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This Guy Is Using ‘Good Looks’ as a Rape Defense

2 minute read

A man charged with kidnapping, robbing and raping an Atlanta woman says the sex was consensual because he’s just so damn good looking.

A previous trial resulted in a hung jury, where one juror believed Darriuos Mathis’s “good looking” defense while 11 voted to convict him.

The 24-year old survivor testified Wednesday that one night over two years ago, Mathis stopped her as she was leaving a CVS and kidnapped her at gunpoint, forced her to take money out of various ATMs and ultimately sexually assaulted her. “He had told me to get in the car and I actually begged him to take my car,” she said. “I had pushed my wallet that was in my hand and my keys toward him and I was like ‘Please take my car. You can take my cards and everything.”

Mathis’s defense attorneys are arguing that the victim consented to the sex, mostly because of Mathis’s sexy appearance and the fact that she gave him her phone number. The survivor says she gave him the phone number because she was terrified.

Mathis’s lawyer presented an alternative narrative to the evening; he said that the victim was taken with Mathis’s good looks and sparkling personality and she also wanted to buy drugs from him. “He walked up to her with a bottle of Vicodin and said, ‘Wanna buy some pills? She said, “Sure,” get in. We’ll go to the ATM,” said attorney Carter Clayton.

Neither Clayton nor his good-looking client could not be immediately reached for comment.

[KiroTV]

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Write to Charlotte Alter at charlotte.alter@time.com