photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Chastleton Jordan Malone during a trial where he is charged in Douglas County District Court with three counts of rape on Jan. 10, 2023.

A Lawrence man was acquitted on Tuesday by a Douglas County jury on charges of raping two women after a New Year’s Eve party in 2020.

The man, Chastleton Jordan Malone, 24, was charged with three felony counts of rape of a person who is unable to consent, according to charging documents. The charges are in connection with an incident in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 2020, when Malone went home with two women, ages 18 and 19, after a night of drinking together at different parties.

The trial began on Jan. 9, and through the week the jury heard testimony from numerous police officers, sexual assault nurses and people who attended the parties with the women and Malone, in addition to testimony from the victims and Malone himself.

As previously reported by the Journal-World, police gathered statements from the women while the women were at LMH Health receiving sexual assault exams on Jan. 2, 2020. One woman told police that she had no clear memory of the assault after having several drinks throughout the night. She told police that she woke up the next day without any pants on and her friend, who also was alleged to have been raped, told the woman that she thought both of them had been raped the night before by the man who was drinking with them at the party.

The women waited a day before going to the hospital for sexual assault exams. They told police that Malone was “creepily stalking” one of the women throughout New Year’s Eve and that he rode home with them but they did not let him inside their house and that he later broke in and raped them after they had fallen asleep.

When Malone heard about the allegations from a friend on Jan. 3, 2020, he called police in an effort to “dispel the lies,” and he was interviewed by police that day before giving police his DNA to be tested and his cellphone to be searched. Malone told police that everything was consensual and that the women invited him onto a bed the two were sharing and that he asked both women if they wanted to have sex and if they were on birth control before having sex with one woman once and the other woman twice.

On Tuesday, Malone’s defense attorney, Michael Duma, said that this incident was a case of “post-coital regret” and that the women had fabricated the story after they woke up the next day and realized they had both slept with the same man and that he was unattractive. He said that Malone and one of the women kissed multiple times during the party and that multiple party-goers testified to seeing them happy together and that at no point did those party-goers think that Malone was stalking them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, someone is not telling the truth,” Duma said.

Duma then accused one of the women of being a “serial accuser who has an ax to grind.”

Duma said that Malone was picked up by a friend of his the morning after the incident and Malone told that friend that he had sex with two women that night and when he learned of the allegation two days later he immediately went to the police to tell his side of the story.

“Is that the action of a man who raped two girls?” Duma said.

The state was represented by District Attorney Suzanne Valdez and Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden. In closing, Seiden said Malone was clearly guilty on all three counts and that his statement about how drunk he was that night ranged from not drunk at all to kind of drunk to pretty drunk depending on when he was asked.

Seiden said DNA evidence was recovered from the women but that there was no evidence of alcohol or drugs because the women had waited a full day before getting sexual assault exams. He said that Duma had weaponized one of the women’s prior sexual assaults by claiming she was a “serial accuser” and that it is unfortunate that the woman has been victimized multiple times.

The jury began deliberations a little after 11 a.m. and returned a verdict around 4 p.m.

After the verdict was read, Duma told the Journal-World that the jury “realized this man was 100% not guilty.”

“They realized that it does happen that a man can be falsely accused,” he said.