Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller mentioned Masterson put substances into drinks that he gave to a longtime girlfriend and two girls he knew by buddy circles across the Church of Scientology, all of whom Masterson is charged with raping.

“The evidence will show that they were drugged,” Mueller instructed the jury. The protection denies such proof exists.

Direct dialogue of drugging was lacking from the primary trial — which led to a mistrial when a jury deadlocked on all three counts — with Mueller as a substitute having to suggest it by the testimony of the ladies, who mentioned they had been woozy, disoriented and at instances unconscious on the nights they described the actor raping them.

But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo is permitting the direct assertion on the second trial.

Masterson’s lawyer, Philip Cohen, mentioned within the protection opening assertion that these hazy tales and assertions are all of the prosecution has, and he instructed jurors, “there is no drugging charge in this case.”

Attorneys for each side acknowledged that there isn’t any forensic proof of any substances Masterson could have given the ladies as a result of the police investigation that led to the 2 trials didn’t start till about 15 years after the occasions.

But Mueller mentioned he’ll name 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 consult with testimony from the primary trial — one thing Olmedo admonished him a number of instances for doing — however he mentioned he anticipated testimony this time would present that one of many girls Masterson is charged with raping watched him make the allegedly drugged drink her gave her.

Cohen instructed jurors that one other of the ladies, a younger actress who spent a night alone with Masterson at his home in 2003, made no point out of drugging on the time.

“She spoke to her mom about how her date with Masterson went, she spoke to her friends, she did not ever say to one person, ‘I was drugged.’ Never,” Cohen mentioned.

She would solely point out considering she had been drugged years later after the investigation started, Cohen mentioned.

This and lots of different similarities between the ladies’s tales come from them speaking to one another and “cross-pollinating” the main points of their accounts, one thing they did a number of instances even after the detective within the case warned them that such communication may taint the case in opposition to Masterson, Cohen mentioned.

The drugging allegations had echoes of the trial of Bill Cosby, the place girls testified to comparable experiences. Cosby’s conviction after two trials of his personal was completely thrown out by Pennsylvania’s highest courtroom.

The Associated Press doesn’t usually identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted.

Masterson, 47, may get 45 years in jail if convicted.

Mueller additionally instructed jurors that the ladies didn’t instantly go to authorities as a result of they had been instructed to not by officers within the Church of Scientology, they usually had been instructed what occurred to them was not rape.

Masterson is a distinguished member of the church. All three girls are former members.

The church mentioned in an announcement after the ladies’s testimony within the first trial that it “has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of Scientologists, or of anyone, to law enforcement.”

In one other distinction from the primary trial, Olmedo is permitting professional witnesses to testify on these insurance policies.

Cohen mentioned that prosecution professional Claire Headley, a former member of the church’s management group, is somebody who works “to rid the world of Scientology, rid people of Scientology,” and instructed jurors they had been going to “hear tremendous bias” in her testimony. The professional on the protection witness listing is her father-in-law, a present high-level Scientologist.

Actor Leah Remini, a former Scientologist who has change into the church’s most distinguished detractor on social media and thru a TV collection she hosted that includes dissident ex-members, sat within the entrance row of the courtroom in help of Masterson’s accusers.

Masterson, who has been free on bail since his 2020 arrest, sat on the protection desk, with a big coterie of supporters behind him, many if not all church members, who additionally sat by his first trial. They included his spouse, mannequin and actor Bijou Phillips; his sister-in-law, “One Day at a Time” actor Mackenzie Phillips; and his brother, “Malcolm in the Middle” actor Christopher Masterson.