The Denver Post
Bryant attorneys challenge state's rape-shield law
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 -
Kobe Bryant's lawyers, challenging Colorado's rape-shield law, argued today that defendants accused of rape deserve substantially more protection in trials than the accusers because, by law, citizens accused of committing a crime are presumed innocent.
In sexual-assault cases, the history of both the defendant and the alleged victim lie at the heart of the criminal justice prosecution, said lawyer Hal Haddon in a motion filed with District Judge Terry Ruckriegle. But under Colorado's statutory scheme - specifically its rape-shield law - an alleged rape victim's sexual history is overly protected, making it virtually impossible for a defendant to confront the accuser and learn his or her sexual history, he said. Haddon is asking Ruckriegle to declare the rape-shield law unconstitutional. "The law's treatment of the relevance of their respective histories should be equal (to) or, if anything, more protective of the defendant ... (because) it is the defendant, and not the accuser, who faces a tremendous loss of liberty and a lifetime stigma and therefore receives numerous constitutional protections," Haddon said. Ruckriegle has four days of pre-trial motions scheduled in March during which he is expected to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the rape shield law. If he should rule that the law is unconstitutional, prosecutors would immediately appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court. Such a ruling and appeal would delay a trial for at least year.
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Bryant, all-star guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, faces four years to life in prison if convicted of sexual assault. He has admitted he had sex with a 19-year-old hotel employee on the night of June 30 at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera. But he said the encounter was consensual. But the woman claims that what started out as consensual kissing degenerated into a degrading rape. Prosecutors have vigorously defended the state's rape-shield law, saying Colorado courts have consistently upheld the law. A member of the prosecution team, Dana Easter, said the law is an effort to correct a former practice of trial courts that allowed "wide latitude in cross-examining" rape victims about their prior sexual history. One Colorado court said that this now-disfavored practice was based on "little or no analysis" of the "logical connection" between the victim's credibility and her prior sexual conduct, Easter noted in a brief to Ruckriegle. But Haddon said today that Colorado's laws fly in the face of the presumption of innocence. One law states that a sexual assault accuser's other sexual conduct "is presumed to be irrelevant" except under certain circumstances, while another law says that a defendant's other sexual acts are "typically relevant and highly probative," he argued. "The prosecution's argument that no fundamental rights are impacted by this illogical and indefensible double standard is premised on the fiction that these starting points - which are statutory presumptions - make no difference," Haddon said. "But of course they do - otherwise the General Assembly would not have bothered to enact them." |