A woman who authorities say was sexually assaulted by the same man charged with killing a University of Virginia student came face to face with her alleged attacker in a Fairfax courtroom.
The encounter yesterday was brief, and the woman's testimony was focused on a narrow legal question, though she did testify that his face looked familiar. But it provided a preview of the courtroom drama expected next week, when a jury trial begins for 33-year-old Jesse Matthew.
Matthew, of Charlottesville, is charged in Fairfax with abducting and sexually assaulting the woman who testified at Thursday's pretrial hearing. He faces a separate trial later in Albemarle County for the abduction and killing of Graham, whose disappearance last year prompted a frenzied, weekslong search and drew national headlines.
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Yesterday's hearing was to determine whether the woman's ability to identify Matthew as her attacker had been corrupted by the passage of time and by pretrial publicity in which Matthew's face has been shown repeatedly.
Matthew's lawyers wanted her to be barred from telling the jury that she recognises Matthew. The judge, David Schell, refused to do so, though the issue could be revisited at trial.
Schell said there was no reason to deal with the issue before trial unless there was some evidence that police or prosecutors had made some undue suggestion to the woman that Matthew was the man who attacked her.
The woman, who now lives in India and is not being identified because The Associated Press generally withholds the names of sexual assault victims, then testified briefly about what she had discussed with detectives about Matthew's identity. She said she had once seen a photo of Matthew in a news account after police called her to tell her an arrest had been made. She also made a remark to police that Matthew's face looked familiar but his hair looked different.
