After more than a week of testimony, the prosecution and defense made their closing arguments in Jonathan Majors’s domestic assault trial on Thursday. The 34-year-old actor best known for Creed III and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of assault and harassment originating from an alleged domestic altercation between him and then girlfriend Grace Jabbari in March.
Majors was arrested on March 25, and Jabbari was treated at a hospital for what authorities said were “minor injuries to her head and neck.” The prosecution says Jabbari was riding in the back of a vehicle with Majors when she grabbed his phone from him after seeing a text message that said, “Wish I was kissing you right now,” sent by a woman listed in his phone as “Cleopatra.” Majors’s defense attorney, Priya Chaudhry, has maintained her client’s innocence, saying during opening statements, “In revenge, [Jabbari] made these false allegations to ruin Mr. Majors and take away everything he spent his life working for.”
In her final remarks to the jury on Thursday, Chaudhry said, “This entire case is built on Grace’s lies—and, boy, does Grace lie,” as reported by The Messenger. “You don’t get to destroy people’s lives with your fantasies. Grace is obviously an emotional person, but she cannot distinguish between her lies and her feelings. These prosecutors bought Grace’s white lies, her big lies, and all her pretty little lies.”
According to People, prosecutor Kelli Galaway told the jury: “This is not a revenge plot to take away a man’s career or ruin his life,” arguing that Jabbari initially did not cooperate with prosecutors and tried to protect Majors. “Is that the actions of a woman whose sole intent is to take a man down? To not cooperate?” Galaway asked.
Jabbari testified to Majors’s “violent temper, rage, a bit of aggression” throughout their two-year relationship. Majors did not take the stand. The defense rested its case on Wednesday afternoon after calling multiple witnesses. Naveed Sarwar, the driver of the couple’s car, testified that Majors was “not doing anything, [Jabbari] was doing everything,” as reported by Variety. Tammy Weiner, an emergency room physician who did not treat Jabbari but reviewed her injuries, testified, as did NYPD detective Ronnie Mejia, who in October arrested Jabbari in a counter-complaint, filed by Majors, alleging domestic abuse. The claims were not prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office “because [they] lack[ed] prosecutorial merit,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement in October. Majors’s talent agent, Elan Ruspoli, a partner at William Morris Endeavor, testified that he spoke with his client on the morning of March 25 and that he sounded “beyond concerned” and “distraught,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Wednesday also brought the public release of evidence previously only available to jurors. This included security- and traffic-cam video of Majors and Jabbari leaving their car after the alleged dispute and running through Manhattan streets; images of Jabbari’s fractured finger and a cut behind her ear; and the 911 call Majors placed to authorities the night of the alleged assault, in which he tells police that his ex had “attempted suicide, I think,” according to the recording. In her closing statements, Majors’s lead attorney said that the actor’s “fear of what happens when a Black man in America calls 911 came true.”
Savannah Walsh
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