By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – A New York jury is deliberating Monday in a criminal case accusing actor Jonathan Majors of attacking his ex-girlfriend in the back of a car.
Majors, seen as one of the future faces of Disney’s Marvel superhero franchise until the allegations stalled his rapid rise, faces two counts of assault and two counts of harassment, all misdemeanors.
The jury of six began deliberating after closing arguments on Thursday in the two week trial in state court in Manhattan.
Prosecutors said Majors assaulted his then-girlfriend Grace Jabbari in a hired car in Manhattan in March, leaving her with a broken finger and swollen arm and ear.
Jabbari said during her testimony that Majors attacked her after she grabbed his phone upon seeing a text from another woman. She also described his “violent temper” and other incidents where he “exploded” in anger.
“She had shaped herself around the defendant, to cater to his personality, to avoid him being angry with her,” prosecutor Kelli Galaway said during closing arguments Thursday.
Majors’ lawyer sought to flip the script, claiming it was Jabbari who victimized Majors by attacking him in the car and then falsely accusing him of assault after he broke up with her.
“You are here to end this nightmare for Jonathan Majors,” lawyer Priya Chaudhry said through tears during her closing argument.
Majors filed his own criminal complaint against Jabbari several months after the incident, prompting her arrest on assault charges in October. But the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it closed the case because it lacked “prosecutorial merit.”
Majors starred in the 2019 film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” before landing top billing in “Creed III” and Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
He was dropped by his management company, public relations firm and several advertisers after his arrest, and Disney removed his upcoming film “Magazine Dreams” from its release schedule.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
