Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis need to make clear just a few issues.

Over the weekend, the celeb couple issued a video regarding letters they wrote to a decide vouching for his or her good friend and former That ’70s Present co-star Danny Masterson’s character. In Could 2023, Masterson was convicted for plying two girls with medication and raping them within the early aughts. Of their character letters, Kunis and Kutcher describe Masterson as an older brother determine, a father, and a staunchly anti-drug presence who has solely been a optimistic affect of their lives.

“The letters weren’t written to query the legitimacy of the judicial system or the validity of the jury’s ruling,” Kunis and Kutcher stated of their Instagram video. “We assist victims. We’ve performed this traditionally by means of our work and can proceed to take action sooner or later.”

The couple, who met on the set of the late ’90s Fox hit and have been married since 2015, has been dragged for displaying an absence of ethical middle within the lackluster video. They’ve every had one thing of a front-row seat to the Masterson ordeal — first as costars on That ’70s Present when the rapes befell between 2001 and 2003, and later, when Kutcher reunited with Masterson on Netflix’s The Ranch in 2016. In late 2017, Masterson was fired from that present because of these allegations.

Critics say the video, wherein they stress their consciousness of the “ache prompted” by the letters, did not atone for what Kutcher and Kunis wrote of their Masterson letters.

Chrissie Carnell Bixler, one among Masterson’s victims, denounced the letters in an Instagram Story, stating “in my view you’re [Kutcher] simply as sick as your ‘mentor.’” Actress Christina Ricci appeared to reference Kutcher and Kunis’s character portraits in an Instagram Story, writing: “So typically folks now we have cherished and admired do horrible issues. They may not do this stuff to us and we solely know who they have been to us however that doesn’t imply they didn’t do the horrible issues and to discredit the abused is a criminal offense.”

Kunis and Kutcher’s tone-deaf letters have created a typical chorus: Wouldn’t or not it’s simpler to not defend a rapist?

However that response misunderstands the aim of character letters or letters of assist for convicted folks. Theoretically, these letters — that are commonplace in legal instances — aren’t about an individual’s innocence or last-ditch protection, however a plea for mercy and for the decide to see a fuller portrait of an individual and their potential for rehabilitation. For these marginalized by society and dealing with a crushing legal justice system, a personality letter can act as a small and crucial verify on the justice system.

I spoke with Colleen McCormack-Maitland, the deputy director of authorized providers on the Authorized Motion Middle (LAC), about how these letters work. McCormack-Maitland and the LAC work to struggle discrimination throughout the legal justice system and advocate on behalf of these with arrest and conviction data, substance use problems, and HIV or AIDS.

McCormack-Maitland highlighted how the pushback towards Kutcher and Kunis’s testimonials (which she mentions are “counterproductive”) could also be obscuring the precise intention and significance of those sorts of testimonials.

Colleen, clarify character letters to me.

So my first job out of legislation faculty, I used to be a public defender for seven years. I’m actually accustomed to a lot of these letters, which I believe at the moment, I might have referred to as them “a letter of assist.” The purpose of those letters is to assist the sentencing decide perceive who the particular person is, past what they may have learn in an indictment or heard in testimony at trial.

It’s necessary to know that conviction and sentencing are two utterly separate components of the authorized course of. These letters come after conviction.

Proper. At this level, Danny Masterson has been discovered responsible. He went to trial, a jury trial. In a jury trial, the decide doesn’t have an element in deciding somebody’s guilt or innocence. After an individual has been discovered responsible, [judges] resolve the authorized sentencing choices. For every sort of crime, there’s a set vary and judges are allowed to think about what might be imposed inside that vary. Typically ranges may be big.

The decide will, at this level, doubtlessly have heard numerous actually horrible issues about the one who was convicted of a criminal offense. However they could by no means have heard something from the particular person themselves as a result of folks aren’t required to testify in their very own protection, and most of the people don’t.

And that’s the place these letters are available in, proper? Like we’re leaping into the Masterson case with the decide figuring out how lengthy Danny Masterson goes to be in jail. Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis stated they have been requested by the Masterson household to provide the decide a private account. It’s not about whether or not Masterson is responsible of rape, it’s about telling the decide who they suppose Masterson is.

Precisely. It may be actually arduous when writing a lot of these letters for folks. Persons are put in a troublesome place after they consider the [person they’re writing these letters for] is just not responsible and that particular person has been discovered responsible.

I believe the best letters are ones that specific regret, ones that on some stage take duty however then speak about why the decide ought to present some mercy to this particular person.

So yeah, about Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’s letters …

I don’t suppose that their letters have been efficient — I don’t know that I might have submitted these letters, and I believe they’re doubtlessly counterproductive.

There have been components within the letters that speak concerning the impression that this could have on Danny Masterson, his youngster, and that’s actually necessary to inform the decide — that this has the potential to have an enormous damaging impression on his youngster’s life. I believe that’s one thing that I might encourage somebody to place in there. However these letters had components that have been simply actually out of contact.

