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The 2020 conviction of Harvey Weinstein on felony sex crime charges in Manhattan was overturned on Thursday by New York’s top court. The ruling by the New York Court of Appeals said the trial judge in Mr. Weinstein’s case, Justice James M. Burke, erred in letting prosecutors call some women as witnesses who said Mr. […] More
A judge ruled that the dancehall artist’s 2014 trial had proceeded improperly after a claim of juror misconduct.The murder conviction of the dancehall artist Vybz Kartel and three co-defendants was overturned on Thursday by the highest court of appeal for Jamaica and other Commonwealth countries.Vybz Kartel, born Adidja Palmer, had previously been convicted and given a life sentence for the 2011 murder of Clive Williams, known as Lizard. The sentence was later reduced to 32 and a half years.On Thursday, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London overturned the conviction because of allegations of jury misconduct in the 2014 trial. A juror, described in court documents as “Juror X,” was allowed to remain seated after a claim that the person had attempted to bribe other members of the jury. Jurors ultimately convicted Mr. Palmer, Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and André St. John of murder.“Allowing Juror X to remain on the jury is fatal to the safety of the convictions which followed,” the court ruled. “It was an infringement of the appellants’ fundamental right to a fair hearing under the Jamaican Constitution.”Another appeals court will now decide whether Mr. Palmer should be retried. Lawyers for Mr. Palmer and for the prosecution did not immediately respond to requests for comment.After a string of successful singles in his native Jamaica, Mr. Palmer reached U.S. charts in 2009 with “Romping Shop,” which also featured Spice, and collaborated with Rihanna, Jay-Z and other artists. He also starred in the reality TV show “Teacha’s Pet,” which aired on Jamaican TV in 2011. While imprisoned, Mr. Palmer continued to release new songs, including the 2016 single “Fever,” which went gold.During the trial, prosecutors alleged that Mr. Williams and another man had been given two unlicensed firearms belonging to Mr. Palmer. When the pair did not return the weapons on time, they were summoned to Mr. Palmer’s house, where Mr. Williams was killed, according to prosecutors, who relied on evidence from Mr. Palmer’s cellphone to advance their case. Mr. Williams’s body was never found.All four defendants had pleaded not guilty. More
The English actress sued the American musician weeks after they announced their split, saying he had prevented their two children from returning to Britain.A judge in New York on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that the English actress Sophie Turner filed last year against her husband, Joe Jonas, in which she requested that their two young children be returned to England from the United States.The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was dismissed with both parties’ consent, according to a court filing.Turner, a star on the television show “Game of Thrones,” sued Jonas, an American musician who plays in a boy band with his brothers, in September, weeks after the couple said publicly that they planned to divorce.That summer, the children had traveled to the U.S. with Jonas because he was on tour there and Turner had a busy filming schedule in Britain, according to the lawsuit. The couple agreed that Turner would pick up the children in September and return with them to England, it said.Instead, the lawsuit said, Jonas filed for divorce in September and later refused to give Turner the children’s passports, preventing them from returning to England, their “habitual residence.”A representative for Jonas said at the time that giving Turner the children’s passports would have violated a court order in Florida — where the couple’s divorce proceedings had been initiated — that restricted both parents from relocating the children.In the court filing on Wednesday, known as a consent order, Judge Katherine Polk Failla noted that Turner and Jonas had signed a memorandum of understanding and a “parenting plan” related to their children in October. They also filed a consent order with a court in Britain that was approved on Jan. 11, she wrote.Attorneys and publicists for Turner and Jonas did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.The couple’s children, who were born in the United States in 2020 and 2022, have American and British citizenship. They have been identified in court documents by only their initials.Turner and Jonas began dating in 2016, when he was touring in Britain, and married in Las Vegas three years later.After living a “very peripatetic lifestyle” for a few years, Turner’s lawsuit said, they relocated to England in April 2023 and had planned to buy a home there later in the year.But in early September, after a succession of negative news stories about Turner, they said in a joint statement on Instagram that they had “mutually decided to amicably end our marriage.”Seamus Hughes More
Leon Wildes, a New York immigration lawyer who successfully fought the United States government’s attempt to deport John Lennon, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 90.His death, at Lenox Hill Hospital, was confirmed by his son Michael.For more than three years, from early 1972 to the fall of 1975, Mr. Wildes (pronounced WY-ulds) doggedly battled the targeting by the Nixon administration and immigration officials of Mr. Lennon, the former Beatle, and his wife, Yoko Ono, marshaling a series of legal arguments that exposed both political chicanery and a hidden U.S. immigration policy.Uncovering secret records through the Freedom of Information Act, he showed that immigration officials, in practice, can exercise wide discretion in whom they choose to deport, a revelation that continues to resonate in immigration law. And he revealed that Mr. Lennon, an antiwar activist and a vocal critic of President Richard M. Nixon, had been singled out by the White House for political reasons.Mr. Wildes was ultimately vindicated by the stinging decision of a federal appeals court in October 1975, which said that “the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds,” and which halted the effort to kick Mr. Lennon out of the country.Mr. Lennon and Mr. Wildes addressing reporters about the case, which centered on Mr. Lennon’s 1968 London conviction for marijuana possession.via Wildes Family ArchivesThe Beatles had broken up in 1970, and Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono moved to New York the next year. Mr. Lennon had been convicted of marijuana possession in London in 1968; that record would normally have barred him from entry, but he had obtained a waiver. The waiver was coming to an end, and the Lennons received a deportation notice.“It was a very frightening moment,” Ms. Ono said in the 2007 documentary “The U.S. vs. John Lennon.”When the Lennons engaged Mr. Wildes to represent them, he had barely heard of his famous clients. In his book about the case, “John Lennon vs. the USA,” published by the American Bar Association in 2016, he wrote that he was vaguely aware of the Beatles — it was nearly impossible not to be — but that the names of its members had escaped him.“I think it was Jack Lemmon and Yoko Moto,” he recalled telling his wife after meeting them in their apartment on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. She quickly corrected him.In the 2007 film, Mr. Lennon is seen telling reporters about Mr. Wildes: “He’s not a radical lawyer. He’s not William Kunstler.”Mr. Lennon had publicly opposed the Vietnam War — he recorded the antiwar anthem “Give Peace a Chance” in 1969 — and he had been involved in protests on behalf of figures in the New Left movement, which campaigned against the war.Nixon administration officials feared that he had outsize influence among the young, who would be allowed to vote in greater numbers in the 1972 presidential election, the first after the voting age had been lowered to 18 from 21. In the paranoid atmosphere then prevailing in the White House, that was enough for administration officials and their allies, notably the conservative South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, to go after Mr. Lennon.Their case centered on the London marijuana conviction. But the appellate court judge, Irving Kaufman, ultimately ruled that the crime was insufficient to make Mr. Lennon an “excludable alien.”The real reasons for the quixotic pursuit of Mr. Lennon, Mr. Wildes argued, lay elsewhere, as he was able to show thanks to his relentless digging through records. Early in 1972, Mr. Thurmond had drafted a letter recommending that Mr. Lennon be thrown out of the country, which Attorney General John N. Mitchell forwarded to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency then in charge of visas. Of particular concern was the fact that Mr. Lennon had performed at a rally in support of a New Left figure, the poet John Sinclair, who had been jailed on a marijuana charge.“If Lennon’s visa is terminated it would be a strategic countermeasure,” the South Carolina senator wrote.Ten days later, “a telegram went out to all immigration offices in the United States instructing that the Lennons should not be given any extensions of their time to visit the United States,” Mr. Wildes wrote in his book.For the next three years, the government continued to press its case, in efforts that appeared increasingly ham-fisted as public support for Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono grew. In letters and testimony, many of the era’s cultural celebrities spoke up for them, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Bernstein, the artist Jasper Johns and the authors John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Joseph Heller, as well as Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York.“The sole reason for deporting the Lennons was President Nixon’s desire to remove John and Yoko from the country before the 1972 election and a new, much younger electorate getting the vote,” Mr. Wildes wrote. “To ensure his grip on power, any ‘dirty tricks,’ including the abusive misuse of the immigration process, were acceptable.”Mr. Wildes, seated, consulted with his partner, Steven Weinberg, at their immigration law office in 1983.via Wildes Family ArchivesThe whole time, the F.B.I. was keeping a close watch on Mr. Lennon. “Surveillance reports on him ran to literally hundreds of pages,” Mr. Wildes wrote.When Mr. Lennon learned of the skulduggery, he was infuriated. “They’re even changing their own rules because we’re peaceniks,” he said in a television interview.The 1975 ruling allowed him to remain in the country. He was killed in front of the Dakota, the Upper West Side building where he and Ms. Yoko lived, five years later.In another breakthrough, Mr. Wildes found that immigration officials had the discretion to deport or not, depending on whether there were extenuating circumstances. The revelation of this policy continues to aid immigration lawyers battling the deportation of noncitizens today.“As part of his legal strategy, Wildes conducted groundbreaking research on the ‘nonpriority’ program, and eventually filed an application for ‘nonpriority status’ for Lennon,” the immigration expert Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia wrote in her 2015 book, “Beyond Deportation.” “Wildes learned that I.N.S. had for many years been granting ‘nonpriority’ status to prevent the deportation of noncitizens with sympathetic cases, but I.N.S. had never publicized the practice.”Throughout what Mr. Wildes acknowledged was the all-consuming job of representing the Lennons, he kept a bemused and friendly eye on his famous clients, sometimes encountering them, as others did, in what he called the “wonderful upright bed” in their Bank Street apartment.“One could meet half the world around that bed,” he wrote — “radical types like Jerry Rubin or Bobby Seale, oddball musicians like David Peel, poets like Allen Ginsberg, actors like Peter Boyle, television personalities like Geraldo Rivera, or even political operatives like the deputy mayor of New York.”Mr. Wildes at his office in 2015. “He’s not a radical lawyer,” John Lennon said. “He’s not William Kunstler.”via Wildes Family ArchivesLeon Wildes was born on March 4, 1933, in Olyphant, Pa., a small coal-mining town near Scranton. His father, Harry, was a clothing and dry goods merchant, and his mother, Sarah (Rudin) Wildes, worked in his store. Mr. Wildes was educated at public schools in Olyphant and earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in 1954 and a law degree from New York University in 1958.He quickly gravitated toward immigration law, working for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a refugee aid organization, and helping two Americans who had gone to Israel establish their U.S. citizenship. He founded the immigration law firm Wildes & Weinberg in 1960 and went on to write numerous law review articles on immigration law and to teach at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.In addition to his son Michael, he is survived by another son, Mark; his wife, Alice Goldberg Wiles; eight grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.Immigration law had “biblical import to him,” Michael Wildes, who is also a lawyer, recalled in a phone interview. “My father drew value from helping others achieve their American dream, as he had done — the golden grail of a green card, or citizenship.” More
Mr. Majors spoke on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” his first interview since being convicted of misdemeanor assault and harassment for attacking his girlfriend in a car.Jonathan Majors, an ascending Hollywood star whose career was upended when he was found guilty last month of assault and harassment for attacking his girlfriend, said in an interview broadcast on Monday that he was “absolutely shocked” by the verdict.In the interview, portions of which were shown on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Majors, 34, said that the episode had been “very hard” and “confusing in many ways.”“I’m standing there and the verdict comes down. I say, ‘How is that possible based off the evidence, based off the prosecution’s evidence, let alone our evidence? How is that possible?’” he told Linsey Davis of ABC News.A six-person jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Majors last month on misdemeanor assault and harassment charges for an altercation with Grace Jabbari, who was then his girlfriend, as they rode in a hired S.U.V. in March.Shortly after the verdict was announced, Marvel Studios parted ways with the actor, clouding the prospects of his once promising acting career. Marvel Studios had previously intended to build several films around the character Mr. Majors played in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” (Both Marvel and ABC, which ran the interview, are owned by Disney.)Mr. Majors’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 6.During a whirlwind two-week trial, the courtroom heard Ms. Jabbari describe the altercation that left her ear bloody and finger fractured. She said that Mr. Majors had received a flirty text from another woman, and that she had grabbed his phone out of his hand. First, she said, he tried to pry her fingers away; then he twisted her hand and her arm.“Next,” she said, “I felt like a really hard blow across my head.”Eventually, she said, Mr. Majors asked the driver to stop the vehicle. Video that jurors watched showed Mr. Majors jumping out, followed by Ms. Jabbari. He turned around, picked her up and placed her back in the car, appearing to push her back in when she tried to get out.Mr. Majors did not testify during the trial. But in the interview broadcast on Monday, he continued to dispute Ms. Jabbari’s account of the altercation and said that he did not know how she suffered the cut behind her ear and fractured finger.“I wish to God I knew,” he said.In a statement, Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for Ms. Jabbari, said that Mr. Majors “continues to take no accountability for his actions.”