WORCESTER — A jury in Worcester County Superior Court Wednesday found a former Rutland police officer guilty of committing rape.
Jason D. Briddon was found guilty of raping a woman he met at a bar in May 2007. He is scheduled for sentencing Thursday.
The 12-member jury found Briddon not guilty of an additional charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Briddon — a longtime Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus driver and a part-time Rutland police officer for three years at the time of the alleged assault — was originally charged in 2008.
His first trial ended in a mistrial, and his second with a conviction.
But that conviction was vacated in 2022 by the state Appeals Court, after Briddon had argued that his defense lawyer should have called his wife to the stand to offer an alibi, as she had in the first trial. The lawyer, David R. Yannetti, elected not to do so because Briddon and his wife were in a contentious divorce at the time of the second trial.
In vacating the conviction, the Appeals Court justices agreed that Yannetti had made a substantial error.