YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: After a little over half a day of deliberations, jurors in Hackensack today found a city man not guilty of sexually assaulting and beating a former Clifton woman after a Memorial Day outing last year.
Paul Roseboro, Jr. got a broad smile and a hug from his lawyer after the verdict was read this afternoon. Roseboro, however, kept the same steely expression he had throughout the brief trial.
The alleged victim testified last week that Roseboro groped, choked and punched her, then threw her into a mirror and through a door before chasing her into an Anderson Avenue parking lot for more of a beating (SEE: Woman tells jurors of beating at hands of Hackensack man).
Roseboro was acquitted of four separate charges: criminal sexual contact, harassment, aggravated assault and simple assault.
Paul Roseboro, Jr. (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Defense attorney Ian Silvera told jurors the 6-foot, 280-pound Roseboro, who turned 42 a week ago, was fighting back against the then-23-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch “strapping” kickboxer after she attacked him.
Silvera contended that his client “had no choice but to use the legal force he is entitled to use.”
“This woman went ballistic on him, she lost her mind,” the attorney argued. “They had some argument about something and she attacked him, and what did he do? He responded.”
“She lost the fight, so she wants to get revenge” Silvera said. “I call this he Shylock syndrome, where she wants to exact her pound of flesh.”
The young mother arrived to pick up her son “in a revealing dress” and Roseboro, whose girlfriend was in the apartment with her own son, “felt she was flirting with him,” he said.
“She is not trustworthy. She has lied, she has embellished, his evidence is not reliable, it’s not credible,” Silvera said.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Dion Findley countered that self-defense may be recognized under the law, but it “doesn’t absolve you of all further actions.
To satisfy the standard of self-defense, the prosecutor said, someone must reasonably believe that:
- he or she must use force;
- it was immediately necessary;
- it’s a defense against unlawful force;
- it’s proportionate to the attack.
Roseboro didn’t meet that standard, Findley said, because he wasn’t in danger, he could have left the area at any time, she warned him not to touch her offensively and he didn’t just hit her once or twice.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter