A Manhattan jury last Friday acquitted a former Boston prosecutor who was charged with the 2017 rape of a woman as she was sleeping in a Midtown hotel room, the New York Times reported.
Adam Foss, 43, an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform, claimed that the encounter with the 25-year-old woman was consensual.
In a statement after the acquittal, Foss’s attorney Priya Chaudhry said Foss expressed “sincere appreciation” to the judge and jury for diligently discerning the “truth in a complex case.” She said Foss would carefully evaluate his “legal options” in addressing “the grave impact these false accusations” had “on his life.”
Foss formerly served as a prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and in 2016 started Prosecutor Impact, a nonprofit group that sought to instruct prosecutors in ways to lower incarceration rates.
An advocate against mass incarceration, Foss was named one of The Root’s “100 most influential black Americans” of 2016.
A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said while prosecutors were disappointed by last Friday’s verdict, they respected the decision of the jury.
During the two-week trial, the jury was presented with the details of what happened on the night in October 2017 when Foss encountered the woman.
Prosecutors said the two had exchanged calls and text messages for about a month before they met in the Midtown hotel, where the woman repeatedly rebuffed Foss’s advances, and after she fell asleep, he assaulted her.
In her closing arguments, Chaudhry attempted to frame the accuser’s account of the night as not credible. She detailed to the jury her client’s account and cited the text messages between the accuser and a friend in which the accuser recounted her night with Foss and described him as “cute.” Chaudhry argued that the woman’s account only changed after Foss “ghosted her.”