“His denigration of our jury system is not dissimilar from the above-the-law attitude that he has maintained throughout this legal process,” Ms. Henderson said in the statement. “The timing of these new statements demonstrates a clear lack of remorse for the actions for which he was found guilty and should make the sentencing decisions fairly easy for the Court.”Mr. Majors first gained attention in 2019 with the independent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and quickly expanded into blockbuster movies, delivering acclaimed performances in “Creed III” and “Quantumania.” He also starred in “Magazine Dreams,” about a troubled aspiring bodybuilder — a film acquired by Searchlight Pictures, a Disney subsidiary. But the movie, originally scheduled to be released this fall, was removed from the studio’s calendar last year amid the actor’s legal troubles.Asked if he thinks he will work again in Hollywood, Mr. Majors said, “Heck yeah, I do. I pray I do,” in the interview. “But it’s God’s plan and God’s timing.” More
The suit about the 1991 album had been dismissed because of the statute of limitations. But an appeals court ruled that it could proceed, noting that the album had been reissued in 2021.A federal appeals court ruled against the grunge rock group Nirvana on Thursday, reviving a lawsuit about the band’s use of a naked baby on the cover of its 1991 album “Nevermind.”A district court judge had dismissed Spencer Elden’s lawsuit that said he was a victim of child sexual abuse imagery, ruling that the complaint had not been filed within the 10-year statute of limitations. But a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, finding that “each republication” of an image “may constitute a new personal injury.”The appeals court noted that Mr. Elden’s 2021 complaint says Nirvana has reproduced the album cover within the past 10 years, including the band’s September 2021 rerelease of “Nevermind.”“The question whether the ‘Nevermind’ album cover meets the definition of child pornography is not at issue in this appeal,” the court wrote in a footnote.The case will now return to the district court.A lawyer for Mr. Elden did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bert H. Deixler, a lawyer for Nirvana, said in a statement that the opinion was a “procedural setback.”“We will defend this meritless case with vigor and expect to prevail,” Mr. Deixler said.Mr. Elden was 4 months old when he was photographed in 1991 by a family friend at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, Calif. His parents were paid $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar, dangling from a fishhook.In the decades that followed, Mr. Elden seemed to celebrate his appearance on the classic album cover, recreating the moment — though not in the nude — for several of the album’s anniversaries.But in the lawsuit, Mr. Elden said he had suffered “permanent harm” because of his association with the album, including emotional distress and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity.”The lawsuit did not detail the losses but said that Nirvana, the producers of the album and others had all profited at Mr. Elden’s expense.Lawyers for Nirvana argued that Mr. Elden had benefited financially from the album cover by re-enacting the photograph for a fee and making public appearances parodying the image. They have also denied that the picture in question was an example of child sexual abuse imagery, noting that the photograph is present in the homes of millions of Americans.Maria Cramer More
A judge ruled on Thursday that at least 17 specific sets of lines from the Atlanta rapper and his collaborators could be used by prosecutors in their gang conspiracy case.A judge decided on Thursday that rap lyrics by the Atlanta artist Young Thug and his collaborators will be allowed as evidence in the racketeering trial of YSL, a chart-topping hip-hop label and collective that prosecutors say is also a criminal street gang responsible for violent crimes.Following months of dueling court filings and a day of arguments about the relevance and admissibility of the song lyrics, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville ruled that 17 specific sets of lines from the music of Young Thug and other YSL artists could be used by the state when the trial begins later this month to argue for the existence of the gang, the defendants’ membership in the alleged criminal conspiracy and their mind state regarding specific crimes they are accused of committing.“The lyrics are being used to prove the nature of YSL as a racketeering enterprise — the expectations of YSL as a criminal street gang,” Mike Carlson, a Fulton County executive district attorney, said in court.Defense lawyers in the case had argued that including the lyrics was a constitutional violation of the First Amendment protecting free speech and would unfairly prejudice the jury.Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, was one of 28 people initially charged in May 2022 with conspiracy to violate Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, with some accused of murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and other crimes. Prosecutors say Young Thug, who has denied all of the charges and pleaded not guilty, occupied a leadership position in the gang, known as Young Slime Life or Young Stoner Life, which they say is an offshoot of the national Bloods gang.Jury selection for the trial began in January with 14 defendants, following some plea deals and the severing of other defendants from the case. After more than 10 months, a jury was seated last week; six defendants — including Young Thug — are left, with the remainder of the trial expected to last from three months to a year. Opening statements are scheduled for Nov. 27.The use of rap lyrics in criminal prosecutions has long been a thorny topic, with critics and defense lawyers contending that negative attitudes toward crude and violent lyrics in hip-hop could bias a jury. Lawyers for Young Thug argued in this case that the use of lyrics, videos and social media posts was “racist and discrimination because the jury will be so poisoned and prejudiced by these lyrics/poetry/artistry/speech” that it amounted to “unlawful character assassination.”Brian Steel, a lawyer for Young Thug, said in court on Wednesday that lyrics needed to be specifically tied back to alleged crimes in order to be admissible. “They’re targeting the right to free speech,” Steel said.Doug Weinstein, a lawyer for Deamonte Kendrick, the YSL rapper known as Yak Gotti, said, “There is art here, and the art has got to be separated from real life.”“They’re going to look at these lyrics and instantly say these guys are guilty,” Weinstein said of the jury, adding that rappers were playing characters: “It’s what his audience is looking for and demands in gangster rap.”Prosecutors argued that because they were not charging the rappers for the content of their lyrics — as in a terroristic threat case — but merely using the lyrics as supporting evidence that other crimes had been committed, that they were not protected by the First Amendment and should be admitted.They added, “the Defense would seem to opine that if the Unabomber’s manifesto had been set to music, it could not be used against him.” And in court, Carlson, the prosecutor, raised the frequently cited Johnny Cash lyric, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” arguing that if Cash had actually been accused of killing a man in Washoe County, where Reno is located, “his lyrics would have in all likelihood have been used against him.”Carlson also noted that, in a racketeering and gang conspiracy case like the one facing YSL, “evidence of existence and the nature of the organization is not only relevant, it’s required.”Among the specific lyrics admitted as evidence by the judge — taken from songs like “Eww,” “Just How It Is” and “Mob Ties” — are lines that prosecutors argued would establish the existence of YSL (“this that mob life”); the expectations for its self-professed members (“for slimes you know I’ll kill”); and Young Thug’s role as a leader (“I’m the principal (slime!),” “I’m a boss, I call the shots,” “I was a capo in my hood way before a plaque”).The use of the lyrics at trial, Judge Glanville said, would be conditional, depending on prosecutors laying a foundation for their relevance, with any additional lyrics subject to further analysis before they could be admitted. More
Prakazrel Michel was convicted in April in an illegal foreign influence scheme. In a motion for a new trial, he said his lawyer’s closing argument was “frivolous.”A founding member of the hip-hop group the Fugees has requested a new trial for a foreign influence scheme after arguing in part that his lawyer used artificial intelligence software to craft a “frivolous and ineffectual” closing argument.In April, the rapper Prakazrel Michel was found guilty in federal court of orchestrating an illegal international conspiracy, in which he took millions of dollars from Jho Low, a Malaysian financier who was seeking political influence in the United States. Mr. Michel, known as Pras, was convicted on 10 criminal counts that included money laundering and witness tampering. He faces up to 20 years in prison.In a motion for a new trial this week, Mr. Michel’s new legal team said the lawyers who defended him during the trial in U.S. District Court in Washington had been “deficient throughout.” They singled out the lead lawyer, David E. Kenner, saying that he had misunderstood the facts of the case and ignored “critical weaknesses” in federal prosecutors’ arguments, and that he used an experimental A.I. program to create a closing argument that made “frivolous” claims.Mr. Michel’s lawyers also wrote that Mr. Kenner and another lawyer, Alon Israely, “appear to have had an undisclosed financial interest” in the program, EyeLevel.AI. The motion cited a news release from EyeLevel that mentioned a partner company, CaseFile Connect, the website of which lists the same Los Angeles address as Mr. Kenner’s law firm.Mr. Kenner did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Neither Mr. Israely nor CaseFile Connect could be reached for comment.Neil Katz, the founder and chief operating officer of EyeLevel.AI, said on Thursday that it was “categorically untrue” that the trial lawyers had had an undisclosed financial interest in the company. He added that neither CaseFile Connect nor the lawyers at Mr. Kenner’s firm had a financial stake in his company.Regarding the role his company’s software played in the case, Mr. Katz said that it merely allowed the lawyers to conduct research and analysis in real time based on trial transcripts.