Danny Masterson’s Lawyer Scolded by Judge for ‘Tacitly Coercive’ Juror Contact
The judge who presided over Danny Masterson’s 2023 rape trial and sentencing had a testy exchange with one of the actor’s lawyers in a California courtroom Tuesday, but stopped short of ordering a full-blown evidentiary hearing into claims Masterson’s appellate team acted improperly when it recently tracked down jurors at their homes and workplaces.
At a tense hearing in downtown Los Angeles, Judge Charlaine Olmedo ruled that she simply lacked jurisdiction to order such a hearing while Masterson’s conviction is on appeal. Still, she made it clear she was bothered by the way a private investigator approached one specific juror outside her home the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 15. She called the interaction “tacitly coercive” and said it remains a “mystery” how the appellate team managed to identify approximately six jurors who served during the 2023 trial considering their personal information had been sealed.
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As she concluded the hearing, the judge said she planned to refer Masterson’s two appellate lawyers to the state bar’s attorney discipline division “for further investigation and action if necessary.” She also said she would contact the state’s Bureau of Security and Investigative Services to report the private investigator’s alleged actions.
After the hearing, one of the Jane Does whom Masterson was convicted of raping said the same private investigator has reached out to people connected to her personal life. “I found it objectionable. These are people who had nothing to do with the criminal case. I’m being contacted by these people who are saying they feel harassed,” the Jane Doe forcibly raped by Masterson in 2003 told Rolling Stone.
The jurors contacted by the appellate team served on a second trial that ended with Masterson’s conviction in May 2023. An initial trial on the same charges ended in a mistrial when the prior panel couldn’t reach a unanimous decision. Both trials included emotional testimony from the three women whose allegations led to Masterson’s three charges of forcible rape. All three women said Masterson drugged them before raping them. The women were practicing Scientologists along with Masterson at the time and testified that Church of Scientology officials protected the That ‘70s Show actor. Masterson ultimately was convicted of raping two of the women. Jurors deadlocked on the third alleged victim, voting 8-4 in favor of conviction.
Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in September 2023, the same month he filed his appeal. As Masterson pursued both the appeal and a petition challenging his incarceration, his appellate lawyers started looking for jurors willing to discuss possible problems with the trial. Their efforts led multiple jurors to complain to the court. Judge Olmedo sent a letter to prosecutors and Masterson’s defense on Sept. 17, 2024, stating several jurors reported “unwanted contact” where they “may have felt pressured” to talk. She said the jurors were “troubled” they were approached at their homes or workplaces. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller, the lead prosecutor on the case, asked the court for an evidentiary hearing.
On Tuesday, Mueller said he reviewed the anonymous jury questionnaires from the trial and couldn’t understand how the appellate team identified the jurors beyond the foreperson, who willingly gave some identifying information about her job.
Masterson’s trial lawyer Shawn Holley attended the hearing Tuesday and shared with the court some of her personal communications to prove she had only cordial and voluntary post-verdict communications with the foreperson. In a prior declaration, Holley told the court she met with the foreperson for a lunch in Santa Monica shortly after the trial ended. She said the foreperson put her in touch with two more jurors. Judge Olmedo said from the bench Tuesday that she received a follow-up email from the foreperson on Nov. 19, 2024, in which the juror wanted to “clarify” that her contact with Holley was “perfectly appropriate and with her consent.”
“The complete blame for harassment is with the appellate attorneys and their private investigator,” the foreperson wrote in the email read aloud by Judge Olmedo. “[The investigator’s] tactics were harassing as she showed up to private residences. We all wondered how she found out where the various jurors lived and worked. And she kept showing up, which is a form of intimidation in our opinion as we continue to communicate via group text.”
When the judge turned to Masterson’s habeas lawyer, Eric Multhaup, she pointedly asked how he managed to track down the jurors on his end. Multhaup replied that his investigator is very skilled at her job. The judge seemed skeptical but said her “limited jurisdiction” during the appeals process tied her hands.
“How the defense appellate and habeas teams got the names of the trial jurors is a mystery to this court as I have not ordered to unseal [them] and all trial counsel were ordered to not copy them in any way,” she said Tuesday.
In one particularly tense exchange, Judge Olmedo pressed Multhaup on what happened with the juror who was approached at her home while doing yard work last September. Olmedo said Multhaup’s investigator failed to follow protocol and first inform the juror that she had a right to stay silent. Multhaup told the court that the juror “interrupted” the investigator before she could give the admonition. He said his investigator “said thank you and walked away.”
“No, she didn’t,” Judge Olmedo shot back. “She said, ‘So, you decline to participate?’ In the same breath that she said, ‘So, you decline to participate?’ – which implies there should have been some participation – she should have said, ‘You have an absolute right not to talk to me if you don’t want to.’” Judge Olmedo called the investigator’s response “tacitly coercive” and an apparent violation.
“Your honor, you’re putting the cart before the horse,” Multhaup said.
“No, I’m not. And I will also indicate that [the juror approached at her home] is a court reporter for the Los Angeles Superior Court. Her job literally is to take down words accurately and be clear on the meaning of those words. So I take great stock in what [she] put down, the order of what took place and the words that were said,” Judge Olmedo shot back.
“We will certainly contest in any state bar proceedings Judge Olmedo’s view that improprieties occurred in the juror interviews,” Multhaup said in a statement sent to Rolling Stone Tuesday evening. “Juror interviews are a normal and often important part of post-conviction proceedings to see if the defendant received a fair trial. In any case, we will not be distracted, delayed or deterred in our efforts to obtain a new trial for Danny Masterson. Many of the defects in the trial are set forth in the opening brief that will be filed in the Court of Appeal by December 22.”
After the hearing ended, a lawyer representing the Jane Does in their civil lawsuit against Masterson and the Church of Scientology asked the judge for a court order maintaining the sealing of everything that was filed under seal during the criminal. He said the worry was that other identifying information might fall into the wrong hands. Judge Olmedo said she wasn’t sure where everything stood amid the appeal but urged the lawyer to file a written application.
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