photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Matthew Thaine Lee is pictured during a preliminary hearing on April 11, 2023, in Douglas County District Court.

A Douglas County judge on Wednesday sentenced a man to nearly five years in prison in a case that began as a rape charge and ended with a plea deal to aggravated battery.

The man, Matthew Thaine Lee, 59, of Baldwin City, pleaded guilty in September 2023 to aggravated battery after originally being accused in February of that year of violently raping a 37-year-old woman, as the Journal-World has reported.

The woman testified at Lee’s preliminary hearing that he choke-slammed, punched and sexually violated her, leaving her with vision loss and migraines. Following that hearing, Lee was ordered to stand trial on one felony count of aggravated sodomy, one felony count of aggravated domestic battery and one misdemeanor count of domestic battery. The state and Lee eventually reached a deal that resulted in his being convicted of one count of aggravated battery.

The woman did not appear at Lee’s sentencing on Wednesday, when Lee’s attorney, Branden Smith, asked the court to sentence his client to probation, claiming that his client’s criminal history — a person felony in 1986 and two drug cases and a burglary in the early 2000s — were long ago.

Smith characterized the current crime — which his client described to the judge as simply “a slap” for which he was sorry — as being more about “mental health” than sexual wrongdoing, based on his reading of an evaluation completed prior to sentencing.

“Mr. Lee really needs help,” Smith said. “He needs some strict supervision … He’s had a traumatic past that he’s never really dealt with,” and those issues could be dealt with best in a community rather than a prison setting.

Lee denied sexually assaulting the woman and insisted to the court on Wednesday that “I’m not a violent person,” a claim that Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden rebutted.

“We can’t overlook the harm that was caused,” Seiden told the court, saying that the incident involved “extremely violent” behavior, far exceeding a slap or shove; the woman, he noted, said at the preliminary hearing that she had been choke-slammed and punched in the face, among other abuse.

“The defendant is blaming the victim,” Seiden said, and “minimizing his own conduct.”

Seiden asked the court to deny the defense’s motion for a downward departure to probation, asking instead for 60 months, or five years, in prison.

Judge Amy Hanley essentially agreed, noting that the aggravated battery conviction together with Lee’s criminal history score resulted in a presumption of prison time between 53 and 60 months.

Hanley settled on 57 months in prison, with 394 days of credit for jail time already served, plus two years of post-release supervision.

“I am very concerned about the facts in this case and the harm that was done,” she said before Lee was led from the courtroom in shackles.