By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
October 24, 2003

Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert wants an investigation into his charge that Kobe Bryant defense lawyer Hal Haddon might have improperly leaked information about the athlete's alleged victim.

In a motion filed in the Los Angeles Lakers star's sexual assault case Tuesday - but coming to light only Thursday - Hurlbert said that evidence of the leak surfaced Oct. 11 in a New York Daily News story headlined "Team Kobe's bomb: Proof of other man."

That story quotes retired Eagle District Court Judge William Jones as saying to a reporter, "There was more than one man's semen found in her panties. That's what's behind all of this."

Jones, the story reported, claimed to have learned that information from Haddon.

"I have known him for 40 years," Jones said, according to the newspaper. "He was doing some work for me, and he mentioned it to me. It will come out in due course."

Haddon has released a copy of a letter he sent to Hurlbert on Thursday, in which he said, "I have not seen or spoken to Judge Jones since I last appeared in his court, which was probably some time in the 1980s."

The Daily News story appeared two days after the first day of Bryant's two-part hearing, and four days before its Oct. 15 conclusion, when Haddon's defense team partner, Pamela Mackey, elicited from Eagle County Sheriff's Detective Doug Winters testimony about the semen in the woman's underwear.

On the day the New York paper's story was published, that fact hadn't yet surfaced in courtroom testimony or in any media outlet.

Jones told an investigator for Hurlbert that he hadn't "talked to Haddon in 10 years."

Hurlbert stated in his own motion that he doesn't accept Jones' denial.

Haddon's statement said that if Hurlbert had made contact with him, perhaps the matter might have been resolved without Hurlbert's "scurrilous motion."

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