Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller has announced that Danny Masterson will be retried for three charges of rape after his first trial ended with a hung jury in November.
“Our office has decided to retry this case,” Mueller told the court on Tuesday (via Variety). While the first jury tended towards acquittal, voting 10-2, 8-4, and 7-5 on the three counts of sexual assault, Mueller claimed that the jurors ignored some supporting testimony which could be made clearer in a subsequent trial.
“Not giving these victims another chance with a jury who can sit there and consider all of the evidence – win, lose or draw – that would be an injustice,” Mueller said.
Masterson, 46, was arrested in 2020 and accused of sexually assaulting three women between 2001 and 2003 while he starred on That ’70s Show. Like Masterson, his three accusers attended the Church of Scientology. Over several days of emotional testimony, the women testified that they had been assaulted, manipulated, and punished for coming forward by the Church. A fourth woman, who was not a Scientologist, also testified.
As for the defense, Masterson’s attorney Philip Cohen argued that there were inconsistencies in each of the women’s stories, and that Mueller was more concerned about the Church of Scientology than justice. Masterson declined to take the stand.
Last week Masterson requested that the case be dismissed, but Judge Charlaine Olmedo rejected the motion after concluding that “there are many other witnesses the People could choose to call or different arguments the People could choose to make. A different outcome at a retrial is at least a possibility.”
Accusations against Masterson first surfaced in 2017, and later that year he was fired from his Netflix sitcom, The Ranch.
