Former prosecutor Gary Zerola didn’t find yourself taking the stand to testify in his personal protection in his rape trial, and his aspect solely referred to as one witness earlier than they rested their case.
Zerola, 51, of Salem, who served as a prosecutor in each Essex and Suffolk counties earlier than turning into a protection legal professional, has pleaded not responsible to accusations that he raped a 23-year-old girl in a pal’s Beacon Hill residence the morning of Nov. 10, 2016.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning at 9 a.m.
At the start of Thursday morning’s Suffolk Superior Court session, the third day within the trial, prosecutor Tom Brant stated that the commonwealth was resting its case. While rumors and indications abounded round courtroom 815 that Zerola would take the stand as a protection witness.
Instead, protection attorneys Joseph Krowski Jr. and Rosemary Scapicchio referred to as just one witness: one other protection legal professional named Paul Moraski, who lives on Beacon Hill and is a pal of Zerola’s.
Moraski testified that he got here throughout Zerola and two girls — clearly meant to be the alleged rape sufferer and her greatest pal, a lady Zerola was in a “sexual relationship” with named Colleen Daley who testified for the prosecution on Wednesday — as he was strolling down the road from his automotive to maneuver it earlier than tickets begin getting issued at round 8 a.m., round an hour after the alleged assault had taken place.
Moraski stated that he had heard the 2 girls laughing over a video on one in every of their telephones as he chatted with Zerola on the road the place the latter had parked to choose up some Vitamin Waters from a comfort retailer on his strategy to dropping the alleged sufferer off at her automotive parked at Wellington Station. This furthered Scapicchio’s opening argument level that the alleged sufferer was not behaving as somebody who had been raped may.
Prosecutor Brant pushed again in cross-examination on why Moraski would have so many particulars in reminiscence of this “uneventful day to you,” particularly that the 2 girls’s black scrubs — their work uniforms — stood out to him a lot.
The Herald doesn’t title victims, alleged or in any other case, of sexual assault.
As testimony and proof revealed over the earlier two days has proven, the alleged rape occurred at round 7 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2016, on the darkish beige L-shaped sofa within the Myrtle Street residence of Zerola’s pal Jonathan Plaut. All 4 of the individuals talked about up to now — Zerola, Daley, Plaut and the 23-year-old alleged sufferer — had met on the Four Winds on Commercial Street on the Four Winds.
Their bartender that evening, Jacqueline Hurley, testified Tuesday that she had served them alcohol however didn’t imagine she had overserved them. The alleged sufferer testified all of them received fairly drunk there and that Zerola was kissing her and that she didn’t prefer it.
Daley testified Wednesday that Zerola “just kept ordering” vodka sodas for the group and likewise that he had been kissing her pal. The kissing seemed to be each methods, protection confirmed in their very own SnapChat video depicting the alleged sufferer kissing Zerola on the lips.
They ended up at Plaut’s home and Daley and the alleged sufferer slept on the sofa. The prosecution’s story is that the alleged sufferer awoke to Zerola assaulting her.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”