WOODLAND — It took only a couple of hours of deliberations Thursday for a Yolo County jury to find a former UC Davis graduate student not guilty of the sexual assault charges he faced for more than a year.
The nine-woman, three-man jury acquitted 36-year-old Ephrem Rukundo of oral copulation and sexual penetration of an unconscious person — both felonies — as well as a misdemeanor sexual battery count stemming from allegations that arose following an April 2015 house party in Davis.
“I just want to thank the jury from the bottom of our hearts,” Rukundo’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson, said as jurors filed out of the courtroom following the 3:50 p.m. verdict reading.
Moments earlier, the 22-year-old woman who said Rukundo had sexual contact with her while she slept on a living room couch rushed out of the courtroom, visibly upset.
In her testimony, the woman said she had fallen asleep on the couch as the party wound down, awakening several hours later to discover someone orally copulating her, followed by the feeling of penetration. DNA recovered following a medical exam matched Rukundo’s genetic profile.
Rukundo recalled the encounter differently, testifying in his own defense that the woman, apparently awake, had grabbed his hand and “started passing it around her body” as he moved a blanket from the floor to the couch where she lay.
“I thought I’d just go with it. … So then we had sex,” Rukundo said. During closing arguments in the case Friday morning, Johansson characterized the woman’s subsequent assault claim as a result of remorse, or perhaps a bid for attention.
Prosecuting attorney Deanna Hays challenged Rukundo’s story during her closing remarks, saying the woman had no motivation to lie, then undergo an invasive rape exam and a yearlong court ordeal if the conduct was consensual.
“We are so proud of (her) for standing up and speaking against sexual assault,” Hays said following the verdicts. “We have always believed her, but we respect the jury’s decision.”
Several jurors contacted by The Enterprise outside the courthouse declined to comment on their deliberations.
Meanwhile, Rukundo’s legal woes are not fully behind him. Arrested on misdemeanor DUI charges while the sexual assault case was pending, the onetime Ph.D. candidate is due back in court June 16 for a pretrial hearing.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene