The criminal prosecution of actor Jonathan Majors, who is accused of abusing his ex-girlfriend, started on Monday with opening comments.
Around 9:30 a.m., he showed up at New York City Criminal Court donning a beret and a heavy coat. Majors carried a Bible into the lower Manhattan courtroom at 10:05 a.m. He planted a kiss on the cheek of everyone in attendance, including his new partner, Meagan Good.
Majors was arrested on March 25 following an alleged domestic argument in Manhattan with his then-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Majors has starred in popular films, including Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Creed III.” Three counts of misdemeanor assault, aggravated harassment, and harassment remain against the actor, who has entered a not-guilty plea. An allegation of strangling has been dismissed. If found guilty, he may spend up to a year behind bars.
First, prosecutor Michael Perez provided information about the circumstances surrounding Majors’ apprehension. On March 25, Majors and Jabbari arrived at their Chelsea residence after midnight from a Brooklyn party via private vehicle. The prosecutor stated that the couple had talked about marriage and having children and had been together for two years after meeting on the set of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” in 2021.
Perez informed the jury, “This was a serious relationship.”
Jabbari noticed a text message from Cleopatra, a woman, on Majors’s phone the night of the event. It said, “Wish I was kissing you right now.” According to reports, Jabbari removed the phone from his grasp to check the sender’s identity. Majors allegedly started grasping Jabbari’s right side of her body and pried her finger off the phone to get it back, according to Perez. According to the prosecution, this resulted in significant discomfort, swelling, and bruises.
Perez claimed, “He did cause Grace Jabbari’s physical injury, and he intended to cause her physical injury.”
Majors did not dispute that the reported altercation began with a text message from a different woman. Priya Chaudhry, Majors’ criminal defense attorney, contends that Jabbari, not Majors, was the one who attacked him, tearing the pocket “with her bare hands” and ripping two buttons off his coat.
That evening, Jabbari parted ways with three strangers whom she met on the street and invited to a club. The prosecutor, Perez, told the jury that she went there to “block out the experience.” Majors, meantime, had texted their breakup to stop their relationship and booked into a hotel room.
Later, Jabbari went back to Majors’ apartment and, according to Chaudhry, called him 32 times before taking two sleeping pills. The next morning, he returned to the Chelsea home and claimed to have discovered Jabbari lying on the closet floor.
Chaudhry informed jurors that Majors had called the police “out of concern” for Jabbari’s mental health since she was unconscious and had made suicide threats via text message. After some hesitation, Jabbari eventually admitted to the cops that Majors had hurt her; Majors was taken into custody. She was brought to the hospital so that her wounds could be attended to.
A few months later, on October 26, Jabbari was taken into custody and accused of assault and criminal mischief in relation to the March incident. However, due to “a lack of prosecutorial merit,” the Manhattan District Attorney’s office “declined to prosecute the case against Grace Jabbari.” Judge Michael Gaffey decided on Thursday that the defense team may mention Jabbari’s arrest throughout the trial.
Jabbari, the driver of the private vehicle where the claimed altercation occurred, a medical professional, and the three strangers that Jabbari met on the street will all likely testify during the two-week trial.
Perez claims that things “began to sour” and that Majors and Jabbari’s relationship was nearing the end of its “honeymoon period” before the evening above. He went on, “the defendant’s true self began to show” a few months into the relationship. He started to belittle, control, and purposefully withhold affection from [Jabbari]. Perez claimed that Majors had previously threatened suicide in an attempt to “control her actions.”
The prosecutor stated, “This affected their entire relationship and how she reacted on March 25.”
Jurors were informed by Chaudhry that Majors and Jabbari’s past connection had “nothing to do with what happened in the car.”
Majors’s Hollywood career was booming prior to his arrest, according to the defense. In addition to two 2023 blockbusters, he starred in the independent film “Magazine Dreams,” which Searchlight Pictures picked up at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. After the accusations, the studio took the project off of its release schedule. He was removed from the movie “The Man in My Basement” and fired by his management and PR team as a result of the backlash. As the evil Kang the Conqueror in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, Majors continues to play a significant role.
“Mr. Majors’ career seemed unstoppable, and his lifetime of hard work was paying off until he broke up with Jabbari, and she started making these false accusations,” Chaudhry stated. “This individual put in a lot of work over 30 years to get to where he was on March 25. A man having the entire world at his command.
“This is a case about the end of a relationship, not about a crime… at least not one that Mr. Majors committed,” the defense said in closing remarks. She concocted these untrue accusations as payback to destroy Mr. Majors and take away everything he had worked so hard to achieve during his life.
