Prosecutors drop charges against woman who accused Jonathan Majors the day after her arrest
Oct 26, 2023, 9:30 AM
New York (AP) — Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday dropped all charges against a woman who accused the movie star Jonathan Majors of assault, less than a day after she was arrested by New York City police following his allegation that she initiated the physical confrontation.
Grace Jabbari was briefly put under arrest at a New York City police station Wednesday evening and charged with misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief. She and Majors, her ex-boyfriend, have accused each other of battery during an argument in a car ride earlier this year. Jabbari was given a court summons and released.
By the morning, the case against Jabbari was already over.
“The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has officially declined to prosecute the case against Grace Jabbari because it lacks prosecutorial merit. The matter is now closed and sealed,” said Doug Cohen, a press secretary for the prosecutor’s office.
Majors, a fast-rising Hollywood star, still faces criminal charges that led to his arrest last March. The actor is accused of pulling Jabbari’s finger, twisting her arm behind her back, striking and cutting her ear and pushing her into a vehicle, leaving her with a broken finger and bruises.
Attorneys for Majors maintain that Jabbari was the aggressor during the fight, which began after Jabbari saw a text message on Majors phone that said, “Wish I was kissing you right now,” and tried to snatch the devices from his hands to see who sent it. Her arrest on Wednesday came three months after police opened an investigation into Jabbari based on a cross complaint filed by Majors.
In a court filing earlier this month, prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office said they “would decline to prosecute any charges brought by the NYPD against Ms. Jabbari related to the belated allegations” made by Majors. They said they had informed police of that decision on two separate occasions.
Ross Kramer, an attorney for Jabbari, described the NYPD’s decision to bring charges against Jabbari as “unfortunate and re-traumatizing.” The Manhattan district attorney’s office had “carefully reviewed all the facts of the case and concluded that Ms. Jabbari was the victim, and not the perpetrator,” the statement added.
An attorney for Majors, Priya Chaudhry, declined to comment. She has previously said that she provided the Manhattan district attorney with “irrefutable evidence that the woman is lying, including video proof showing nothing happened, especially not where she claimed.”
But in their October 13th memo, prosecutors pointed to “concerning” discrepancies in the evidence handed over by Chaudhry. In one case, prosecutors said, a witness who was quoted as watching Majors “gently” place Jabbari in the car after she slapped him told prosecutors that he had never written the statement and believed it to be false.
The memo also outlines the cooperation between NYPD detectives and Majors’ attorney. A wanted flier for Jabbari, for example, included a photograph that the defense had provided to the NYPD.
Majors had quickly ascended to Hollywood stardom in recent years, with major roles in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” following his 2019 breakthrough in “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”
In the wake of his arrest, the U.S. Army pulled TV commercials narrated by Majors, saying it was “deeply concerned” by the allegations. His upcoming Marvel film “Avengers: Kang Dynasty” was postponed by Disney, while the theatrical release of his recent Sundance Film Festival entry “Magazine Dreams” remains up in the air.
His trial is set to begin on November 29th.