“The idea here is not that you would take what is outputted by a computer and walk it into a courtroom and read it into the record,” he said. “That’s not what happened here,”“Human lawyers take this as one important input that helps them get to the ideas faster,” he added. “They ultimately write the legal arguments that they present in a court.”The motion also took aim at the Justice Department and the federal court itself. It said government prosecutors had improperly used an F.B.I. agent at trial, “usurping the role of the jury and influencing the jury’s verdict.” It added that court had prejudiced the jury by ruling in front of them that Mr. Michel had conspired with others in the foreign influence scheme.The Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did not immediately responded to requests for comment.Erica Dumas, Mr. Michel’s publicist, said in a brief statement that his new legal team had identified areas of the case “where justice may not have been properly served.”“After careful examination of the facts and circumstances around Pras Michel’s previous trial, it has become evident that there were inconsistencies and errors in the case,” she said. She did not elaborate and declined to comment further.It was unclear whether the motion would be granted. More
The letters to a judge ahead of Masterson’s sentencing described their friendship with him and spoke glowingly of his character.Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher on Saturday spoke about letters they had written seeking leniency in the prison sentence of Danny Masterson, the actor best known for his role in the sitcom “That ’70s Show” who was found guilty of raping two women more than 20 years ago.Masterson was sentenced to the maximum, 30 years to life, on Thursday.The letters to the judge in the case, Charlaine F. Olmedo of Los Angeles Superior Court, which were published on Friday on Substacks of journalists who had covered the trial, described the couple’s friendship with Masterson.“I do not believe he is an ongoing harm to society,” Kutcher, who is married to Kunis, wrote of Masterson in a letter dated July 27, adding that “having his daughter raised without a present father” would be “a tertiary injustice in and of itself.”In her letter, Kunis vouched for Masterson’s “exceptional character and the tremendous positive influence he has had on me and the people around him.”Masterson, 47, co-starred on “That ’70s Show” with Kutcher and Kunis from 1998 to 2006. Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith, two other co-stars from the show, also wrote letters to the judge in support of Masterson, praising their interactions with him while working together.Kunis and Kutcher defended their letters in support of Masterson in a recorded statement posted to Instagram on Saturday, saying they “were not written to question the legitimacy of the judicial system or the validity of the jury’s ruling.”“They were intended for the judge to read,” Kutcher said. “And not to undermine the testimony of the victims or re-traumatize them in any way. We would never want to do that and we’re sorry if that has taken place.”Comments were closed on the Instagram post addressing the letters, but other recent posts on the account were flooded with outrage and criticism, with many noting Kutcher’s longtime philanthropic efforts to combat sex trafficking.The letters from Kutcher and Kunis sought to portray Masterson as someone who was critical of drug use. Kutcher said he attributed “not falling into the typical Hollywood life of drugs directly to Danny.” Kunis said that “Danny played a pivotal role in guiding me away from such destructive paths.”Those statements appeared to be responding to specific allegations in the case.Prosecutors had accused Masterson of drugging and then raping three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles between 2001 and 2003. (The jury deadlocked on the charge that Masterson had raped a third woman.)In the video statement, Kutcher said that he and Kunis were “aware of the pain that has been caused” by the letters. Kunis added, “Our heart goes out to every single person who’s ever been a victim of sexual assault, sexual abuse or rape.”The couple said in the video on Instagram that Masterson’s family had asked them to write the letters “to represent the person that we knew for 25 years, so that the judge could take that into full consideration relative to the sentencing.”Tony Ortega, one of the journalists who published the letters on his Substack, “The Underground Bunker,” wrote that “these letter writers were probably aware that Judge Olmedo could really only choose between 15 to life and 30 to life.”“They knew they were not trying to convince her to let Danny walk out of prison,” he added. Another Substack, “Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff,” also published the letters.The case against Masterson drew widespread attention, in part because of accusations that the Church of Scientology, to which Masterson belonged, had pressured his accusers to keep quiet. The church denied that it pressured the victims.Kutcher and Kunis in their letters described deep connections to Masterson, with Kutcher saying that Masterson had been his friend and role model for 25 years.“We’ve traveled around the world together, raised our daughters together and shared countless family moments,” Kutcher said, adding “he is among few people that I would trust to be alone with my son and daughter.”Kunis added that Masterson’s “unwavering commitment to being an exceptional older brother figure to me has had a transformative impact on my life.”Masterson will be eligible for parole in 20 years, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. More
