to a year in jail when he is sentenced on Feb. 6, though the judge could opt for probation or treatment instead of prison time. The judge reminded him that a protection order remains in effect and he cannot have contact with Jabbari or could face additional charges.

The March charges put a halt to the actor’s rising stardom, which in the early part of 2023 saw Majors starring alongside Michael B. Jordan in Creed III and as the villainous Kang the Conqueror in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Disney’s highly anticipated Magazine Dreams, starring Majors as an amateur bodybuilder, had even generated Oscar buzz, before the studio pulled the film from its release roster.

Jonathan Majors and Grace Jabbari.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

The more than two-week-long trial in Manhattan’s criminal court included 12 witnesses brought to the stand by Manhattan prosecutors and three more by the defense.

Over four days of testimony at the start of trial, Jabbari told the jury that 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.

Describing that night, Jabbari said that after an evening out, the couple was inside a hired car, heading back to the penthouse they shared, when she had overseen a flirtatious text message from another woman on Majors’s phone. She said she had snatched the phone from his hands, and that in response Majors had 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.”

The following day, Majors, returning from a hotel, came back to the penthouse they shared to a locked bedroom door, according to later 911 audio submitted into evidence and reviewed by the jury on the second day of deliberations Friday afternoon.

In the call Majors told the 911 dispatcher that he did not know what had happened to Jabbari.

“She’s unconscious,” Majors said in audio of the call obtained by PEOPLE. “She’s naked from the bottom down. She has a sweatshirt on. She’s my ex-partner. We broke up. I came back. She sent me text messages insinuating as much.”

Police arrived at the couple’s Manhattan penthouse minutes later.

Jabbari went to the hospital and was treated for a hairline fracture to a bone in her middle finger and a cut to her ear.

Majors was arrested in his living room.

“This is not a he said–she said case,” Assistant District Attorney Kelli Galaway told the jury in closing statements Thursday afternoon. “This is a she said-plus.”

As part of her closing statements, Galaway flashed on a screen alleged text messages between Majors and Jabbari from September 2022 — months before the charged incident — in which Majors — calling himself “a monster and horrible man” — appears to admit to physically attacking Jabbari and threatening to kill himself if she went to the hospital for an injury to her head.

“Context,” Galaway said as the jury turned toward the messages.

That earlier incident of alleged abuse had previously been ruled inadmissible, but, in a lengthy cross-examination of Jabbari, which presiding Judge Michael Gaffey had said lacked specificity, the judge said the defense opened the door to prosecutors being able to share with the jury text messages regarding that prior incident.

Text messages entered into evidence in Jonathan Majors's trial suggested that the actor had previously acknowledged physically attacking Grace Jabbari prior to the March 2023 incident, Exhibit 18.

District Attorney of NY

“I fear you have no perspective of what could happen if you go to the hospital,” Majors had texted Jabbari following that earlier alleged incident, according to the text messages. “They will ask you questions and as I don’t think you actually protect us it could lead to an investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.”

In the text messages — displayed to the jury and read into the record by Jabbari during the trial — Jabbari appeared to assure Majors that she would not blame him for allegedly causing an injury to her head.

“I will tell the doctor I bumped my head,” Jabbari told Majors in the text messages. She cried as she read aloud the message in court.

When Jabbari was unable to continue through her tears, Galaway took over reading the texts: “I will tell the doctor I bumped my head, if I go, I’m going to give it one more day, but I can’t sleep and I need some stronger pain killers. That’s all. Why would I want to tell them what really happened when it’s clear I want to be with you."

Some members of the jury had at times throughout the trial appeared sympathetic to Majors. Lakeisha Johnson, the only Black person on the jury, had mouthed repeatedly “that’s right,” during Chaudhry’s cross-examination of Jabbari.

Jonathan Majors.

AP Photo/Steven Hirsch, Pool

And in closing statements, Priya Chaudhry, one of Majors’s defense lawyers, tried to refocus the case on race, countering that Majors had been presumed guilty by law enforcement because he is a Black man who was accused by his ex, a White woman.

“They took a look at Mr. Majors and made up their minds,” Chaudhry said of the responding police officers. “They decided who was the victim and who was the criminal.”

She added that knowing what calling 911 could mean, a concerned Majors had dialed anyway and “his fear of what happens when a Black man in America calls 911 came true.”

Then as Chaudhry, Majors and current girlfriend Meagan Good — who attended the trial daily — all broke into tears, his lawyer added: ​​“Jonathan Majors is innocent.”

The actor’s legal troubles may not be over. Other former partners of Majors have also reportedly alleged abuse, going back nearly a decade.