For the second time in six months, a Los Angeles jury is debating whether actor Danny Masterson, former star of "That ’70s Show," is guilty of raping three women on between 2001 and 2003.
Last Thursday afternoon, the downtown L.A. panel re-heard portions of testimony from one of the alleged victims, who was a former longtime girlfriend of Masterson. The seven-woman, five-man jury had previously asked to re-watch portions of a videotaped interview and to look at transcripts from that interview between the same woman and two Los Angeles Police Department detectives in January 2017.
Prosecutors confirmed in January that they wanted to retry the actor, and Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo rejected a defense effort to have the charges dismissed. In his rebuttal argument during the retrial, Mueller said the three alleged victims were -- like Masterson -- members of the Church of Scientology, and told jurors that the church retaliated against them.
Masterson's lawyer said he was not alleging that there was some "grand conspiracy" against his client, but told jurors the alleged victims have spoken with each other despite an LAPD detective's admonition and that their accounts have been tweaked throughout the years. The Church of Scientology issued a statement criticizing the prosecution's characterizations of the church's actions.