Danny Masterson done with appeals before Oct 11 trial? Can Scientology allow it to happen?
We have some updates on some of the legal cases we’ve been watching, and thought we’d collect them in a single piece. First, we are kind of surprised to find that Danny Masterson is apparently not trying to appeal his most recent defeat in his criminal rape case.
If you’ve been following our coverage you know that since he was charged in June 2020, Masterson and his attorneys have been trying every possible angle to slow up the case, with multiple appeals and even some downright unusual moves.
Initially, that effort did delay things (as did the pandemic), but once the matter ended up in the courtroom of Judge Charlaine Olmedo, she’s really held both sides to a strict schedule, with the aim of starting a criminal trial on October 11. (Masterson is facing three counts of forcible rape, and if he’s convicted of all three, he’s looking at 45 years to life in prison.)
Most recently, Masterson’s team filed a couple of motions that were meant to derail the case. They asked for count one — the allegations of a woman going by the name Jane Doe 1 — to be dismissed because of prosecutorial delay. They also asked for the remaining two counts to be severed into separate trials.
Judge Olmedo dismissed that second motion in May, and then asked for more briefing before denying the motion to dismiss Jane Doe 1 on June 30. We got a copy of the transcript from that day, and went into some detail about it earlier.
Who could blame Judge Olmedo, after all that’s gone on in this case, when she said at the June 30 hearing that she expected her ruling denying Danny’s latest motion to face yet another petition for appeal, saying at one point, “if there is a reviewing court down the road — and I’m not trying to foreshadow anything…”
Like Judge Olmedo, we’ve been expecting that petition to come. So we’ve been watching the dockets at various courthouses since then, waiting for some sign that the Masterson team had filed something somewhere asking for a review of Judge Olmedo’s ruling, and assuming it would come within two weeks of the June 30 decision. On Friday, after seeing nothing, we called up the court and the clerk also indicated that he saw no sign of an appeal.
Is Danny now resigned to preparing for an October 11 trial? Or is another move coming? In May he fired his attorneys Tom Mesereau and Sharon Appelbaum, but that only bought him a six-week delay. Can he get another delay if he now fires Philip Cohen and Shawn Holley? And if they don’t leave, is Shawn Holley really prepared to become the very visible trial counsel for an accused violent, serial rapist right when the series she is co-producing with Kerry Washington and Larry Wilmore, “Reasonable Doubt,” is premiering on Hulu just two weeks before the trial starts? And can David Miscavige really allow a trial to happen that will be soaked through with allegations of Scientology meddling and interference?
If Danny’s done with appeals, his list of options to get out of the trial is growing shorter every day.
Another tidbit about Masterson’s October 11 trial: Earlier we told you that a strange scheduling conflict was really putting us into a quandary: Both the Masterson criminal trial in Los Angeles, and Paul Haggis’s civil trial in New York, are scheduled to start the same day.
Since then there’s been a new development. Haleigh Breest, the woman suing Haggis, has asked the court, with Haggis’s consent, to move the trial start up to October 3. In a letter to the court, Breest’s attorneys explain that they are requesting the change to accommodate an expert they are asking to testify, who can’t make the later date.
We’re still waiting to see if the court approves this request, which would at least help the scheduling crunch a little.
Meanwhile, in the civil lawsuit Bixler v. Scientology, filed by Danny Masterson’s accusers, the US Supreme Court set a date of August 22 for the Bixler plaintiffs to respond to Scientology’s petition. Scientology is asking the court to review a stunning January ruling that struck down its “religious arbitration” derailing of the lawsuit. The ruling, from a California appeals court, restored the lawsuit, and Scientology complains that the decision was a shocking violation of the church’s religious freedom.
Odds are long that the Supreme Court will want to get involved, but if the Bixler side wants to respond, they have until that date, August 22.
And finally, Scientology’s “International Justice Chief” Mike Ellis is apparently taking his sweet time responding to Valerie Haney’s nomination of Elisabeth Moss as an arbitrator in her derailed lawsuit.
After trying and failing to get the motion that forced her lawsuit into religious arbitration overturned, Valerie was faced with little choice but to write personally to Ellis on July 1, asking Scientology to begin the arbitration process. And when she was asked to nominate a Scientologist in good standing to be an arbitrator (one of three for the panel), she named Moss.
It was a cheeky move and an excellent form of protest. But we’re kind of surprised that it’s taken this long for Ellis to respond. (We assume he’s just going to say Moss is unavailable, and will ask Valerie to suggest another name.)
Since this will be only the second religious arbitration in the 70-year history of Scientology, what’s taking Ellis so long? It’s not like he’s busy or something.
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I would expect the criminal organisation known as the "church"of $cientoilogy to play one tune, and one tune only. In the US, that would be: Any trial where the word "scientology" is uttered is automatically invalid, because "church."
I expect this because I saw the Co$ do just one thing to laughable excess where it walked out of an appeal trial in France (the Co$ was appealing a verdict of guilty of organised criminal fraud for the organisation itself, kind of an existential threat, one would have thought). The reason given for walking out: A lawyer for civil plaintiffs from the original trial was allowed to make a statement. That was it. After the organisation had failed to secure the exclusion of that statement, it walked out of the appeal, leaving the court free to confirm the conviction.
The Masterson case is, of course, different. But I fully expect that the Co$ is going to make one point, no trial can be valid because "church." And to make that one point only. (I do believe that the Co$ has already done so, even though it is not actually on trial, here.) So, if a ruling is about something else (in this case, whether the cases can be joined together), the Co$ loses interest. If the defense for Danny "DJ Donkey Punch" Masterson were running entirely independent of the Co$, then it would still very much have an interest in appealing everything. However, if the strategy were dictated by the Co$, there's nothing much to be gained...
"(We assume he’s just going to say Moss is unavailable, and will ask Valerie to suggest another name.)" When that day happens, Valerie should just cut to the chase and nominate david miscavige to be her choice for arbitrator. He calls ALL the shots anyway.