BATON ROUGE — Accused serial rapist David Coutee – who held a woman captive for 13 hours and tortured her in 2024 – pleaded guilty Monday to reduced charges.
Coutee raped the woman in her home, forced her to perform oral sex, beat her with a hammer and a flashlight, dragged her around the house by her hair and locked her in her attic.
Judge Fred Crifasi sentenced him to 15 years in prison on the rape without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence.
Coutee, 40, is scheduled for trial next week in Livingston Parish in a rape involving a different victim.
In East Baton Rouge, Coutee’s first-degree rape charge was reduced to second-degree rape. His aggravated second-degree battery charge was reduced to second-degree battery. Prosecutors dismissed a charge of false imprisonment with a weapon, court records show.
For the battery charge, Crifasi gave Coutee a suspended 8-year sentence and ordered him to complete three years of probation.
In May, a judge declared a mistrial in what should have been his trial in that case after determining that prosecutors had not provided some pieces of evidence to the defense. District Attorney Hillar Moore said at the time, his office gave the evidence to the defense as soon as they received it.
The mistrial did not create a possible path to release from jail for Coutee. Court records indicate that he is serving a state sentence that will keep him in prison until at least 2032.
He is currently being held in the Livingston Parish Detention Center.
On June 11, 2024, the Baton Rouge victim, who was acquainted with Coutee and had hung out with him several times, asked him to help her move some household items to the curb. He refused to leave and became concerned that another man was in the house with them.
He beat her with a flashlight and a hammer, dragged her around her house by her hair, raped her twice and repeatedly forced her to perform oral sex on him. He also choked her until she was unconscious.
She told UWK that she was afraid she was going to die.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” she said in 2024. “He needs to be put away because if he gets out, he will do it again.”
Her ordeal continued for 13 hours and she was left with injuries over half her body, including significant injuries to her eyes.
“If he gets out again, he will probably do it again because he’s very charming,” she said. “He seems very normal. He did not come off as a rapist or a guy who was abusive towards women. He came off very loving and very sweet. And then he flipped a switch so if he gets out again, he will kill the next person. He threatened to kill me so what’s that tell you?”
Two days after his arrest in the Baton Rouge case, a Livingston Parish woman reported to the sheriff’s office that Coutee had attacked her five days after the Baton Rouge rape.
She said she had known Coutee for 20 years and that they reconnected on social media. She says she had consensual sex with him once and returned to visit him two days later. That, she told authorities, was when he allegedly choked her with his hands while forcing oral sex. She didn’t have a car, so she was stuck at Coutee’s home for two days. She said he allegedly raped her again and choked her with a belt.
In that case, Coutee is charged with two counts of second-degree rape and one count of aggravated battery.
His Baton Rouge guilty plea means that when he is released from prison, he must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
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