Inside Danny Masterson's Legal Gambit to Leave Prison Long Before His 30-Year Term

Danny Masterson is not done fighting his case. From prison, the former sitcom star is taking another big swing at overturning his rape convictions, and this time he says the problem wasn’t the jury or the judge — it was his own defense strategy.

Where he is and what he’s filed now

Masterson is serving a 30-year sentence at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. He already filed a direct appeal last December challenging the judge’s rulings. On Monday, he added a habeas corpus petition — the legal move you use when you claim something went fundamentally wrong at trial — arguing his lawyer didn’t put on the defense he asked for and left key witnesses on the sidelines.

'In sum, the jury saw only the tip of the iceberg of available defense evidence in the form of the complaining witnesses' inconsistent statements while the wealth of directly exculpatory evidence went unused for no viable tactical reason'

That’s from the petition, which also says Masterson pushed his trial attorney, Philip Cohen, to call defense witnesses and present more of their case, and that Cohen refused. According to Variety, the filing accuses Cohen of sticking with the same playbook in the retrial, not interviewing a number of potential defense witnesses, and banking on cross-examining the accusers to create reasonable doubt.

How we got here

• Allegations: The two convictions stem from incidents at Masterson’s Hollywood Hills home in 2001 and 2003. A third charge, involving his then-girlfriend, ended in a hung jury.
• First trial (2022): The jury deadlocked on all three counts; trade reports at the time said jurors were leaning toward acquittal.
• Retrial (May 2023): The jury convicted Masterson of raping two women. The third count again didn’t get a verdict.
• Sentence: 30 years to life in prison.
• Appeal: Filed December, challenging the judge’s rulings.
• New move: Monday’s habeas petition claiming ineffective assistance of counsel and a defense case that never fully made it into the record.

The Scientology factor, and why the defense says it backfired

All three women met Masterson through the Church of Scientology. The prosecution leaned into that in the retrial after it was largely background in the first go-round. Two women testified they were threatened with excommunication if they went public. Prosecutors also called Claire Headley, a former Scientologist, who told the jury the church requires special permission to go to the authorities. The LA Times has reported that after the women went to police, they were allegedly labeled suppressive persons and booted from the church — part of why, the accusers say, it took roughly 20 years to get the case to court.

Masterson’s new petition argues the defense should have directly countered those claims. The filing says a longtime Scientologist named Hugh Witt was on their witness list and that attorneys for the church urged Cohen to call him to rebut the testimony about church practices — but Cohen and his co-counsel chose not to put Witt on the stand.

According to Variety, Cohen’s strategy was to minimize the Scientology storyline altogether — a plan that arguably worked in the first trial (hung jury) but didn’t land in the second. In his closing at the retrial, he essentially told jurors the religious testimony was a distraction from weaknesses in the government’s case. The new filing calls that a miss and says the defense never offered an affirmative case of its own.

What Masterson’s legal team wants now

'The jury heard only half the story - the prosecution's side. Danny deserves a new trial where the jury can hear his side as well.'

That’s Masterson’s appellate lawyer, Eric Multhaup, who is pushing for a do-over where the defense puts those omitted witnesses and evidence in front of jurors.

Big picture

This is a blunt critique of the defense’s own game plan — the kind of post-conviction claim that can work if a court agrees the attorney’s choices weren’t just strategic, but unreasonably so, and that it might have changed the outcome. That’s a high bar. But between the retrial’s heavy focus on Scientology and the first trial’s hung jury, there’s a lot of trial-strategy wrangling to unpack. Now it’s up to the appellate courts to decide whether Masterson gets another day in front of a jury.