A Lyft driver who was accused of raping his very drunk and incapacitated passenger and retaining her in his automotive for five hours one summer season evening in 2019 was discovered responsible of 1 depend of rape.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury on Wednesday discovered Joseph Piard, 26, of Mattapan, responsible of 1 depend of rape, however acquitted him on a further rape depend and a depend of indecent assault and battery. Piard is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 5.
“What should have been a $3.53 ride to her home became a 5-hour detour through the city,” prosecutor Erin Murphy stated in her closing assertion. She added later that each one the proof confirmed that regardless of Piard’s texts to the sufferer afterward, they have been simply to seek out out what she might have remembered. “The defendant didn’t care about (the victim).”
Over an almost weeklong trial, which started Sept. 15, jurors heard recordings of three interviews Piard made with police; testimony from Det. Jesse Goff, who performed these interviews; testimony from a number of scientists with the Boston Police Department’s crime lab, testimony from Piard’s sufferer — the Herald doesn’t determine victims of rape — and from Eliza Kelley, the pal she was hanging out with the night of July 30, 2019.
That night, the chums, one who went to Berklee College of Music and one who went to Boston Conservatory at Berklee and had met in a mixed drama class, had determined to satisfy as much as watch the season finale of “The Bachelorette.”
The pair first met on the sufferer’s place in Back Bay, the place they drank two bottles of low cost rose wine and took within the present, in accordance with testimony from each of them. They then determined to decamp to Kelley’s place, a 15-minute or so stroll away additionally in Back Bay, to proceed hanging out and drink screwdrivers.
But the sufferer needed to get again to her getting older chihuahua and somebody in the home, whether or not Kelley or her roommate, referred to as a Lyft on the sufferer’s telephone for her.
When Piard got here in his small Mitsubishi, he already had two passengers — this was the time earlier than COVID, when shared rides have been frequent. He took her the brief distance to the handle on the app, however it wasn’t the correct one, so she obtained again into the automotive. Piard determined to drop the opposite passengers off first, and on the experience to that Cambridge vacation spot, the sufferer fell asleep.
She awoke to sunlight, she testified. She stated Piard charged her $30 for his inconvenience of sitting together with her for five hours.
When she went to the hospital, feeling one thing was off, she had a rape package carried out. Male DNA confirmed up in a spot it shouldn’t have, and that DNA can be discovered to match Piard — he had given permission in a police interview for detectives to take pattern swabs of his cheeks.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”