Lawyers on both sides in the upcoming Danny Masterson trial are trying to control how much the Church of Scientology is brought up during the proceedings.
While both sides agree that the church itself isn’t on trial, Masterson’s side wants it not to be mentioned at all and the prosecutors want the jury to know about it because they feel it’s relevant, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Masterson is a practicing Scientologist, and he’s been charged with the sexual assault of three women between the years of 2001 and 2003. The women were also members of the church, and they say officials tried to dissuade them from going to the police.
A total of five women have accused Masterson of raping them. The assaults came to light in 2017, and three women sued him in 2019. He was charged with 3 counts of rape in 2020.
The lawyer for the accusers, Brian Kent, said it would be impossible to not bring up the church.
“The trial is not about Scientology. The trial is about Danny Masterson. But that being said, the facts of what happened, why certain things happened, who was involved … it’s so interwoven that certain parts of the trial will necessarily have to involve Scientology,” Kent said.
Masterson’s lawyer, Phillip Cohen, said the actor’s relationship with the church will be misinterpreted as negative by the jury. “It is disingenuous to say the government is not placing Scientology on trial,” Cohen told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo.
He said talking about Scientology will create a “war on two fronts” and that the lawyers could simply say “the church” during the trial.
Prosecutors argued that Scientology was inextricably linked with the trial. Dept. Dist. Atty. Reinhold Mueller previously said that “It’s about their entire life being wrapped up in this church,” and that “If they don’t follow certain policies … they lose that entire life.”
Not being able to talk about the church of Scientology and referring to it simply as the church would only confuse jurors, he said. “It’s not just as simple as not talking about Scientology.”
Mueller also asked the judge if he could bring in a Scientology expert to talk about the church’s structure. The judge didn’t lean too far one way or the other.
Olmedo ruled that the expert was too much but that talk about the religion is relevant to the case, since the “tentacles” of the organization are all over the trial.
“Evidence presented in criminal cases often involve subject matters that many of the public view with disdain, including gangs, guns and violence,” Olmedo said. “The fact that any individual has a negative view of any particular subject matter does not, per se, render that person unfit to serve as a juror.”
If Masterson is found guilty he faces up to 45 years in prison. We’ll keep you posted as things develop.