Jury considers rape charge against Uber driver
In the trial of an Uber driver charged with raping a passenger, closing arguments Thursday centered on an allegation concerning a disturbing act in the car that a prosecutor called “gross” and “weird” but completely true.
Gary Kitchings’ lawyer told jurors the “ridiculous” accusation that he forced the woman to drink his urine during a ride home from a concert last year casts doubt on her rape claim and the woman’s cries when calling 911.
Now it’s up to the Palm Beach County jury to decide if Kitchings, 58, is guilty of six felony counts over the May 7, 2017, encounter he testified was entirely consensual and a violation only of his marriage.
Chief Circuit Judge Krista Marx asked the panel of five men and one woman to continue deliberating at 9 a.m. today. They spent five hours reviewing evidence and discussing the case Thursday, which included listening to the 911 call again and watching a video of the woman giving a statement to an investigator.
“I’m afraid you will convict Gary Kitchings just because it sounds horrible,” Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow said in his final words to the jury. “Mr. Kitchings is an innocent man.”
The attorney called the 38-year-old accuser a “liar” who possibly had regret after agreeing to have sex with the older man, who quickly left her Jupiter condo to continue driving for Uber the same night.
Arbuzow asked the jurors to disregard the recording of the woman’s 911 call because “people have won Oscars for things like this.”
But Assistant State Attorneys Brianna Coakley and Marci Rex said the woman’s cries for help to the 911 operator, her statement to detectives that night, and her testimony this week in court about the attack are all true.
The woman said Kitchings first threatened to pull out a gun if she didn’t obey his orders to perform sex acts in the car — at one point she unbuckled her seat belt but was unable to open the front passenger door to jump out. Then, he forced his way into her home and raped her on her bed, she told the jury.
“There is absolutely no reason for her to make this up,” Coakley said of the woman’s ride home after attending SunFest in downtown West Palm Beach.
Because of the nature of the allegations, the South Florida Sun Sentinel is not naming the woman.
Kitchings’ “spur of the moment” decision to rape his Uber passenger was a “nightmare that has changed her life forever,” the prosecutor said.
Rex slammed the defense’s claim that the woman was acting when she hid in a locked bathroom closet and called for police, and later submitted to a rape kit and intrusive questions.
“Victims do that — there’s no script,” the prosecutor said.
In response to the defense argument that police never found evidence of Kitchings’ urine or semen in his Nissan Versa, Rex said that’s because he commanded her to swallow it.
“Because she didn’t vomit in the car after drinking the urine, we’re going to say it didn’t happen?” Rex argued. “She swallowed what she was told to swallow.”
The prosecutor said Kitchings’ testimony that it was simply sex between consenting adults made no sense because she had just flown into South Florida after a Mexico vacation with her boyfriend. And, it is obvious Kitchings was not “in her wheelhouse.”
“She’s going to go with a 5-foot-2, 200-pound Uber driver? Not likely. Not real,” Rex said. “This was the worst night of her life … that is her truth.”
Arbuzow, the defense attorney, said none of the accuser’s allegations are true.
“There is an ocean of reasonable doubt in this case,” Arbuzow said in his final words to the jury. “A story just shouldn’t be believed because it shocks us.”