Trial begins in 2015 rape case

The video of the alleged sexual assault no longer exists.

But audio of the defendant discussing it with the woman accusing him does.

The question before the jury is: Will it be enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime occurred?

James Taric Byrd, 45, formerly of Pittsburgh, is charged with rape of an unconscious person, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and invasion of privacy stemming from the alleged assault in May 2015.

Police said he raped the alleged victim while she slept — and after she took sleep medication to combat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The case has been pending for eight years. It has included appeals to the state Supreme Court over the admissibility of audio recordings from the jail between the two.

Byrd has also gone through at least four defense attorneys.

For a period of time, he was going to represent himself at trial. But he lost that privilege in January after he misused the laptop he was issued in Allegheny County Jail to post videos of himself giving sample opening statements on YouTube.

Considered to be a career offender in federal court, Byrd was ordered on Jan. 31 to serve a life sentence stemming from his conviction on drug and gun charges.

He was tried in absentia for his behavior during that trial, currently on appeal, including attacking his own attorney and urinating on the courtroom floor.

In the current state court case, Byrd was present during jury selection and opening statements Thursday.

Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket previously warned Byrd that if he acted out, he would be removed from the courtroom and not permitted to return.

Throughout the proceedings, Thursday afternoon, Byrd sat at counsel table, working on a laptop computer and talking quietly with defense attorneys Lisle Weaver and Thomas N. Farrell.

Assistant District Attorney Alexa Roberts told the jury in her opening statement that Byrd met the alleged victim in 1998, and the two of them dated on and off for four years.

Then, the woman, whose name is being withheld to protect an alleged victim of sexual assault, didn’t see him until late 2014.

Within a few months, Roberts said, Byrd forced the woman to allow him to move in with her and the man who is now her husband.

“His behavior toward her became very aggressive, forceful and eventually violent,” Roberts said. “She felt powerless to change her situation at that time.”

One day, in May 2015, the prosecutor continued, Byrd told the woman he wanted to show her what he did the night before.

He then played a video on his cell phone in which he positioned the woman, who was unconscious, removed her clothes and raped her, Roberts said.

As Byrd showed the woman the video, her partner walked into the room, and Byrd showed the video to him, too, the prosecutor said.

“She immediately deleted the video after that,” Roberts continued.

The woman did not go to the police to report what happened for eight months because she was afraid, Roberts said.

Byrd is also charged with threatening to kill the woman and her partner with a gun on June 7, 2015.

Two days after that, Roberts told the jury, Byrd was arrested on separate gun and drug charges. He has been incarcerated ever since.

During his initial stay at Allegheny County Jail, Roberts said, the woman visited Byrd and spoke to him on the phone.

During recorded calls, she continued, Byrd described the sexual assault, including what he did to the alleged victim and why.

The woman continued to fear for her own safety and didn’t report what happened, Roberts said.

When, ultimately, she did go to the police, she had the cell phone on which Byrd allegedly recorded the incident. Experts attempted to retrieve the deleted video but could not.

Roberts asked the jurors during her opening to try to understand that the alleged victim’s circumstances are likely different from their own, and that they should not think about how they would have responded.

“Because, frankly, you haven’t been in her circumstances.”

But, in his opening statement, Weaver told the jury his client did not rape the alleged victim.

“She’s not telling you everything,” he said about the prosecution’s opening. “We want to give you the whole picture of this relationship between Mr. Byrd and (the alleged victim).”

He warned the jurors that the trial would be uncomfortable.

“You’re going to squirm,” he said.

Weaver told the jurors to listen closely to what the alleged victim said in 2015 and 2016 in the jail recordings and compare it to her testimony.

“She went and visited him at the jail after he raped her,” Weaver said.

The defense attorney didn’t shy away from telling the jurors that they might not like his client, calling him “not the best person in the world.

But Weaver told the panel “His past, all that, don’t care. Did he do what they say he did?”

The alleged victim will return to the witness stand, still on direct examination, Friday morning. She began her direct testimony late Thursday, describing for the jury the abusive relationship she said she had with Byrd.

“He was very abusive to me, mentally, physically, emotionally,” she said.

In 2002, their relationship ended when she said, he kicked in the door of her home, held her at gunpoint and broke her jaw.

She didn’t see him for 12 years after that. When he resurfaced, she continued, she was afraid.

The woman said that in late April or early May 2015, Byrd picked her up at her home, took her to his sister’s and told her they had never really broken up all those years earlier.

“Basically, I belonged to him,” she said he told her. “I was his, and he was taking me back.”

Byrd told the woman’s partner that, she said, and forced himself into living in their home. She said she had nowhere else to go.

For about a month, she said, Byrd told her where she could go, what she could wear, choked her, gave her black eyes and threatened her with a silver revolver. He made her have sex with him.

She called him “terrifying,” and “unpredictable.”

“I was scared, not just for me, but the people around me.”