Jury asks lack of unanimous verdict question in trial of Worcester bridge attack
The jury asked what happens if they cannot reach a unanimous verdict for an indictment on Wednesday in the trial of Joshua Hubert, a Worcester man charged with rape of a child in 2017.
“A question has arisen about what happens should a unanimous decision not be reached on an indictment?” Judge Karin Bell said Wednesday afternoon.
David McShera, a Worcester County prosecutor, argued the jury was saying they were not deadlocked yet, and that deliberations were too early for the judge to provide more instructions “based on ambiguity of the passive wording.”
Defense attorney Kevin Larson agreed with the prosecutor that jurors weren’t saying they were deadlocked, and asked the judge to tell them “their verdict must be unanimous.”
The judge decided to send a written note back to jurors referring to their jury instructions about reaching a verdict at about 3:20 p.m.
This question follows two previous questions asked by the jury on Wednesday afternoon, which regarded technical language and information on the cellphone data.
Hubert, 43, kidnapped his best friend’s then 7-year-old daughter, raped her and threw her off a bridge in the early morning hours of Aug. 27, 2017, according to prosecutors.
She told authorities that her “friend Josh” tossed her into the waters of Lake Quinsigamond.
Jurors are deliberating for the second day of the nearly two-week-long trial.
The girl, now 15, testified to her memory of that night in Worcester County Superior Court on Sept. 8, on the first day of testimony in the trial against Hubert.
He faces charges of forcible child rape, child rape aggravated by age, two counts of attempted murder and a single count each of kidnapping a child under 16 and strangulation.
But over the last week of trial, prosecutors admitted there’s no forensic evidence — even after testing of his car, the child’s clothing and her body after the attack — that ties Hubert to the crime.
There was, however, sperm cell DNA that belonged to the girl’s father, found on her underwear after she was thrown from the bridge.
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