Sonoma County jurors on Thursday convicted a Santa Rosa man of raping and stabbing a woman he abducted as she was loading her young child into her car at a Bennett Valley grocery store.
After deliberating four days, the 10-woman, two-man jury returned guilty verdicts on all nine felony counts against Aristotle Quadra, 31, who will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for the Feb. 7 attack.
The 29-year-old victim was in the courtroom but left without making a public statement. Quadra sat motionless beside his attorney as the verdict was read.
Sentencing was set for Jan. 21.
?I?m pleased with the decision,? prosecutor Tashawn Sanders said. ?The jury did a very deliberate and thorough job.?
Jurors said they struggled over the issue of premeditation, finally concluding Quadra planned the attack.
After raping the woman with her 20-month-old in the carseat behind them, he waited briefly and then attacked her with an ice pick, stabbing her 14 times.
?We really had a hard time concluding there was a pause,? said a juror who identified himself only as Michael.
Another juror said the group talked at length about the meaning of premeditation.
Before reaching a verdict, the jury requested to hear the victim?s testimony again. One juror said she couldn?t digest the information the first time because it was so compelling.
?It was so riveting we couldn?t take out eyes off her,? the juror said. ?It?s why we needed to hear it again.?
The jury approved all but one sentence enhancement. It said the woman?s injuries in the rape did not rise to the level of great bodily injury, which could have added several years to any sentence.
During the weeklong trial, Quadra didn?t deny that he kidnapped, raped and stabbed the woman as she was loading her son into her SUV at the Yulupa Avenue Safeway.
But his attorney asked jurors to be lenient on him because Quadra may have been too high on methamphetamine to have formed the premeditation necessary for the first-degree attempted murder charge.
The jury was not persuaded.
The victim, identified in court only as Jane Doe, testified that Quadra shoved her from behind into her SUV as she was loading her son into his car seat in the grocery store parking lot. She said he was holding an ice pick and threatened the boy?s life unless she complied with his demands.
She testified that Quadra forced her to drive to a secluded parking lot a few miles away, where he handcuffed her and raped her while her son sat in his car seat in the back seat.
He then stabbed her repeatedly with an ice pick, stopping only when she was able to stomp on the car horn, causing her attacker to flee.
Quadra was arrested three days later after a former co-worker identified him from a composite sketch based on the woman?s description.
Sanders said he would be sentenced to at least two life sentences ? one for the rape conviction and another for attempted murder.
The balance of his convictions plus enhancements could add at least 10 more years, she said.
Quadra?s attorney, Barry Collins, said he would likely get a much longer sentence that would keep him behind bars virtually forever.
?He?s never going to be eligible for parole,? Collins said. ?If he is, he?ll be 90 years old.?
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