Summary
Transcript
Tonight, Jonathan Majors walked out of court with heavy security after being found guilty of assault and harassment. He was acquitted of two other charges that required prosecutors to show majors intentionally committed those acts. Do you think your son got a fair trial? The 34 year old star has demed since he was arrested in March after a fight with his ex girlfriend, Grace Jabari. He played roles in Marvel films and Creed three, but it was his performance in the tv series Lovecraft country that made Hollywood take notice.
During deliberations, the jury asked to rewatch surveillance video from the incident in slow motion, where it appears Majors shoves Jabari into a black Escalade. Another video shows Jabari running after Majors following the incident. She testified she grabbed Majors phone after seeing a text message from another woman. In a criminal complaint, Jabari accused Majors of assaulting her, leaving a cup behind her ear and fracturing her finger. CBS News legal analyst Ricky Kleeman that Jonathan Majors did not intend to cause any physical harm to this woman.
But what Jonathan Majors did by virtue simply of his actions, his size, his strength, was create a substantial risk of physical injury. Majors and his family did not speak to the media as they left the court today. Grace Jabari, who was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read, did release a statement saying she was, quote, gratified to see justice. This, remember, y’all, remember, this is a woman.
This is a woman that at a lot of points, told this man that she loved him. Told this man that she loved him, was riding his wave, his coattails, the whole nine yards. And now Marvel has dropped Jonathan Majors after this man basically fought his entire life to be recognized and now has an opportunity to really be able to take off. He’s lost everything. Let’s continue. It’s a bizarre rant as actor Jonathan Majors berates his ex girlfriend, Grace Jabari.
Majors is upset that she’d gone out partying. Do you really know, baby? Do you really? Yes. Then how dare you come home drunk to disturb the peace of our house when we have a listen to what he’s saying. Listen, this is what they call abuse. I want you all to really understand and take in the gravity of what’s happening right now. Okay, I really want you all to understand the gravity.
He says, how dare you come home drunk and disturb the peace of our house when we have a plan. This is abuse according to what the media and the jury found him guilty of. So the man set boundaries. She’s out doing God knows what at God knows what time of the night. She’s also setting him up. Let’s take into consideration the entire context of what’s happening, because she’s intentionally recording him, which means that she’s already lying to you because she’s making adjustments to her behavior, considering that she knows that she’s the one that’s recording.
So she’s recording him. Basically set boundaries to say, how dare you come into the home that I’m paying for drunk and disturb the piece of the house when we had a plan. He then tells Javari that she needs to emulate two iconic women. Coretta Scott King. Do you know who that is? That’s Martin Luther King’s wife, Michelle Obama. Barack Obama’s wife. I know I shouldn’t have gone out.
I’m sorry. The ex girlfriend secretly recorded the argument in 2022. I’m a great man. A great man. Now, remember, she recorded this in 2022, which has no bearing on what it is that he’s being accused of, that we seen on footage him running away from her and her chasing him. Right. Let’s put it in perspective. So that means for the entirety of the time that he’s been with her, he’s been sleeping with the enemy.
I don’t care about the dynamics of who it is that he’s referencing or if it’s a white woman or a black woman or whatever, so on and so forth. What I care about and what I’m passionate about and what I’ve been speaking about a lot over the last few years is the things that men endure through. But yet you all want to continue to discount us and have a conversation about what men should do when it comes to being leaders within our households.
What we not having a conversation about is how she’s been setting him up, recording him, and holding on to content for just this very moment. She’s been holding on to listen. Any woman, any person, but any woman that is recording your conversations and waiting for the perfect opportunity to accuse you of doing something that is egregious in order to ruin your life. And I’ve been saying this for an extended period of time, that the person that you lay next to is the most important decision that you’re ever going to make in your entire life, business, relationship, personal.
It will completely ruin your life if you are laying with or think that you’re sleeping with somebody that’s telling you they love you, but they’ve been secretly recording you, trying to make sure that they set you up. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. So he’s talking about how great of a man he is, and he doing great things, not just for me. I am doing great things, not just for me, but for my culture and for the world.
