Will Jonathan Majors Serve Jail Time After Guilty Verdict? Lawyers Weigh In
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Majors faces up to a year in jail for assault and harassment when he is sentenced on Feb. 6
Janet Mayer / SplashNews
Jonathan Majors was found guilty of assaulting and harassing his former girlfriend Grace Jabbari in a split verdict by a jury on Monday.
The Creed III talent, 34, was found guilty of two charges: misdemeanor assault in the third degree, recklessly causing physical injury, and harassment in the second degree, which is a violation. He was found not guilty of misdemeanor assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury and misdemeanor aggravated harassment in the second degree.
Majors faces up to a year in jail when he is sentenced on Feb. 6. What happens next? PEOPLE spoke with Brett Ward, a partner at Blank Rome, and Kate Mangels, a litigation partner at Kinsella Holley, both of whom are not connected to the case.
“I would say that it's highly unlikely that he does any type of significant time,” says Ward. While misdemeanors are punishable by "up to a year in prison" in New York, he says, such a heavy sentence would be "normally unlikely" with options like behavioral programs and probation also at the judge's discretion.
But the judge could choose to make an example of Majors due to the spotlight shone on the trial and potentially "wanting to show that this type of behavior will not be tolerated, [that] you don't assault your intimate partner,” Ward adds.
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Majors will also likely appeal, he adds. And if any jail time is handed down "he may serve it," says Ward. "Or he could try to stay that, pending an appeal. And if it's not jail, then he'll take care of whatever he has to take care of in terms of any kind of programs or probation the court requires."
When asked why jurors found the Lovecraft Country actor not guilty of misdemeanor assault in the third degree and misdemeanor aggravated harassment in the second degree, both of which are more serious charges, Ward said the court could have felt that Majors’ actions were likely not premeditated.
“It says to me that the jury felt this was not so one-sided, and it was more a crime of emotion than planning, that this is kind of a heat-of-the-moment type of situation," he says, calling the jury's findings "more of a compromised verdict."
Mangels added, “It really seems like that the prosecution wasn't able to show the jury enough evidence of Major's mental state to show intent. They were apparently able to show enough evidence that an assault occurred and that there was an injury. But the missing piece was his mental state.”
Ward notes that two pieces of evidence appeared to work in Majors’ favor.
His firmer girlfriend testified she “grabbed the phone out of his hand first when she saw the text from what was reported to be another woman. And two, the last bit of video footage, he ran away and she chased him,” the law partner tells PEOPLE.
Overall, Ward calls Majors' push for a jury trial a mistake, particularly if a plea deal had been on the table.
"To fight this and to let it become the public spectacle that it's become and now have a guilty verdict is a mistake," he says.
Following Monday’s verdict, PEOPLE confirmed that Marvel Studios cut ties with Majors, who played Kang the Conqueror in 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and appeared in the current season of the Disney+ series Loki.
He was also expected to be featured in other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe titles, including a fifth Avengers movie.
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