The Denver Post
DA: Bryant accuser abandoned the case after jury-form leak
Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - The following is a longer version of a story published Wednesday in The Denver Post.
Two days before the sexual assault case against basketball star Kobe Bryant was dismissed, the accuser called Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert and said she couldn't go forward.
The reason: the leak of her parents' name and home address on the jury questionnaire handed to residents called for jury service. "She called me and said, 'Mark, I can't go forward.' I tried to convince her to go forward," Hurlbert told the City Club of Denver on Tuesday. Two days later, she called back and said she hadn't changed her mind. Hurlbert said dismissing the case was painful. But he also said the prosecution had made mistakes. "There is no way to try a case like this and try it perfectly," the district attorney said. "And we certainly made several along the way." One was not sitting down with the accuser after she filed a civil lawsuit against Bryant on Aug. 10 in federal district court in Denver, Hurlbert said. "After the civil case was filed, I did talk to her and did ask her whether she wanted to go forward," Hurlbert said.
"I probably should have sat down with her face-to-face and said, 'Here's the deal, now or never.' "I did not do that. That was one of the mistakes I made. The result might not have been any different. But there would not have been 700 Eagle County people that came in."
Click here for a timeline of the People v. Bryant case.
Click here for the official court website with officials court orders, filings and documents in the case.
Click here to see a copy of the felony charges against Bryant in the PDF format. The charges were dropped Sept. 1.
Click here for the questions that were asked asked of potential jurors in the case.
Click here for an interactive presentation on Bryant's career.
Hurlbert said that after the accuser decided to withdraw from the case, prosecutors tried to figure out whether they could go forward but realized that without her, they could not prevail. Hurlbert said he was not going to force the woman to testify. Juries, he said, see a witness who doesn't want to be there and asks, "Why should I find guilty if that person doesn't want to be here?" Hurlbert said he had filed the case after consulting with three Denver-area district attorneys, the Colorado attorney general's office and Pete Weir, then executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council. "They not only said, 'Mark you have an ethical obligation,' but they said: 'Mark you have a good case. This is a good sex-assault case.' " Bryant said the encounter was consensual. Hurlbert said that at one point his staff, who had been kept in the dark about the evidence, was discouraged about the case. But he said after he and prosecutor Ingrid Bakke met with the staff and outlined the evidence, their faith in the case was restored. Also Tuesday, transcripts of Bryant's conversations with detectives were released. He said not only was the sex consensual, the accuser started it by kissing him and later fondled him. Bryant claimed that money must be the motive for the woman's allegations. "She has to have a motive to do this," Bryant said. "She must be trying to get money or something." Bryant said he'd be willing to pay because of the precarious position of his marriage and career because of the allegations. Much of the information released already has been leaked to The Vail Daily and reported by several media outlets, including The Denver Post. |