Jury deliberations begin in 2017 Worcester bridge attack trial
Jury deliberations have begun in the trial for Joshua Hubert , after more than a week of testimony and arguments were heard in Worcester Superior Court.
Hubert, 43, faces several indictments in connection with the attempted murder and rape of a 7-year-old girl in Worcester in 2017, which are being combined into one case for the trial that began with opening statements on Sept. 8. He is charged with 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.
Prosecutors say Hubert — a childhood friend of the victim's father — kidnapped the girl from her grandparents' home after a party, then raped and strangled her in his car before throwing her from the Interstate 290 overpass into Lake Quinsigamond.
The girl survived and told police it was her "friend Josh" who had thrown her from the bridge.
However, prosecutors have acknowledged from the start that there is no forensic evidence linking Hubert to the crime — and that the sperm cell DNA found on the girl's underwear after the attack actually belongs to her father.
Yet, the jury was made to listen to a lengthy testimony over the past week, including accounts from the girl, her parents, her grandfather, a man who claimed to have seen a car similar to Hubert's on the bridge in the early morning hours of Aug. 27, 2017, and several police officers from Worcester and Shrewsbury involved in the investigation.
The jury was given instructions on how to consider the testimony heard over the past week, after hearing from closing arguments from both sides.
Hubert's lawyer, Kevin Larson, pointed out numerous inconsistencies in the evidence presented by prosecutors, like the cell phone data that puts his location away from the bridge that night — but added the jury "could ignore everything ... and decide this case just based on the DNA alone."
"Why. Is [the father's] sperm. On his daughter's underwear. When she came out of the water on Aug. 27, 2017?" Larson paused with each word, dragging them out for emphasis.
But Mark McShera said the "coincidences" in the case prove Hubert's guilt, pointing to surveillance footage showing that he drove around the city in the hours before the girl is believed to have been thrown of the bridge.
"Ultimately, you have these two competing theories — one, with a 15-year-old girl taking the stand and talking about what happened," McShera said.
"Competing against that, you have that [her father] maybe did part of this, maybe she was thrown off a bridge ... who knows? Versus our theory, the Commonwealth's theory," he said.
The jury was given instructions by Judge Karin Bell before she sent them to begin deliberations at 11:25 a.m. They will have as much time as necessary to deliberate.
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