That is actually the position I’m in. So it sounds like he understands the gravity of what it is that he’s about to embark on and how it is that he needs to be portrayed. And so he’s very, very careful about the fact that you can’t be coming in here drunk and disrespecting and being an extension of me. And think about it. This man wasn’t even married. He wasn’t even married.
But yet you all keep talking about and having a conversation about what men and what women go through and how women are the least protected. That’s not what I’m seeing right here. They took his entire ability to be able to provide for himself in one fell swoop. Defense rested its case without calling Jonathan Majors to the stand. But the actor was seen wiping away tears as his attorney made closing arguments in which she accused the ex girlfriend of telling little white lies and also big lies.
Anything to say about the video evidence, Jonathan? As the jury deliberates, they will consider this jaw dropping surveillance tape where it appears Jabari is pursuing majors after a physical back and forth in the suv over a text he received from another woman named Cleopatra. And then the big moment where Majors is accused of pushing her back into the suv the next day is when Jabari is found on the floor of the walk in closet.
Jesus Christ. Is it okay to say that I’m absolutely disgusted with what it is that I see happening nowadays? Is it fair to say that I’m disgusted? I’m absolutely, positively disgusted. Look at this foolishness, y’all. Oh, my God. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to have love at all? Is this love closet, Major? And this is after she was out here in these streets partying. Right after that.
Called cops. When he couldn’t get inside, I bang on the door. I’ve been at the apartment for about 40 minutes now. I couldn’t get in. I finally went downstairs and asked the doorman to help us. They let me in via the handyman. In the aftermath, cops are seen talking to majors they look around the apartment from the bedroom with the unmade bed to the sprawling living room area.
Majors is seen on the phone. Then Jabari surfaces dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. She leaves the apartment and is seen making calls on the elevator. And. Hello, everyone. I’m Kira Phillips. And I’m Terry Morana. We’ve got some breaking news. The jury in the Jonathan Majors domestic violence trial has found him guilty of one count of assault and one count of harassment, but acquitted him of another count of assaulting his former girlfriend.
This comes after jurors spent four or 5 hours deliberating over portions of several days. And this is a case that has gotten a lot of attention. Jonathan Major is a major rising star, and he met a crisis in this. And the jury is now returned with its verdict. And there was a lot of talk about this trial impacting his future in the movie business. Rising star within the Marvel movies.
Our legal contributor, Brian Buckmeyer has been following this from the very beginning as well. So I guess let’s first of all talk about the charges here. Brian, your first reaction? Yeah, I’m actually kind of scratching my head just because I’m looking at the different charges. And let me break it down and explain. There are two different assaults here. One is intentional assault, and one is reckless assault based on the number order that they’re telling us.
My guess, and please, someone correct me if I’m wrong, is they’re acquitting him of intentional assault, but finding him guilty of reckless assault, meaning that he just did something he should have known better and caused the injury of Grace Jabari. Then he’s found not guilty of aggravated assault, which is to alarm, annoy, harass, or threaten someone and subject them to physical violence. But he’s not guilty of that.
But he is guilty of alarming and annoying Grace Jabari. To me, this sounds like we call it a King Solomon decision. They literally just split the baby and said half and half. But some of the convictions and some of the acquittals don’t really make sense when you put them all together. Well, Brian, let me try to make a little sense. I wonder, I don’t know the exact fact pattern since I wasn’t in the courtroom, but couldn’t you say that in the fury of what is a domestic dispute, he was reckless in his physical handling of Jabari, and that was the reckless assault.
And the harassment is he lost his temper rather than consciously went after her. Does that make sense? No, because it would make sense for the reckless and then the aggravated harassment, because the aggravated harassment is harassing someone through physical violence. So why find him guilty of assaulting recklessly but not guilty of harassing someone through physical force? That’s the part that I’m thinking. Someone just kind of said, you know what? We’ll find him guilty for two, but not guilty for these two.
But it could work. Someone’s got to talk to the jury, I guess. Honestly, I’m absolutely disgusted. I’m absolutely disgusted. And I think that this is disrespectful. This is unfortunate. .