As world watches, 12 citizens will rule on future of athlete in high-profile case

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
August 26, 2004

Soon, the opinions of only a dozen people will matter.

The curtain is about to rise on one of the most keenly anticipated trials in the state's history: The People of Colorado v. Kobe Bean Bryant.

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The conflicting stories of a multimillionaire world-class athlete and a 20-year-old girl from the small Western Slope town of Eagle will be put before jurors to decide whether he should serve a sentence of four years to life in prison or remain free to earn his $136.4 million salary playing basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Since Bryant was charged with one felony count of sexual assault July 18 last year, lawyers have flooded the Eagle courts with close to 800 pleadings in the case. More than 500 members of the media will cover the trial.

But the men and women who matter most now will appear for the first time Friday as several hundred of the 999 jurors summoned report to the Eagle County Justice Center to be considered for jury service.

Many will try to be excused. Others, motivated by anything ranging from a sense of civic duty to dreams of fame and fortune they might somehow accrue from deciding the fate of a celebrity, might attempt to work their way onto the jury panel.

Court officials hope a jury can be selected in one week, setting the stage for opening statements in Bryant's sexual assault case Sept. 7, the day after Labor Day.

Estimates on the trial's length range from three to four weeks to anybody's guess.

There have been so many surprises since the NBA superstar and a then-19-year-old Eagle woman came together in his room June 30, 2003, at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera that few would bet against several more twists and turns on the final road to justice.

If there is a fault line in the case against Bryant, a pressure point that could send it off the rails into territory that might make its contentious first year look like child's play, that might be the subject of race.

"It's the 500-pound gorilla in the middle of the room," said Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. "People are constantly censoring themselves on this, but the racial politics are extremely important in this trial."

Unsolicited and independently, Denver defense lawyer and legal analyst Scott Robinson chose the same animal, a larger version.

"That's the 800-pound gorilla there, that's always lurking," Robinson said. "In the unlikely event that Bryant is convicted, you're going to have people saying that his race was a factor."

According to the 2000 Census, Eagle County had 142 black people among its population of about 41,000. That's 0.3 percent; a much higher number, about 25 percent, are Hispanic.

The jury selection process, in which jury candidates are questioned individually by the judge and attorneys in a closed-door setting and also in open court, is aimed at weeding out those whose beliefs render them unfit for service. That exercise, known as voir dire (French for "to speak the truth"), is the tool that gives Bryant his best bet for a color-blind justice based on nothing but the facts - the evidence.

Lisa Wayne, a Denver defense attorney who has defended more than 100 sexual assault cases and is black, said race is an issue that confronts her in trials "all the time."

"I tell lawyers that if you don't think race is an issue in a case where you're defending a client of color and the victim is white, then you do yourself a disservice," Wayne said. "You have to talk about it. You have to get it out on the table."

During jury selection, Campos said, juror sentiment about race is "undoubtedly going to be one of the major subjects of focus for the defense. It might be the single most important thing they will focus on."

If a race-neutral jury can be seated the case will be decided on the evidence and by the testimony of the alleged victim and Bryant. That is, presuming Bryant testifies, which may not be a foregone conclusion.

"Every juror wants to hear a defendant, but they don't need to hear the defendant in order to make the decision," said Larry Pozner, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "You don't try them by what people want. You try them by the law.

"And the law says, put the prosecution case under a microscope. And if the jury doesn't trust it, that's the end. There's no need to put Kobe Bryant on, and because his statement is coming in (as evidence), it makes it even less necessary to call him. Good criminal defense lawyers don't wait for their client to establish reasonable doubt. They do it on cross-examination."

Should Bryant testify, the jury will be weighing the words of a man who has lived his life in the spotlight, microphones and cameras jammed in his face more than 250 days a year, against a 20-year-old woman from a small town who has hardly been painted as a picture of stability in pretrial motions. That suggests Bryant might be more comfortable on the stand. But it might not make him the more effective witness.

"One of the primary obstacles the defense has to face is that the girl is a young woman and likely to elicit a lot of sympathy," Craig Skinner, a Denver criminal defense attorney, said.

"I think a lot of people can relate to a young person getting involved in situations which might be compromising, things that they might look back on when they're older."

All the public has heard from Bryant since he was arrested came in his news conference July 18, 2003. That's the day Bryant was charged, when he told a packed news conference, wife Vanessa at his side: "I'm innocent. You know, I sit here in front of you guys, furious at myself, disgusted at myself for making the mistake of adultery."

Dan Recht, past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, said, "He certainly came off very credibly and seemed sincere and honest in that brief statement. So my guess is he will be a good witness for himself, and my guess is that he will testify, and that the jury will tend to believe him.

"However, that may well be true of the alleged victim, as well, and then the jury has a difficult job."

As for the evidence, a wealth of it is already on the table in the court of public opinion, and most agree it's weighted in favor of the defense.

"Any prosecution that starts with, 'In the defendant's hotel room . . . ' starts out on a downhill course and only gets worse," said Robinson, alluding to the fact that the alleged victim accepted an invitation to be in Bryant's suite the night both their lives were turned upside down.

"We are used to very one-sided cases, cases full of prosecution facts, and the defense has comparatively little. This case is reversed," Pozner said. "Yes, the prosecution has facts, but one has to say not many, not very strong, and all rebutted by very powerful defense witnesses - including, most bizarrely, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation testifying as a defense witness. You can go the rest of your career and not see that.

"What the prosecution really needs, it lacks," Pozner said. "It lacks the smoking gun."

Picking jurors

• What is the legal term for jury selection? It's called voir dire, which is a French term meaning "to speak the truth." Citizens who are summoned will fill out questionnaires written by defense attorneys and prosecutors and then may be questioned in open or closed court on specific issues.

• How big is the jury pool? 999 summons went out to Eagle County residents in mid-July.

• How many seats are in the courtroom? There are 25 seats for press, 25 for the public. But all seats will be used for jurors during voir dire.

brennanc@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2742

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