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View Winners → News Jan 26, 2022
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The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a former ride-share driver who was convicted of raping an intoxicated female passenger in a North Hollywood motel room.
Alaric Francis Spence was found guilty in November 2019 of raping an intoxicated woman in the June 23, 2017, attack.
Jurors acquitted him of two other counts — kidnapping for rape and rape of an unconscious person.
In a ruling last November, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal found there was no evidence that Spence reasonably believed the woman “had the capacity to consent.”
Surveillance video showed Spence carrying the woman into a motel room, where DNA belonging to Spence was collected from two used condoms found inside a trash can, according to the appellate court panel’s 15-page ruling.
The woman had been picked up in downtown Los Angeles, and her phone’s Uber data showed she had requested a ride to her boyfriend’s apartment and that the trip had ended there, according to the ruling.
Spence — whom police said had been an Uber driver for six months — was arrested the day after the attack.
In a statement read in court by a Los Angeles Police Department detective at Spence’s sentencing in January 2020, the victim wrote, “I’ve tried to process what happened to my body over time. Every night, I cried myself to sleep and used frozen spoons that I kept in my freezer to put on my swollen eyes in the morning.”
Addressing the defendant directly, the victim wrote, “I forgive you, only so I can move on with my life.”
The victim’s mother said she needed to be in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom to face her daughter’s assailant and to let him “know that what he has done is not right.”
“I’ve worked so hard to raise (my daughters) and keep them safe, and you took all of that away in one night,” the woman said. “May God forgive you.”
The defendant countered that he had been “falsely accused” and that he had “no faith” in the court system.
Spence was sentenced to six years behind bars and ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
He is no longer in state prison, according to records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
