The Denver Postjim spencer
Time to shut down Bryant case
Wednesday, August 04, 2004 -
The rape case against Kobe Bryant has been gut shot and bleeding slowly to death for months.
It began to hemorrhage Monday with the release of transcripts of a hearing that suggest Bryant's accuser had intercourse with someone else shortly after her alleged sexual assault. The same scientific evidence will go before a jury if the case goes to trial. "The prosecution team still feels this should move forward," prosecution spokeswoman Krista Flannigan said Tuesday. "As far as the transcripts, that's a defense witness. There are other things the jury will hear, too." Unless the jury hears a sex partner and forensic experts refute the transcripts, this publicly funded, X-rated peep show should be shut down and the people involved left to work it out on their own dime in civil court. Rape counselors insist that it's still important to take Bryant to trial. "Fifteen out of 16 rapes go unreported," said Sheri Vanino, the director of victim services for Denver's Rape Assistance and Awareness Program. "If you drop charges, people think they can get away with it." If you go to court with a guaranteed loser, the acquitted can proclaim he did nothing wrong. A criminal jury will be hard pressed to unanimously convict Bryant amid all the questions. That doesn't mean Bryant's accuser wasn't raped. It means the pro basketball star's upcoming trial will be about rules of evidence more than truth. Since it became public at a preliminary hearing in October 2003, admission of evidence that Bryant's accuser had multiple sex partners in the 72 hours surrounding her alleged assault became the determining factor in this prosecution. Promiscuity is a common result of rape trauma, Vanino said. Victims have sex with lots of people to prove to themselves that nothing bad happened. "It's very common with teenagers," Vanino explained. "It's their way of saying, 'I'm in control."' Bryant's alleged victim was 19. The challenge, Vanino admitted, will be explaining this to a jury. "I hear (the prosecutors) have a very good expert witness," she said. They had better. Bryant's jurors will be told that Bryant's accuser had someone else's semen on her body and in the panties that she wore to the hospital for a rape exam. Jurors will be told to consider this so-called "Mr. X" only in relation to injuries he might have caused. But as former Denver County Judge Jacqueline St. Joan noted: "Instructing a jury to consider evidence for one purpose and not another may be a legal fiction." "We're at a point of still trying the victim," said Cynthia Stone of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault. That's going to get worse with the release of the transcripts and Judge Terry Ruckriegle's ruling that much of the content can be used at trial. The Bryant case has reached a tipping point. To convict the defendant, jurors must not only accept a nuanced definition of sexual assault, they must buy a weird theory of the victim's innocence. In the hearing testimony released Monday, the prosecution argued that the panties the alleged victim wore to the hospital were already soiled from a sexual encounter that occurred before Bryant forced the woman to have sex. For 10 months, District Attorney Mark Hurlbert's team has promised that new facts will shore up the Bryant case. If this is the prosecutor's idea of a smoking gun, he's shooting blanks. NBA coaches and fans don't even bother to mention Bryant's legal troubles these days. Check out www.lakers.com The jock sniffers are gearing up for Kobe's first game in L.A. against Shaq's new team, not a trial in Colorado. That's a pathetic commentary on the priorities of popular culture. But it ought to signal something to those determined to let this lurid case linger painfully to its inevitable demise. Reasonable doubt is the province of the defense, not the prosecution. |