From Daily Report

The lawyers behind a criminal defense theory that drew howls on the Internet—that a man was “too handsome” to be guilty of sexual assault—are defending the tactic, especially because their now-former-client was convicted in a second trial.

A Cobb County jury last week found Darrious Mathis guilty of kidnapping, carjacking, possession of a weapon in the commission of a crime and assaulting with intent to rob and rape a 24-year-old woman he encountered as she exited an Austell CVS store in 2011. Mathis, 23, was not charged with rape in Cobb because, according to his own testimony, he had sex with the woman in Fulton County. He said the sex was consensual, but he faces rape charges in Fulton.

When the news of his conviction was reported, observers on the Internet seized on the “too handsome” claim. “You Can’t Be Serious,” said Bossip. “WTF?” asked GlobalGrind.

Some of the stories mentioned the name of the defense attorney at the second trial, W. Carter Clayton, but none quoted him.

When Clayton answered his phone at the Jones Morrison & Womack firm in downtown Atlanta the morning after the conviction, he was upset. He said news reports saying he’d called his client too good looking to be guilty weren’t true.

Clayton said that although the defense was essentially the same in both trials—that the woman was attracted to Mathis and had sex with him willingly—he did not build a defense around looks.

“If I’d come up with it, I’d probably be proud of it,” Clayton said. “But it wasn’t my defense.”

The too-handsome strategy was the work of Dwight Thomas and Hannah Ward of Atlanta, Mathis’ attorneys in the first trial, in September 2013, which ended with a hung jury.

“You work with what you’ve got,” Thomas told the Daily Report in an interview after the second trial.

“I had a white female alleged victim and a young black male defendant,” in a predominately white and conservative suburb, he said. Thomas figured he needed something more than just a consent argument.

“I had him stand up,” Thomas said. “I told the jury I wish I had what this guy’s got.”

Thomas recalled that he invited the jurors to take a good look, and they did. “Don’t take my word for it. Look at him,” Thomas told the jury. “A lot of women like this—and some men, too.”

The first trial lasted for eight days, with four days taken by the jury’s doomed efforts to deliberate. The defense counted the mistrial as something of a victory, at least better than a conviction.

From Hannah Ward argued that the rape story was concocted for the woman’s boyfriend

John Disney/Daily Report

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