Following a trial in New York, US actor Jonathan Majors was convicted guilty of beating his ex-girlfriend.
Majors, who is most known for portraying Kang in the Marvel movies, was found by the jury to have assaulted British dancer Grace Jabbari in March after a fight.
She reported to the court that she was left with a cut behind her ear, bruises, a shattered finger, and “excruciating” pain.
Majors, 34, has been cast as a supporting character in future Marvel films and could spend up to a year in prison.
The judgment of the six-member jury was declared on Monday after three days of deliberations.
According to court reporters, Majors pursed his lips and looked down as their decision was read out, but he did not react in any other way.
A Marvel representative announced that the studio will not be working on any more projects involving Majors in the wake of the decision.
The crime occurred when Ms. Jabbari noticed a text message from a different woman on Majors’ phone while the couple was driving in New York. The message said, “Wish I was kissing you right now.”
Prosecutors claim that when she removed the phone, he grabbed her, pulled her arm behind her back, and struck her in the head in an attempt to reclaim it.
“I felt like a hard blow across my head,” Ms Jabbari testified.
Of the four accusations he was facing related to domestic abuse, the jury found him guilty on two of them.
He was found guilty of both harassment and assault by careless bodily harm.
On accusations of aggravated harassment and assault with intent to inflict bodily harm, however, the jury decided not to convict him.
The prosecution portrayed Majors’ assault as the most recent development in his attempts to “exert control” over his partner by abusing her physically and psychologically. The jury was given access to voice recordings and text messages exchanged between the ex-couple.
“I am a monster. A terrible individual. “Not capable of love,” the actor threatened to take his own life in a text message that he sent in September 2022.
Majors advised her to behave more like Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama, the spouses of former President Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr., on audio recorded during a dispute that same month.
“I am doing great things, not just for me but for my culture and the world,” he said, adding that she would need to “make sacrifices” for him.
Majors provided no testimony. His attorney had maintained that Ms. Jabbari had attacked him out of jealous rage after discovering the text message in the car, and that the actor was the real victim.
In June, Majors, who starred in Creed III as well, countersued her, claiming that she was the aggressor. However, prosecutors decided not to charge her because of insufficient evidence.
February will see the sentencing. A fresh protection order mandating that he not communicate with Ms. Jabbari was also issued by the judge.
She was “gratified to see justice served” by the verdict, her lawyer said, adding that it should serve as an inspiration for other abused women to come forward.
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“Ms Jabbari testified publicly and truthfully, even though reliving these traumatic events on the witness stand was obviously painful,” lawyer Ross Kramer said in a statement to BBC News.
A lawyer for Majors said in a statement that his legal team is “grateful” that the jury notably did not find that he had intended to cause physical injuries to Ms Jabbari.
“Mr Majors is grateful to God, his family, his friends, and his fans for their love and support during these harrowing eight months,” said lawyer Priya Chaudhry.
“Mr Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the criminal charges, said after the verdict that the psychological and emotional abuses carried out by the movie star were “far too common across the many intimate partner violence cases we see each and every day”.
As a movement instructor on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Ms. Jabbari had first encountered Majors two years prior.
Majors was supposed to play the main villain in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but Marvel postponed the film’s release until 2026 following his incarceration.
The claims caused the release of another movie, Magazine Dreams, which was tipped as an Oscar contender, to be delayed.
