Jonathan Majors’ Assault Trial: Opening Arguments Address Race and Alleged 'Abuse'

Mar. 15, 2025

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Shortly after meeting on the set ofAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, actorJonathan Majorsasked for choreographerGrace Jabbari’s phone number.

In the beginning of what became a two-year relationship, Majors wrote Jabbari love notes, prosecutors athis assault trialbetween the now-split couple, told the Manhattan jury Monday.

But, within months “the defendant’s true self began to emerge,” assistant district attorney Michael Perez said in opening statements, claiming that the actor “engaged in a cruel and manipulative pattern of psychological and physical abuse that culminated in the tragic end of their relationship," even allegedly threatening suicide after fights to control the dancer’s reactions.

Majors, now 34, is facingchargesof assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury, assault in the third degree recklessly causing physical injury, aggravated harassment in the second degree and harassment in the second degree, in connection with an alleged fight between the couple that spilled onto the streets of Chinatown in March.

Majors has pleaded not guilty to the charges. If convicted he could be behind bars forup to one year.

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Dressed in a black coat with silver buttons and a dark beret, Majors arrived in Manhattan’s criminal court hand-in-hand between his mother and girlfriendMeagan GoodMonday morning.

And in opening statements Monday, Priya Chaudhry, one of Majors’s defense lawyers, brought the racial dynamics of the former couple’s case front and center, noting that in surveillance footage after the alleged attack, Jabbari did not have “a speck of blood” in “her blond hair, no blood on her fair face.”

Theassault case startedon a Saturday morning in March, when police responded to a 911 call involving what the NYPD then described to PEOPLE as “a domestic dispute” between Majors and the woman later identified as Jabbari.

Emergency responders took Jabbari to the hospital and arrested Majors.

In several statements this spring, Chaudhry called the allegations a"witch hunt” to form a “false case” and alleged that Jabbari was “lying,” adding that there was “incontrovertible evidence” of the actor’s innocence.

In June – months after the alleged attack – Majorsfiled a counter-complaint, reportedly alleging that Jabbari had been “drunk and hysterical” at the time and had attacked him on the day that she claims he attacked her, causing him to bleed. Majors further alleged that Jabbari had attacked him multiple times in the past.

Majors claimed that as the March fight that originated in their car continued onto the street, Jabbari lunged at his face, causing a gash, and that she reached for his coat and phone.

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Calling Majors’s assault trial “very unusual,” the judgecontrasted the actor to indigent New Yorkers, who he suggested would not normally have been able to cross-file allegations against their accuser months after the fact, as Majors did, leading to Jabbari’s arrest in October.

Referring to Majors the judge asked: “Ifthis was an indigent New Yorker would this arrest have happened?”

Prosecutors havedeclined to prosecute Jabbariand the case has been sealed, with Assistant District Attorney Kelli Galaway explaining to the judge Wednesday that there was “no prosecutorial merit” to Majors’s claims, a comment gaining a head shake from Good, who was sitting behind the actor in a reserved seat in the first row.

But Good and the rest of the public were shut out of a later pretrial hearing regarding allegations that Gaffey deemed potentially “inflammatory.”

Heading into that hearing last week, Majors entered the courtroom without Good, carryinga coffee mug, notebook, yellow Post-It pad and what appeared to be a gold-leafed Bible.

source: people.com