After opening statements yesterday at the Danny Masterson retrial, the journalists we talked to were pretty unanimous: They said that Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller had done a much better job presenting the government’s case this time than he did at the first trial in October.
If we had one criticism of Mueller’s presentation last time, it was that we felt the jury needed to hear a more cohesive narrative — they needed to be told a story — and Mueller seemed to address that this time, not only putting things together in a more compelling way, but also in a more chronological way.
For example, last time the prosecution led with the story of Jane Doe 1, whose incident with Masterson took place in 2003, and then went back to Jane Doe 3, the former live-in girlfriend whose rape allegation occurred in 2001. The first jury, however, apparently found Jane Doe 3’s story the most compelling, voting 5 to 7 to convict Masterson on her count. And so this time it’s Jane Doe 3’s story that Mueller told first, and saved Jane Doe 1 for second.
But in between them, he told the story of Kathleen Jenkins, the Masterson accuser from Toronto we wrote about in 2021. Although Masterson is not facing charges based on her allegations, she will be appearing in order to testify that she was raped by Masterson in 2000 at a Dracula 2000 cast party in a Toronto hotel.
During his presentation, Mueller repeatedly showed a remarkable graphic on a TV monitor of close-ups of all four accusers’ faces — the three Jane Does, and Jenkins.
Missing from the photo, however, was actress Tricia Vessey, who testified in the first trial as another uncharged accuser, based on her allegations of being raped by Masterson at a 1996 cast party in Los Angeles.
We confirmed last night with Vessey that she will not be testifying this time. We think she did an amazing job at the first trial, but we can understand that it’s a harrowing experience.
Another significant difference to Mueller’s presentation was his emphasis on drugging. In the first trial, it was merely implied that drugging occurred because Masterson’s accusers all felt suspiciously intoxicated after he had given them drinks. This time, Mueller stated it outright: The evidence will show that they were drugged by him, he said, and without a single objection from the defense.
When it was the defense’s turn for its opening, Philip Cohen seemed a bit off his game. He said he had thrown out the presentation he prepared once he saw Mueller’s opening, and wanted to address things that Jane Doe 1, for example, had said in the first trial that contradicted what Mueller had said.
But repeatedly, Cohen ran into trouble with Judge Charlaine Olmedo as he tried to quote from testimony in the first trial and she told him he couldn’t do that. The interruptions were frequent and really seemed to keep Cohen from gaining much steam. At the end of his opening, he implored jurors to pay close attention to the testimony of the three Jane Does, implying that they would see inconsistencies and contradictions in their statements.
There was then a short amount of time to bring on the first witness, Jane Doe 3, who had just a few minutes to begin her story about becoming a model at 14 and moving from Alabama to New York and then to Los Angeles, where she met Masterson at 17 and almost immediately moved in with him after they began dating.
After Judge Olmedo ended testimony for the day, there was one more surprise: Shawn Holley, who had been making the objections during Jane Doe 3’s testimony, revealed that she will be doing the cross-examination of Jane Doe 3 rather than Cohen. She also pointed out that the prosecution had changed up its order of witnesses on Friday, and that the schedule at that point was Jane Doe 3, her husband Cedric, then rape trauma expert Dr. Barbara Ziv, and then Scientology expert Claire Headley.
Holley complained that because she planned to cross-examine Jane Doe 3 and both of those experts, it didn’t give her enough time to prepare. But Mueller indicated that they would probably hold Headley for after both Jane Doe 3 and Jane Doe 1 have testified, and Judge Olmedo told Holley she would order Dr. Ziv to be on call so that the defense could bring her back later for more cross-examination.
Based on our experience last time, we figure that Jane Doe 3’s direct testimony will take the entire day today, but it’s possible her cross-examination by Holley may begin in the afternoon.
As usual, we’ll be sending out reports at the breaks.
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I am cautiously optimistic. Everything is crossed that can be crossed.
Drink more coffee Mr. Mueller and watch how the defense throws sand in every face on the jury.