GEORGETOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — Attorneys delivered opening statements on Tuesday in the trial against the man accused of raping a Georgetown College student in 2018.
Cody Alan Arnett, 35, is charged with rape in connection to an incident police said happened in September of 2018 inside an on-campus apartment.
Arnett entered an apartment through an unlocked door and raped a woman who lived there at knife-point, according to officers.
In her opening statement, Commonwealth's Attorney Sharon Muse played a clip of surveillance video from outside the apartment complex she said shows Arnett walking back and forth outside the woman's apartment multiple times before deciding to enter.
Arnett then attacked the woman as she slept, Muse said.
"She will tell you she was too scared to cry out because she was convinced that if she did, she was convinced that this man, this man with a knife who had just put it at her throat, that he would kill her. He told her he would and she believed him," she told jurors.
But Arnett's attorney, Karema Eldahan, said in her opening statement that Arnett was walking around campus because he was too intoxicated to drive.
"If you watch the entire surveillance video it will actually show him outside of several doors a few times as he's walking back and forth, back and forth in this breezeway," she said.
Arnett was invited inside by the woman where they had consensual sex, Eldahan told jurors.
It only turned violent when he insulted her and she began to stab him, Eldahan said.
But Muse told jurors the assault was ongoing when the woman was able to grab the knife away from Arnett and stabbed him to defend herself.
"Realizing that he no longer had the knife, she knew that the next act she took could either save her life or end it," Muse told jurors.
Testimony in the case begins Wednesday morning. Jurors are expected to hear from the victim and her roommates, police officers, and medical experts.
