Because he was found guilty of assault in the third degree, a misdemeanor in New York, Majors faces up to one year in jail for attacking Jabbari in March in the back of a chauffeured car. He also faces up to three years probation. His sentencing is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 6.
Members of Majors’s family and his girlfriend, Meagan Good, were on hand in court Monday afternoon as the jury rendered its verdict. The actor slumped and looked down after the guilty charges were read. A Bible lay open on the table in front him.
The jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon. Jabbari was not in court when the verdict was read. Majors was released pending sentencing.
“The evidence presented throughout this trial illustrated a cycle of psychological and emotional abuse, and escalating patterns of coercion far too common across the many intimate partner violence cases we see each and every day,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shared in a statement after the verdict.
“Today, a jury determined that pattern of abuse and coercion culminated with Mr. Majors assaulting and harassing his girlfriend,” Bragg continued. “We thank the jury for its service and the survivor for bravely telling her story despite having to relive her trauma on the stand.”
Priya Chaudhry, Majors’s lawyer, said in a statement that Majors and his team were “disappointed” in the guilty verdict for reckless assault, arguing that Jabbari was the one who attacked Majors.
“Mr. Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name,” she said.
Following his conviction, Marvel Studios announced that it would not to move forward with Majors, who previously played a prominent role as Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Majors appeared at Manhattan Criminal Courthouse multiple times for the trial, which started in late November, holding Good’s hand. The actor did not take the witness stand.
He was arrested in March after the altercation between him and Jabbari. Prosecutors said Jabbari tried to take Majors’s phone after seeing a flirty text from someone else, and during their fight, Majors fractured Jabbari’s finger while prying it off his phone and tried to shove her back into the car after she tried to follow him out of it. Chaudhry said he was the victim, explaining that Jabbari hit him after seeing the text.
Judge Michael Gaffey permitted the release of evidence in the case on Wednesday, including voice recordings of Majors yelling at Jabbari, photos of Jabbari’s apparent injuries from the incident and text messages between them.
Video evidence from the night of the fight showed Jabbari and Majors tussling outside a black SUV before Majors picked up his ex-partner and put her into the car. Clips showed that after the pair exited the car, Majors ran down the block with Jabbari chasing after him. Later in the video footage, Jabbari was seen at a bar, and Majors was seen riding an elevator in an apartment building and speaking with police.
Another piece of evidence included a phone call Majors made to 911 dispatchers after their dispute, claiming that he feared Jabbari had “attempted suicide.” He told the dispatcher that he was worried that Jabbari, who was discovered unconscious by Majors, would harm herself after they broke up.
In a September 2022 audio file shared with the court, Majors demanded that Jabbari be more like Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama: “I’m a great man. A great man. I am doing great things, not just for me, but for my culture and for the world. That is actually the position I’m in. That’s real,” Majors said. “The woman that supports me, that I support, needs to be a great woman and make sacrifices the way that man is making for her.”
In text message conversations from the same month, Majors discouraged Jabbari from going to the hospital, saying: “It could lead to an investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.”
“I will tell the doctor I bumped my head, if I go,” Jabbari replied. “I’m going to give it one more day, but I can’t sleep and I need some stronger painkillers. That’s all. Why would I want to tell them what really happened when it’s clear I want to be with you.”
He also told Jabbari several times that he was considering killing himself because he didn’t feel she showed him enough love, the texts revealed.
In closing arguments, defense attorneys painted Jabbari as a fabricator who was hellbent on exacting vengeance. Chaudhry noted that no one had actually seen the moments when Majors allegedly struck her, and she implied that the injuries Jabbari sustained were self-inflicted and after the argument.
Majors’s attorney cycled through videos, showing Jabbari asking strangers for help and not mentioning the assault, then at a club, and eventually the body-camera footage of when police entered the apartment, finding her disoriented on the floor.
“The cops … took a look at Jonathan Majors, and they made up their mind,” Chaudhry said. “They decided who was the victim and who was the criminal and then they asked Grace if Mr. Majors had done this to her.”
As Chaudhry mentioned race as a motivating factor for the police’s arrest of Majors, the actor began crying, patting his face with a white napkin.
“This whole trial has been about what happened in that car even though the people want this trial to be about arguments from months and years ago,” she continued.
Assistant District Attorney Kelli Galaway argued that the contextual evidence mattered in the domestic abuse case. After years of suffering domestic abuse from Majors, Jabbari didn’t want to call the police on him and even refused to cooperate with prosecutors out of fear of damaging the actor’s reputation, the prosecutor argued.
“Her actions cannot be taken in an isolated vacuum without her lived experiences that she has told you about and which there is evidence of,” Galaway said. “Her actions are simply not consistent with a premeditated plan of revenge.”
Anne Branigin, Samantha Chery and Herb Scribner in Washington contributed to this report.
