Danny Masterson’s lawyer filed an appeals brief seeking a complete reversal of his convictions for rape, arguing that the “That ’70s Show” star’s accusers significantly altered their stories to squeeze through a labyrinth of statutes-of-limitations laws in order to pursue monetary damages through a civil case.
The 60,000-word brief – equivalent to more than 200 pages – makes several arguments to immediately free Masterson, who was sentenced in September to 30 years to life in prison for the assaults of two women who testified in his Los Angeles re-trial. The first trial ended in a hung jury in November 2022.
The filing from Cliff Gardner picks apart the timeline of accusers’ stories in exhausting detail, outlining how each “evolved” their memories over the years more than a half-dozen times each. He suggests that they tailored their accounts knowing that a criminal conviction would open the long-expired limitations statutes preventing them from seeking a significant financial reward.
Gardner points out in his introduction that the initial mistrial and split verdict at re-trial – with “protracted jury deliberations at both trials” – shows that jurors had reservations about the credibility of the witnesses.
“Jurors at both trials learned that the testimony of [the accusers] changed dramatically over the years,” Gardner wrote. “The many changes over time – involving both sharply changing recollections as to some facts and the wholesale addition of new facts never before mentioned – consistently pointed in one direction: to a newly minted claim that force was used.”
Gardner writes that the accusers stayed in touch, and were well aware that the California statute of limitations for both criminal and civil rape cases had long passed, coordinating their stories to fit the requirements – in this case, multiple victims – to re-open criminal prosecution. Only with a conviction secured could they then proceed to sue the disgraced TV actor for monetary damages.
Gardner argues, among other things, that the court acted improperly by withholding this potential financial incentive from testimony before the juries. He says that ruling was “irreconcilable with more than a century of California law.”
“But the statute of limitations issue here was just the tip of the unreliability iceberg,” Gardner writes. “The trial court erroneously excluded evidence that the complaining witnesses had a direct monetary interest in the outcome of the criminal trial and a strong financial incentive to characterize the long past sexual encounters as forcible rape.”
“Predictably, within one year of the criminal verdict, both [accusers] moved to amend their pending lawsuit” to reap a bigger financial reward, Gardner argues.
The filing includes text-message communications between the victims and detectives that Gardner argues show a clear understanding of the legal hurdles necessary to re-open a civil case, and an intent to do so.
“Ugh,” writes one of the accusers in a text message to a Los Angeles detective. “I was told [the other two accusers] are both out of the case. And that means [state law] 667.61 is out and therefore statute is an issue and my case can’t go forward.”
Citing the landmark 1913 Supreme Court ruling People v. Fleming, Gardner argues that “the trial court violated both state and federal law in precluding defense counsel from presenting evidence showing that the complaining witnesses had a direct financial interest in the outcome of the criminal trial.”
He also argues that the court improperly suppressed communications between the accusers, which the defense requested via subpoenas; that the admission of testimony about the Church of Scientology violated First Amendment church-state separation norms; and that the 16-year delay between the initial police report and prosecution violated Masterson’s due-process rights, among other arguments for an immediate reversal.
