Former That ’70s Show actor Danny Masterson is blaming his trial lawyer for his 2023 rape convictions and accusing his defence team of “failure of due diligence.”
Masterson, currently serving 30 years to life in prison for raping two women, filed a petition for habeas corpus — a legal action challenging the lawfulness of his imprisonment — on Monday, which blamed his trial lawyer, Philip Cohen, for failing to call any witnesses and for not pushing back on prosecutors’ claims about Scientology, Variety reports.
Masterson, 49, “implored (Cohen) to present at least a minimal modicum of defense evidence, but counsel refused,” according to the filing.
“Cohen had a longstanding aversion to presenting affirmative defense evidence in the cases he tried,” the filing said.
“He personally spoke to only two of the more than 20 potential witnesses who had been strongly recommended by co-counsel Karen Goldstein and investigator Lynda Larsen. He wrote off the great majority of them without any personal contact, notwithstanding their manifestly exculpatory prior statements to the police and to investigators.”
In the petition, Masterson also alleges police and prosecutors were prejudiced against Scientology, partially due to the involvement of former Scientologist Leah Remini, who supported his accusers publicly.
“She was welcomed into the prosecution fold as an adviser, strategist, authoritative arbiter on the policy and practices of the Church of Scientology, and advocate for the complaining witnesses,” said the petition. “She was welcomed even though the LAPD knew that she had an ongoing vendetta against petitioner.”
The actor was found guilty of two of three counts of forcible rape during his retrial in May 2023. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. The retrial was called after 2022’s original trial on the same three counts ended in a mistrial when a jury deadlocked, failing to reach unanimous verdicts.
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During the second trial, deputy district attorney Reinhold Mueller and his team tried to paint Masterson as a serial rapist who had been protected by high-ranking officials in the Church of Scientology. (Masterson and his family are all members of the church.) They claimed Masterson, on separate occasions, put drugs into the drinks of a longtime girlfriend and two other women he knew through the church before he raped them.
The victims claimed Scientology officials threatened them for years after they reported Masterson’s abuse to police. The Church of Scientology has denied all accusations of wrongdoing and was not a party in Masterson’s trial.
At the retrial, prosecutors called Claire Headley to the stand. She is an ex-Scientologist who testified that the church requires special permission to go to authorities.
According to the new filing, the church’s lawyers urged Cohen to call Hugh Whitt, a longtime Scientologist, to speak to the claim, but Cohen and his co-counsel did not call him.
“Why have we heard so much about Scientology?” Cohen asked in his closing argument instead of rebutting Headley’s claim. “Could it be there’s problems otherwise with the government’s case?”
The petition argues that Cohen failed to interview numerous defence witnesses who might have helped Masterson’s case by challenging the credibility of his accusers.
“This failure of due diligence violated the well-settled principle of Sixth Amendment case law that an attorney must interview potential defense witnesses as a necessary foundation for making a reasoned decision about trial strategy,” the petition added.
“In sum, the jury saw only the tip of the iceberg of available defense evidence in the form of the complaining witnesses’ inconsistent statements while the wealth of directly exculpatory evidence went unused for no viable tactical reason.”
Masterson’s appellate lawyer, Eric Multhaup, claims that the jury “heard only half the story – the prosecution’s side.”
“The unfairness of the second Masterson trial was the result of prosecutorial misconduct, judicial bias and the failure of defense counsel to present exculpatory evidence,” Multhaup said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times on Monday. “The habeas corpus petition is accompanied by 65 exhibits that document the evidence of innocence that could have been presented, but was not.
“Danny deserves a new trial where the jury can hear his side as well.”
Masterson’s lawyers filed a separate appeal last December, alleging that key witness testimonies morphed over time and “erroneous judicial rulings” skewed the jury’s view of the evidence against him.
In a statement posted to the Cliff Gardner law offices website, the lawyers said there were “two fundamental flaws” in Masterson’s convictions, one being the aforementioned skewed view and the second a “stunning amount” of alleged exculpatory evidence “never presented to the jury.”
His legal team went on to say that these are only “one part” of their planned challenge to his convictions, and they are working towards Masterson’s “complete exoneration.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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