Former prosecutor Gary Zerola did not end up taking the stand to testify in his own defense in his rape trial, and his side only called one witness before they rested their case.
Zerola, 51, of Salem, who served as a prosecutor in both Essex and Suffolk counties before becoming a defense attorney, has pleaded not guilty to accusations that he raped a 23-year-old woman in a friend’s Beacon Hill apartment the morning of Nov. 10, 2016.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning at 9 a.m.
At the beginning of Thursday morning’s Suffolk Superior Court session, the third day in the trial, prosecutor Tom Brant said that the commonwealth was resting its case. While rumors and indications abounded around courtroom 815 that Zerola would take the stand as a defense witness.
Instead, defense attorneys Joseph Krowski Jr. and Rosemary Scapicchio called only one witness: another defense attorney named Paul Moraski, who lives on Beacon Hill and is a friend of Zerola’s.
Moraski testified that he came across Zerola and two women — obviously meant to be the alleged rape victim and her best friend, a woman Zerola was in a “sexual relationship” with named Colleen Daley who testified for the prosecution on Wednesday — as he was walking down the street from his car to move it before tickets start getting issued at around 8 a.m., around an hour after the alleged assault had taken place.
Moraski said that he had heard the two women laughing over a video on one of their phones as he chatted with Zerola on the street where the latter had parked to pick up some Vitamin Waters from a convenience store on his way to dropping the alleged victim off at her car parked at Wellington Station. This furthered Scapicchio’s opening argument point that the alleged victim was not behaving as someone who had been raped might.
Prosecutor Brant pushed back in cross-examination on why Moraski would have so many details in memory of this “uneventful day to you,” especially that the two women’s black scrubs — their work uniforms — stood out to him so much.
The Herald does not name victims, alleged or otherwise, of sexual assault.
As testimony and evidence revealed over the previous two days has shown, the alleged rape occurred at around 7 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2016, on the dark beige L-shaped couch in the Myrtle Street apartment of Zerola’s friend Jonathan Plaut. All four of the people mentioned so far — Zerola, Daley, Plaut and the 23-year-old alleged victim — had met at the Four Winds on Commercial Street at the Four Winds.
Their bartender that night, Jacqueline Hurley, testified Tuesday that she had served them alcohol but didn’t believe she had overserved them. The alleged victim testified they all got quite drunk there and that Zerola was kissing her and that she didn’t like it.
Daley testified Wednesday that Zerola “just kept ordering” vodka sodas for the group and also that he had been kissing her friend. The kissing appeared to be both ways, defense showed in their own SnapChat video depicting the alleged victim kissing Zerola on the lips.
They ended up at Plaut’s house and Daley and the alleged victim slept on the couch. The prosecution’s story is that the alleged victim awoke to Zerola assaulting her.
