Woman with another man before rape exam?

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
January 14, 2004

Kobe Bryant's alleged victim may have had sex with another man after she left the Los Angeles Laker star's hotel room but before a rape exam 18 hours later.

Bryant lawyer Pamela Mackey makes that allegation in a legal filing made public Tuesday, in arguing that the young woman's prior and subsequent sexual conduct should be admissible at trial.

The basis for Mackey's allegation stems from the semen and sperm found in the yellow panties which the 19-year-old Eagle woman wore to her July 1 examination at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs.

For the first time, in a legal filing made public Tuesday, Mackey states that those same yellow panties - which aren't what the alleged victim was wearing during her June 30 encounter with Bryant - were clean at the time the woman put them on.

"That the accuser was wearing panties at the time of her examination containing the sperm and semen of an (as yet) unidentified male compellingly suggests an intervening sexual event," Mackey states in her brief.

The document goes on to state that "the accuser told law enforcement authorities that these panties had been clean when she put them on."

The "reasonable inference from the presence of semen on those yellow panties is that the accuser engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse between her encounter with Mr. Bryant and the physical examination - that is, within less than 18 hours of the exam," Mackey's brief states.

Mackey's legal filing does not suggest whose sperm and semen were in the yellow underwear. However, at Bryant's preliminary hearing, Eagle County sheriff's Detective Doug Winters said the woman told him she had sex with someone a day or two before the incident involving Bryant - but that on that occasion, a condom was used.

Also at the October preliminary hearing, Winters testified that a sexual-assault nurse who examined Bryant's alleged victim concluded that pinpoint lacerations and two abrasions found in her vaginal area were consistent with forced penetration.

But the new filing from Mackey contends those injuries are also consistent with multiple consensual acts in the 72 hours prior to her examination by nurses in Glenwood Springs the afternoon of July 1.

Denver defense attorney Craig Silverman, a former felony prosecutor, said, "If you put all of team-Kobe's pleadings together, one conclusion that might be drawn is that she had sex with Kobe Bryant, and then she ran to her ex" and had intercourse again.

Prosecutors believe Colorado's rape-shield law, written to limit defense lawyers' ability to expose a victim's sexual history at trial, should prevent Bryant's lawyers from introducing such evidence.

Bryant's legal team, in a motion filed Dec. 12, is challenging the constitutionality of the rape-shield law.

In a separate filing by Mackey, also made public Tuesday, the defense lawyer seizes on a remark made Dec. 18 by a friend of the alleged victim, on NBC's Today show, that the alleged victim "has a minor case maybe of being bipolar."

That comment, made by Johnray Strickland - described by NBC as a former boyfriend of the young woman - is used by Mackey to buttress the defense argument that her medical and mental-health history is relevant to the case and should be admissible at trial.

"One of the common symptoms of mania is an increased sexual drive and engaging in sexual indiscretions," which may be lead to "poor judgment and reckless behavior experienced during manic episodes," Bryant's lawyer states.

According to that same defense document, evidence that the Eagle woman might have been in a manic state at the time she was with Bryant is crucial to the defense contention that she willingly had sex with multiple partners in a 72-hour period - including Bryant - and "might be suffering from a delusion" about what transpired June 30 in Bryant's room at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera.

Bryant, free on $25,000 bond, has admitted committing adultery, but said his contact with the Eagle woman was consensual. The next pretrial motions hearing in the case is set for Jan. 23.

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.