Prosecutor: Actor Masterson drugged, raped several women
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Danny Masterson drugged then raped three women at his Hollywood-area home between 2001 and 2003, a prosecutor told jurors Monday in his opening statement in the retrial of the star of “That ’70s Show.”
Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller said Masterson put substances into drinks that he gave to a longtime girlfriend and two women he knew through friend circles around the Church of Scientology, all of whom Masterson is charged with raping.
“The evidence will show that they were drugged,” Mueller told the jury. The defense denies such evidence exists.
Direct discussion of drugging was missing from the first trial — which ended in a mistrial when a jury deadlocked on all three counts — with Mueller instead having to imply it through the testimony of the women, who said they were woozy, disoriented and at times unconscious on the nights they described the actor raping them.
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo is allowing the direct assertion at the second trial.
Masterson’s attorney, Philip Cohen, said in the defense opening statement that those hazy stories and assertions are all the prosecution has, and he told jurors, “There is no drugging charge in this case.”
Attorneys for both sides acknowledged that there is no forensic evidence of any substances Masterson may have given the women because the police investigation that led
to the two trials did not begin until about 15 years after the events.
But Mueller said he will call an analyst from the police toxicology unit, “who will tell you how some of the most common drug-facilitated sexual assaults, how some of the most common date rape drugs work, how quickly they’re metabolized, what side effects look like.”
Cohen responded that “a toxicologist can come in opine to whatever they want, but there is no toxicology report, there’s no urine, no blood work, no DNA.”
Cohen was not allowed to refer to testimony from the first trial — something Olmedo admonished him several times for doing — but he said he expected testimony this time would show that one of the women Masterson is charged with raping watched him make the allegedly drugged drink her gave her.
Cohen told jurors that another of the women, a young actress who spent an evening alone with Masterson at his house in 2003, made no mention of drugging at the time.