Posted on 08/28/2004 11:27:49 AM PDT by Hawk44
EAGLE, Colo. - This week, as attorneys work to empanel a jury in Kobe Bryant's rape trial, virtually every point of fact in the brief interlude 14 months ago between him and the young woman accusing him remains in dispute.
Questions that pretrial hearings have hinted at are about to bubble over in public:
Who is telling the truth — the 20-year-old woman who says the six-time NBA All-Star forced himself upon her, or the 26-year-old player who led the Los Angeles Lakers (news) in scoring during a season in which his every move was dissected?
Did Bryant's actions make him a felon, or simply an adulterer?
And why can't we stop paying attention?
The case, and the star power behind it, have gripped a celebrity-obsessed nation for more than a year, serving up sordid headlines, variously cloaked photos of the accuser and endless speculation about everything from his bloodstained T-shirt to her sex life.
In Eagle, residents have grown accustomed to the regular onslaught of national media and celebrity television shows dissecting the story and using the town's buildings and people as backdrops.
"It's put Eagle on the map, but I don't know if it's the kind of attention this town wants to have," Roxie Deane, who was in her eighth and final year as mayor when the case broke, said in June.
The name of the young woman, a local, has become an open secret, fed by the rumor mill and several accidental releases of legal documents by the local court. The Associated Press does not name accusers in sexual-assault cases.
On its face, it is a straightforward case of he said-she said, of the kind played out all too frequently in American courts. But the involvement of Bryant, one of the NBA's brightest and — until last year — most spotless stars, has raised it to a level tantamount to the O.J. Simpson and William Kennedy Smith trials.
For Colorado, it is yet another in a slate of high-profile crimes — the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and the 1996 murder of 6-year-old child beauty contestant JonBenet Ramsey being the prime examples.
The young woman, tall and blonde, was 19 on June 30, 2003. She was staffing the front desk of the exclusive Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, a complex of golf courses, restaurants and a hotel perched atop a mountain overlooking the Vail Valley, where the rich and celebrated play.
By her own account, she was excited to meet Bryant and hoped to get an autograph. She gave him a marker and some hotel stationery. Never signed, the material now sits among the pieces of evidence in People of the State of Colorado vs. Kobe Bean Bryant.
According to Eagle County sheriff's Detective Doug Winters, the woman said she kissed Bryant in his room that night, but he became aggressive and blocked her from leaving. She said he bent her over a chair and raped her with his hands on her throat.
She said "no" at least twice, Winters said. Bryant insists the sex was consensual — though, according to Winters, he admonished the woman not to tell anybody about the encounter.
The accuser, a former high school cheerleader who completed one year at the University of Northern Colorado before dropping out last fall, has faced constant pursuit by the media and has even received death threats.
Her attorney, John Clune, says that when she returned to Eagle to testify at a hearing in March, she was approached on a street by a man who began asking questions and shooting pictures. She darted into a restaurant and hid behind a plant.
"She can't live at home. She can't live with relatives. She can't go to school or talk to her friends," her mother wrote in a March 24 letter to the judge. She asked him to set the trial date as quickly as possible so her daughter could put the case behind her.
Bryant's story, a path of precociousness and fame, is more familiar.
He spent much of his childhood in Italy, joined the Lakers at 18 fresh out of a suburban Philadelphia high school. His sharp looks, charisma and ability helped him cultivate a cool, good-guy image.
Raised in an upper-middle class religious family, Bryant showed a respectful demeanor that worked against him in an unsuccessful venture into rap music a few years ago. But he still generated wild cheering when he appeared with his wife at the 2003 Teen Choice Awards, where he was honored as favorite male athlete two weeks after being charged.
On the day he was charged, Bryant convened a news conference where he held his wife's hand — with a new $4 million diamond ring on one finger — and insisted he was innocent.
"I sit here in front of you guys, furious at myself, disgusted at myself for making the mistake of adultery," he said. But, he added, "I've been falsely accused of something and I'm innocent."
Bryant faces four years to life in prison or 20 years to life on probation and a fine up to $750,000 if convicted. Despite that, Bryant has shown startling athletic grace while under legal pressure.
Some of his best performances of the season were in games on hearing dates, and he led the Lakers in scoring and assists in 2003-04. After testing the free-agent market, he also signed a seven-year, $136.4 million contract with the team he joined in 1996. If he's convicted and sent to prison, that will be a wash.
The intense media coverage has made life difficult for the judge and attorneys. Court filings have been sealed by the hundreds, and days of hearings have been held behind closed doors.
Early on, an Eagle County judge had a neighboring county's investigators look into allegations that people connected to the defense, the sheriff's office or the prosecution were leaking secret information to reporters. No leaks were found, but unproven allegations harmful to both Bryant and the accuser often found their way into news reports.
Courthouse blunders, including the accidental Web posting of the accuser's name and the inadvertent e-mailing to some reporters of a transcript of a closed-door hearing in June, helped feed speculation that prosecutors were preparing to drop the case.
Last month, the judge rejected a request from the prosecution to delay the trial indefinitely, and the Colorado Supreme Court refused to review a ruling allowing Bryant's attorneys to introduce limited evidence about the accuser's sexual conduct.
"You seldom see this. The prosecution is crying, `It's the judge, it's the clerk, it's the media, it's the defense,'" said Larry Pozner, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "This isn't particularly about getting out-lawyered. The prosecution ran out of good facts before the defense ran out of good facts."
Bryant's well-budgeted, creative-thinking defense team has questioned virtually everything about the accuser — her mental health, her sexual activities, the money she received from a state fund, whether she should be called "victim" in court.
Some legal experts say the approach has been devastating, putting prosecutors on the defensive and shifting focus away from Bryant.
"After the preliminary hearing, a lot of people wrote the victim's case off," said Norm Early, a former Denver district attorney. "That's unfortunate, since she's never had a chance to testify, didn't choose her prosecutors and had no input into their strategy. This young lady deserves her day in court just as Mr. Bryant deserves his."
Whatever happens at the criminal trial, the woman's court fight against Bryant is probably far from over.
Last month, her attorneys sued Bryant in federal court, seeking monetary damages for what they described as the "public scorn, hatred and ridicule" she has faced since his arrest became public.
And Eagle, the town she came from and the town she has left, will receive more unwanted publicity because of one disputed night between a man and a woman more than a year ago.
"For the most part, it's an aside to what's going on in their daily lives and it might as well be happening on TV," the town's current mayor, Jon Stavney, said last week. "The wheels of justice move slowly, and people recognize that."
Bryant was never on trial;;; Loophole Louies put his victim on trial the first day of court and I havn't watched any of the circus since the begining.
Sheesh, time sure flies when you're cheating on your wife soon after your new daughter arrives in your lives.
I think if anyone should go to jail, it is the prosecutors who have made such a mess of things. I believe that Kobe will walk and the woman will be marked as a slut.
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