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Trial begins for serial rape suspect

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The trial of an Anniston man accused of being a serial rapist began Tuesday at the Calhoun County Courthouse, more than 17 months after his initial arrest.

Ularius Johnson, 23, faces 27 indictments including multiple counts of rape, burglary and kidnapping stemming from several cases in Anniston and Calhoun County that took place between 2007 and 2009.

“I’ve been in longer trials, I’ve had more witnesses, but I’ve never been in a trial with this many victims,” Calhoun County District Attorney Brian McVeigh said during the prosecution’s opening arguments. Six victims of sexual assault are expected to take the witness stand during the trial, which McVeigh and Calhoun County Circuit Judge Debra Jones said will likely take weeks.

“There are six women, and they’re going to tell you what happened to them, and that’s going to be difficult,” McVeigh said. “And that will last as long as it needs to, to get all these on the record.”

Prosecutors have charged Johnson with two counts of first-degree rape, five counts of first-degree burglary, three counts of first-degree sodomy, six counts of second-degree kidnapping and one count of second-degree assault with a firearm. Because of the large number of indictments and the expected length of the process, Jones said the court is treating the trial like a capital case and has three alternate jurors prepared.

Referring to the long stretch of time covering multiple charges within the case, McVeigh called the prosecution’s evidence against Johnson a “puzzle” and urged the jury repeatedly to “listen carefully” and “pay attention” to the evidence he said would connect all the crimes.

“Attention to detail in these cases will be paramount,” McVeigh said. “We have to lay out all these cases going back to 2007.”

The incidents stem back to August 2007 when a woman said she returned to her home on Christine Avenue in Anniston to find an armed man, who burglarized the residence and then sexually assaulted the woman.

Three months later, two women said they were taken from the Victoria Inn on Quintard Avenue in Anniston. The assailant drove the women to an ATM and forced them to withdraw money before raping one of them and kicking them both out of the vehicle.

Another rape and burglary was alleged to have taken place in April 2008 on Blue Ridge Drive, while a robbery and rape were also reported at a home on Christine Avenue in May of the same year.

In August 2009, a woman was shot in the finger after a struggle with a man accused of robbing her.

Police arrested and charged Johnson with robbery, burglary and kidnapping in September 2009, days after an incident in Choccolocco where a woman and her two children were taken from their home by a masked assailant.

No sexual assault is alleged in the September 2009 ioncident, but McVeigh said the separate incidents all shared similar elements, and pointed to Johnson as the man who committed all the crimes based on patterns and the tracing of stolen property back to him.

But in the opening statement for the defense team, defense attorney David Johnston argued none of the evidence linked Johnson to any of the incidents on trial.

“Having stolen property does not make you guilty of burglary, robbery, rape or the like,” Johnston said.

Prior to the jury entering the courtroom and opening statements, Jones denied several motions filed by the defense to prevent prosecutors from having witnesses identify the suspect in the courtroom, on the basis that the prosecution did not do pre-trial identification.

Assistant District Attorney Lynn Hammond said the proper way for the defense to question the validity of the possible witness identification would be during the trial, and not before.

“I understand Mr. Johnston wanting to discuss these individually, but the way to do that is through cross-examination,” Hammond said.

None of the 11 witnesses called on by the prosecution Tuesday – most of whom were law enforcement officials – identified Johnson as a suspect in any of the cases.

The prosecution team presented two key pieces of evidence Tuesday, both involved with a September 2009 kidnapping and burglary case, which eventually led to the arrest of Johnson.

Johnson allegedly burglarized a residence in Choccolocco, east of Anniston, and kidnapped a woman and her two children the morning of Sept. 4, 2009, driving the victims to different ATM locations in Anniston and forcing them to give him money.

Video from a surveillance camera attached to a garage at a residence on Laurel Trace as well as recordings of multiple calls to 911 the morning of Sept. 4, 2009, were played for the jury.

In the video, a man with a mask and firearm seems to enter the residence through the garage, which is outside the frame of the video. A few minutes later he emerges with a woman and two children. The woman enters the driver’s seat of a parked white Volvo while the assailant and two children enter the backseat, before the car exits the frame.

On the 911 calls, a voice claiming to be one of the alleged victims, Cathy McGuirk, told dispatchers a man was attempting to enter her house on Laurel Trace.

McGuirk, who was present in the courtroom Tuesday, appeared to be visually shaken when both the video and audio recordings were presented, crying and being consoled by other witnesses present at the trial.

After going through the examination and cross examination of the witnesses, McVeigh asked the court to be dismissed just prior to 3:30 p.m. Victim witnesses are expected to take the stand on Wednesday and Thursday with forensic evidence presented afterwards.

The trial continues Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.

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Keywords: trial, Anniston, rapist, Calhoun County

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