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Like, “We’re well-known, we predict he’s an excellent man.” There was some actually bizarre stuff in there about villainizing drug customers, and saying, like, Masterson is in some way an excellent man as a result of he thinks drug use is unhealthy. It made it look like in some way drug use is worse than rape.

There could also be a narrative to be advised [about what kind of person Masteron is], I don’t know. However they didn’t inform one.

Properly, it’s doubly bizarre as a result of Masterson was convicted of utilizing medication and alcohol to ply his victims.

They have been placing him on a pedestal as a result of they are saying he’s anti-drug. It was actually exceptionalizing. They have been saying, “Don’t deal with him like different people who find themselves within the legal authorized system like these drug customers.” And once more, I believe that that was not good messaging.

When folks write this stuff, do they anticipate them to essentially go public? Or is it largely like a non-public factor?

They’re 100% a part of a public document. This occurred not too long ago with Iggy Azalea and Tory Lanez. [She was] saying, “We had no thought these have been going to go public.”

Ah, sure, Azalea stated she wrote hers considering solely the decide would see it.

To me, that appears to be a failure by both their legal professional or the legal professional for the accused particular person to elucidate the truth that these are going to be within the public document. The factor is that in 99 p.c of instances, they’re by no means going to go public as a result of they’re on a regular basis instances which can be solely actually necessary to the events concerned.

There are egregious issues, egregious harms, occurring on a regular basis. We by no means learn about them, they’re occurring in a system that’s simply not that clear. However they’re a matter of public document, you simply must request them.

I believe an legal professional in a [celebrity] case would know that there was a chance that these would go public and that these could be picked up by the press. However in an extraordinary on a regular basis case, it’s simply not a problem.

The widespread chorus that we’re seeing is that Kutcher and Kunis shouldn’t have written these letters. And to me, that response is a bit of scary.

I imply, we should always by no means be making broad-based coverage or generalizations based mostly on the instances of well-known celebrities. They’re completely the outliers. Letters of assist are literally actually, actually necessary.

We’ve this extremely draconian legal punishment system that tears households aside, destroys folks’s lives. Jail is a extremely horrible place the place folks may be actually tortured. Persons are raped in jail, persons are crushed in jail, persons are disadvantaged from seeing their family members in jail.

It’s actually necessary, when a decide is making a call about how a lot jail time any individual goes to do, that they don’t simply hear from the prosecutor, and that they don’t simply hear from the individuals who accused them, it’s actually necessary that they hear from the particular person’s family members in order that they’re not simply making a call based mostly on the conviction itself.

I really feel like these letters should matter lots to marginalized folks. Like individuals who could not have a community, who aren’t Hollywood stars, who may have somebody to vouch for them.

One thing like these letters could give any individual even the smallest little bit of an opportunity. These letters can observe folks, and could be referred to later after they’re up for parole. These letters may play a job in somebody’s attraction in a while. So that you’re making an necessary document of one thing for the decide to make their determination. Needless to say the legal authorized system is stacked towards people who find themselves accused of crimes. In that legal authorized system, it’s numerous Black and brown poor folks, not white celebrities.

And a part of these letters is to bridge the potential hole between the particular person and a decide who could also be of a special race, a special tradition, completely different class, completely different instructional attainment stage — to assist them to see the entire particular person.

As you talked about, there are components to think about — if somebody grew up in an abusive family or in the event that they have been a sufferer of dependancy, in the event that they grew up in poverty, in the event that they’re mentally unwell — that judges may not hear in a case. It’s not a matter of guilt or innocence to indicate the circumstances that an individual faces.

It’s that Bryan Stevenson quote, “Every of us is greater than the worst factor we’ve ever performed.”

It’s actually necessary to inform somebody’s story — if they have been poor or abused, completely sure — however these letters are to indicate that they’re extra than simply the unhealthy factor that they did.

It’s to indicate the decide that you may take an opportunity on this particular person and never give them life in jail, you can give them a lesser sentence with a hope of rehabilitation or some hope on the finish of it that possibly they will get out of jail.

I need to speak about that concept. Jail is a punishment however theoretically additionally a method of rehabilitation. After jail, the hope is that folks come again to society. I do know this isn’t a standard case, however the response feels very black and white for a factor that ought to be extra grey.

The actual fact is, lots of people aren’t getting very a lot rehabilitation in jail. , it might be nice if we had one thing that was rehabilitative, however jail is punishment in our society, and, , retributive.

Bleak.

That’s the truth! You’re proper, within the sense that, in principle, most individuals are going to come back residence in some unspecified time in the future. However simply giving somebody the utmost jail sentence doesn’t truly resolve the issue of rape.

Angela Davis has a principle about this. We’re banishing this particular person for a time period to a spot the place we don’t have to consider them anymore. That doesn’t tackle the basis causes of what’s occurring.

However inside that, the decide has a spread of issues they will do. They may have despatched them away for much less. And the thought, such as you stated, is that the decide ought to have this info in making that call. Like what’s this particular person’s capability for change and development? I believe a extremely efficient letter would have proven an individual’s path of change and development previously 20 years. Sadly for Masterson, it might be that there was no path of development within the final 20 years.