“I don’t care how many times you ask, I will swear on the Bible and say, ‘You raped me, you raped me, you raped me!’ “
As a Richland County jury watched, an 85-year-old woman tongue-lashed her
alleged rapist, Marquille Livingston, during her testimony.
“You know I’m not lying! You know that! I asked you if you would rape your 90-year-old mother!” the woman in a wheelchair told Livingston, 36, of Columbia.
Livingston — acting as his own lawyer — was cross-examining the victim.
His feet were manacled as he sat at the defense table, burly deputies close at hand.
“Ma’am, I’m just here to ask you questions,” Livingston told the woman as she questioned him back about details of what happened on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.
In February, Richland County Sheriff Leon
Lott dubbed Livingston “a monster” because of his alleged sexual assaults on two elderly Columbia area women. Livingston also is charged with the 2016 rape of a 70-year-old woman who police say he stunned with a stun gun before repeatedly assaulting. That case has yet to go to trial.
In the case on trial this week, Livingston is charged with rape, burglary and kidnapping. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, meaning he would die in prison.
In an opening statement to the jury Monday afternoon, prosecutor Joanna McDuffie told the jury that law enforcement had substantial evidence against Livingston, including DNA he left at the scene and the eyewitness identification of the victim, a retired, ordained minister.
McDuffie also sketched a night of horror endured by the woman, who wept at times during her testimony. (The State does not identify the victims of sexual assaults.)
“He drug her into the bedroom and raped her continuously for hours and hours and hours,” McDuffie told the jury. “She was made to do things no person should ever suffer.”
When the woman managed to punch a LifeStation alert button, the service’s operator called back but Livingston grabbed the telephone, the prosecutor said.
“The defendant tells them that everything is fine and don’t send the police,” McDuffie said.
Livingston then threw the LifeStation device across the room, she said.
After his assaults, Livingston forced the woman into a bathtub to wash away “anything that may have a fragment of his DNA ... to cover up this most heinous of crimes,” McDuffie said.
Then, he held the woman’s head under scalding hot water coming from the tap.
Before leaving the woman’s apartment, Livingston also collected bedding and other items that might have his DNA on it and put it in a plastic garbage bag. He threatened to kill the woman if she told anyone, then walked out the door.
The victim immediately called 911.
And, McDuffie told the jury, Livingston had forgotten he had thrown the LifeStation device across the room and did not carry it away.
“Police were able to get Mr. Livingston’s DNA from that LifeStation button,” McDuffie said.
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