First for you today we have a programming note: Today’s session of the Danny Masterson retrial will begin a bit later this morning, so the first report you may get from us will be at the lunch break.
Thinking back to yesterday’s final hours of testimony for Jane Doe 3, we’re still struck by a couple of things we wanted to mention.
The email that Shawn Holley showed her, of course, was the first truly strange and unanswered mystery of the retrial. We couldn’t see the contents of the email from where we were sitting, other than it started out “Hey Dan.” Holley said that it was an email Jane Doe 3 had written in 2007 to Masterson, and that it was something to do with the woman he was seeing, actress Bijou Phillips (they were married in 2011).
Holley wanted to read the entire email out loud for the record, but Judge Charlaine Olmedo didn’t allow it. So instead, Holley began asking Jane Doe 3 questions about it. And that’s when Jane Doe 3 began reacting to it, saying, “I have an issue with this.”
She said that although some of it was familiar, “I don’t think I wrote some of this. I don’t understand. Some of this was not what I wrote. I would like an explanation.”
Had the email been altered? She pointed out, for example, that she never referred to Masterson as “Dan,” and never called Phillips “Beej.” The implication seemed clear: This email had been hacked.
From Holley’s questions, we got the notion that the email was some kind of warning that Jane Doe 3 was supposedly sending Masterson about the woman he was about to marry. But again, we will say that we could not read the contents of the email from where we were sitting.
The exchange between Jane Doe 3 and Holley left an unsettling feeling in the courtroom, and then there was an interesting consequence for the defense: Judge Olmedo said the jury could decide on its own if the email had been altered or hacked, and the defense had now opened the door for the prosecution to discuss allegations of hacking that the victims in this case have been alleging in their parallel civil lawsuit.
So Deputy DA Mueller, on redirect, asked Jane Doe 3 about that, and she began giving examples of her phone acting strange, and then she went into a disturbing example of harassment…
Yes, I got a message from account “Operating Thetans” and some numbers. They said’ “we have a list of your crimes and we’re going to expose you.” I got a message from these perverts asking for anal sex. And I got to talk to one of these people, and he sent me a link to a photo of a woman’s bottom with my contact info saying I wanted anal sex.
This seemed to have a lot of impact, and certainly much more than the “Hey Dan” email, which the jury didn’t really get to hear much about. In other words, this was a mistake that the defense was paying pretty dearly for.
And there was another effect. As in the last trial, it’s when she is talking about the harassment Jane Doe 3 says is still ongoing that appears to upset her more than anything else. It led to a massive panic attack in the last trial, and she went into another one yesterday, crying and shaking and clearly having some issues with her breathing.
Judge Olmedo allowed her to step down from the witness stand when Holley said she had only one last question on re-cross. (It was regarding the January 2017 interview in Austin by Det. Reyes.)
Up to that point, Jane Doe 3 had held up very well, and had once again provided the jury a compelling and disturbing look at what it was like to be in a years-long relationship with Danny Masterson.
Today, we’ll hear from her husband Cedric, and we will likely begin the testimony of Jane Doe 1 in the afternoon. Get ready for more reports from the courtroom.
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Remember, the judge let Mueller know he had also opened a door by going into detail about her drinking. The defense has a right to expand on that too now. However, I believe the harassment is a bigger deal. Especially since JD3 reacted so visibly to evidence of that email having been hacked.
I remember when scientology tracked me down more than 30 years after I left and my first response was abject terror, not because they had anything they wanted from me but because of the sheer insanity of their terroristic “religious tenets”. I knew they, if they wished could make my life a living hell for no reason whatsoever.
JD3 has lived through it, so that email reminded her they are out there still messing with her life simply because she tried to bring a criminal to justice. So religious 🙄
Reliving traumatic experiences can be hell. JD3 clearly has PTSD and I hope the jury noticed. This email thing sounds very 'fishy'. The Judge seems to be running the trial very well and excluding that email from testimony is probably a good thing for the prosecution. Now, what will the jury see when they get the case?