This is a real story from a real newspaper.

If you have been poking around in the Pan-Arabia Enquirer satire site discussed yesterday, you can be forgiven for assuming that the story I’m about to link you to is not real, either.

We will start by teasing you with the online headline in The National:

“Man ‘did not rape’ because his wife’s prettier”

In the real, no-not-kidding story, the lawyer for a Jordanian man charged in Abu Dhabi with rape “has requested permission to bring his client’s wife to court, claiming she is so beautiful that he has no need for other women.”

This could be a new frontier in the legal community. The “pretty wife” defense in rape cases. I’m surprised F. Lee Bailey or someone of his ilk didn’t think of it first.

What makes this even more interesting is that the man’s conviction was overturned on appeal.

The defense lawyer threw out a bunch of reasons why the rape could not have happened (son in the house at the time, sexual dysfunction, etc.), but the “pretty wife” thing was part of it.

Seems likely that the a lawyer with that kind of creative mind might be picking up more clients in the near future.