Jonathan Majors Escapes Jail Time In Domestic Violence Sentencing; Gets LA Intervention Program - Deadline

Over three months after being convicted of reckless assault and harassment, Jonathan Majors was sentenced this morning by a New York judge to participate a domestic violence treatment program. The one-year “in person batterers” intervention program will be in LA, where Majors is based.

Present in Judge Michael Gaffey’s Manhattan courtroom Monday, Majors could have faced up to a year of jail time for his conviction on December 18 on two misdemeanor counts of reckless assault and harassment against Grace Jabbari. After a three-week trial late last year and several days of deliberations,  the one-time Marvel actor was convicted by the jury of three men and three women.

In sentencing Monday, Judge Gaffey also issued a permanent order of protection against any contact whatsoever with Jabbari and continued therapy for Majors. The actor cannot apply for or own a gun, the judge also said. Any violation of the sentencing terms could result in Majors being put behind bars for up to 364 days, Gaffey made clear today. If Majors does not complete the West Coast intervention program, he could also face six months in jail.

Up against a total of four misdemeanor charges, Majors, who pleaded not guilty, was not convicted by the jurors of intentional assault in the third degree and of aggravated harassment in the second degree against then-girlfriend Jabbari. Though present every day, often with a Bible before him and Harlem actress Meagan Good accompanying him, Majors did not testify at his trial.

Last week, Majors lost a Hail Mary effort to have the assault and harassment conviction overturned or to receive a new trial.

Like Majors, Jabbari was in the court Monday when sentencing was handed down. Before sentencing, the British dancer read out a victim impact statement. “He will do this again,” Jabbari said of Majors, who was seated just a few feet away from her. “This is a man who thinks he is above the law,” she added.

Majors made no statement in court Monday. Being that this is the actor’s first conviction, both the prosecution and the defense agreed that jail time for Majors was not an appropriate sentence, we hear. In sentencing, Judge Gaffey said Monday “jail is not necessary” for Majors.

Still, this isn’t really over for Majors.

With his career decimated since his arrest in March 2023, the Creed III star is also currently facing defamation suit filed by Jabbari. Almost right after Jabbari filed her complaint in late March, Majors primary lawyer Priya Chaudhry has sworn counterclaims are coming. Yet, as of today, no such counterclaims have appeared on any court docket.

Jabbari’s defamation case is filled with additional allegations of abuse against Majors that were originally  kept out of the criminal case record by Judge Gaffey. Initially the judge ruled the material too “inflammatory” to allow Majors to receive a fair trial. However, in no small part due to the defense itself, he later reversed portions of that sealing ruling so Jabbari could effectively respond to questioning on the stand.

Monday’s sentence ended a yearlong downward spiral for Majors that began with the actor’s arrest by New York City police on March 25, 2023 for domestic violence. The arrest came just hours after an argument between the actor and Jabbari turned physical inside their chauffeured car late at night in downtown Manhattan.

Instead of negotiating a plea on the lesser, non-felony charges filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Majors and his lawyer Chaudhry, took the risky step of going to trial in the misdemeanor case. If the maneuver was a bid to secure a not-guilty verdict and salvage the  actor’s career, which had begun to implode in the days after his arrest as his PR firm and management dropped him in quick succession, it was a failure.

Going on offense as the situation turned from bad to worse for her client, Chaudhry also filed a cross-complaint with the NYPD on her client’s behalf alleging that Jabbari, not Majors, instigated the violence in the car. Jabbari turned herself into a police precinct in October on charges of assault and criminal mischief, and was arrested and released, but the D.A. immediately declined to prosecute, calling the allegations meritless. 

As the case crawled through dueling allegations plus a string of pre-trial motions and hearings, including one conducted in closed court with the public barred and the ruling sealed roles and endorsement deals evaporated for the Emmy-nominated Lovecraft Country star.

With Season 2 of Loki hitting Disney+ in November 2023, Marvel didn’t officially dump Majors from the MCU as supervillain Kang until after his conviction in December. However, even before the verdict was in, Disney-owned Searchlight shelved Sundance sensation Magazine Dreams. Picked up by Searchlight soon after its standing ovation filled Park City debut, the Elijah Bynum directed drama was once tipped as an Oscar nomination sure thing for the Yale-trained actor’s performance as an troubled aspiring bodybuilder. Back in the hands of its filmmakers, Magazine Dreams has been looking for a new home since January this year.

In many ways, Majors’ career dreams turned to a nightmare at his trial last year.

Jurors watched a sometimes sobbing Jabbari testify that in their time together, since meeting in London in 2021 on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Majors swung between sweetness and terrifying rages and self-loathing remorse. To that end, the jury also heard audio that Jabbari recorded secretly in which Majors castigated her for going out drinking with friends, and called himself “a great man” in need of a “great woman” comparable to Coretta Scott King or Michelle Obama. 

During their car ride on March 25, after dinner in Brooklyn, Jabbari spotted a text from another woman on Majors’ phone screen and grabbed the device. She testified that Majors responded with force, twisting her arm and prying her hand back violently enough to fracture a finger, and then struck her in the head. The fight spilled on to the street at a stoplight, where Majors forcefully lifted Jabbari back into the car, “manhandling her … as if she was a doll,” a prosecutor said — a scene jurors watched on security camera footage.

The court also witnessed footage of Majors running away from the scene, with Jabbari giving chase, and later footage of Jabbari at a nightclub with a group of strangers she met on the street. One of the group testified that Jabbari sat at a table applying ice to her finger. Majors spent the night in a hotel room. 

He was arrested the next morning after he called 911 to ask for an emergency check on Jabbari at the apartment in Chelsea the couple shared. Police officers found her lying partially clothed in a wardrobe closet with bruising, swelling and a laceration on her head, and arrested Majors. 

Chaudhry, pointing to the nightclub video, argued that Jabbari had sustained her injuries inside the apartment after hours of drinking. Before and during the trial, Chaudhry sought to portray Majors as the victim of a lying and vindictive ex-  who weaponized a racially biased legal system against him. 

That proved a hard sell as  jurors saw texts between the couple about an incident in London, six months before Majors’ arrest, in which they argued about a hospital visit. “I will tell the doctor I bumped my head if I go,” Jabbari wrote of a plan to get a prescription for painkillers. Majors replied that going to the hospital would “lead to an investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.”

After his conviction, Majors told ABC News in January that he had “never hit a woman” and said, “I was reckless with her heart, not with her body.” As the actor has become more public in recent months, showing up at the AAFCA Special Achievement Awards in early March, more allegations of abuse have emerged from other women describing very similar behavior to what Jabbari has expressed and the new York jury decided on.

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