A former television actor, sentenced to three decades in prison last year for sexual assault, is now seeking to have his conviction overturned. In new legal filings, he argues that his trial attorney provided an ineffective defense.
The actor, convicted in 2023 for assaults that occurred in the early 2000s, claims his lawyer failed to present key witnesses and did not adequately counter prosecution arguments regarding the actor’s religious affiliation. The defense’s strategy, according to the new petition, was to minimize discussion of this affiliation, suggesting it was raised by prosecutors to compensate for a weak case.
The trial had featured testimony about the religious organization’s policies on reporting to authorities. The new filing contends the defense should have called its own witnesses to challenge those assertions and to question the credibility of the accusers. It alleges a significant body of favorable evidence was never presented to the jury.
This latest petition follows a separate appeal filed late last year, which argued that judicial errors and bias during the trial violated the defendant’s rights to a fair proceeding. That appeal described the conviction as fundamentally flawed.
The actor was taken into custody immediately following the jury’s verdict and is currently serving his sentence.
