That 70s Show actor Danny Masterson may get a long time in jail at sentencing for two rapes

LOS ANGELES – “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson may get as a lot as 30 years to life in jail at his sentencing Thursday for the rapes of two girls twenty years in the past.

Los Angeles Superior Court docket Decide Charlaine F. Olmedo is ready to condemn the 47-year-old actor after ruling on a protection movement for a brand new trial that she’s very more likely to reject, and after listening to impression statements from the victims.

A jury of seven girls and 5 males discovered Masterson responsible of two counts on Might 31 after seven days of deliberations. Each assaults happened in Masterson’s Hollywood-area residence in 2003, when he was on the top of his fame on the Fox community sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

The jury couldn’t attain a unanimous verdict on a 3rd rely, an allegation that Masterson additionally raped a longtime girlfriend.

The decision got here in a second trial after a jury failed to succeed in verdicts on three counts of forcible rape in December and a mistrial was declared.

Prosecutors alleged that Masterson used his prominence within the Church of Scientology — the place all three girls had been additionally members on the time — to keep away from penalties for many years after the assaults.

The ladies blamed the church for his or her hesitancy in going to police about Masterson. They testified that after they reported him to Scientology officers, they had been advised they weren’t raped, had been put by ethics applications themselves, and had been warned in opposition to going to regulation enforcement to report a member of such excessive standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Lawyer Reinhold Mueller advised jurors on the trial. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them.”

The church stated in an announcement after the decision that the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” through the trial had been “uniformly false.”

“The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement,” the assertion stated.

Masterson didn’t testify, and his attorneys known as no witnesses. The protection argued that the acts had been consensual, and tried to discredit the ladies’s tales by highlighting modifications and inconsistencies over time, which they stated confirmed indicators of coordination between them.

The ladies whose testimony led to Masterson’s conviction stated that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then grew to become woozy or handed out earlier than he violently raped them.

Olmedo allowed prosecutors and accusers to say instantly within the second trial that Masterson drugged the ladies, whereas solely permitting the ladies to explain their situation within the first.

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there was no toxicology proof to again up the assertion. The problem may very well be a think about a deliberate enchantment from the protection of Masterson’s conviction.

The Related Press doesn’t sometimes title individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused.

Masterson starred with Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace in “That ’70s Show” from 1998 till 2006.

He had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” however was written off the present when an LAPD investigation was revealed the next 12 months.

Whereas that investigation started earlier than a wave of ladies shook Hollywood with tales about Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, the conviction and sentencing of Masterson nonetheless represents a significant #MeToo period success for Los Angeles prosecutors, together with the conviction of Weinstein himself final 12 months.