CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A Chesterfield County man will stand trial on Monday, Jan. 29 after a grand jury indictment of multiple charges including rape, abduction and forcible sodomy.
According to Chesterfield Police, Matthew Kirkland, 27, of Matoaca, was arrested in August 2023 after he was accused of meeting a woman he met online and sexually assaulting her at a location in Chesterfield County in July 2023.
According to online court records, Kirkland faces the following eight charges:
- abduction
- attempted strangulation
- rape
- forcible sodomy
- two counts of object sexual penetration
- aggravated sexual battery
- abduction with the intent to defile
According to 8News legal analyst Russ Stone, if Kirkland is convicted of all eight charges, he could face multiple life sentences.
“In Virginia, rape carries five [years] to life [in prison]. The forcible sodomy is treated just like rape — that’s five to life. The abduction with intent to defile, I believe, is actually 20 to life,” Stone said.
8News asked Stone what an argument for the defense could possibly be. Due to a lack of evidence that is visual or heard, Stone’s answer is based on speculation, but he said that evidence involving the matter of consent will be at play.
“We don’t know what all of the evidence is, but I would suspect, based on the charges and this sort of case, that there is probably evidence that is going to prove that some sort of sexual contact occurred between these people,” Stone said. “From the defense point of view, what you’re often looking at is, was this consensual or not…the force is what makes it truly a criminal offense.”
However, Kirkland’s alleged sexual assault in July is not the first incident that he has been accused of and indicted by a grand jury.
According to online court records, a grand jury met in October 2023 and followed with an indictment against Kirkland for charges of rape and abduction with the intent to defile for another, separate alleged incident that occurred in March 2016.
Kirkland is set to stand trial for the alleged March incident in June 2024, which Stone said will be treated as a separate matter from the other alleged incident that occurred in July.
“I would suspect that [both incidents] were severed just because the evidence relating to one set of charges would not have been admissible in the trial of the other, because each incident does have to be judged separately,” Stone said. “So, they probably severed that case, I suspect, because they had a different victim, somebody else is alleging that he did these things to them.”
Stone also spoke about the specific matters of the incident that took place in July that involved an online meet-up, and discussed the dangers around meeting people through the use of the Internet.
“When dealing with the Internet, you’re meeting somebody electronically. You’re not really going to learn much about them under that circumstance or if they are an unscrupulous person,” Stone said. “They can more easily lie to you over the Internet and then when you actually meet them face to face, you may not know exactly what you’re running into.”
Kirkland’s trial for the alleged incident that took place in July 2023 will begin at 9 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 29 at the Chesterfield County Circuit Court.
