Defense team can seek venue change, but it's not saying

By Peggy Lowe And Jeff Kass, Rocky Mountain News
October 21, 2003

EAGLE - Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert was on the courthouse steps just minutes after Kobe Bryant's preliminary hearing concluded last week.

Reassuring reporters that he was confident Bryant would face trial, Hurlbert said he had offered a "sanitized version" at the NBA star's two-day hearing.

"It is not my intent to try this case to the media, but to an Eagle County jury of 12," Hurlbert said.

Will the trial of Kobe Bryant, already saturated with media coverage, stay put in this mountain county?

Bryant's attorneys aren't saying, but they can seek to move the trial for many reasons, hoping to find a jury that would be more open to hearing their celebrity client's defense.

Pollster Paul Talmey has been surveying Eagle County, although he won't disclose his client. Talmey often is used by defense attorneys to question potential jurors in high-profile cases, and he suggests alternate venues.

The DA's office reiterated Monday that it wants the trial to stay in Eagle. Although Eagle County Sheriff Joseph Hoy sees it as tough logistically - the extra work on security, for example - he said residents will not judge Bryant before the trial starts.

"I do think he can get a fair trial here," Hoy said. "Basically, the people of this county are open-minded; they listen to facts."

Judges often are reluctant to move a trial, following the law that says a defendant must be tried in the community where the alleged crime occurred.

Whether Bryant's attorneys should seek a move also is questionable, said Lisa Wayne, a Denver criminal defense attorney.

Wayne represented Sonny Lee, one of six co-defendants in the 1999 gang rape of a University of Colorado student in Boulder.

That case ultimately was moved to Grand Junction, but only after a Boulder judge denied Wayne's early motion to move the trial and after they had questioned 250 potential jurors.

Asking for a change of venue offers no assurances, as the trial judge turns over the choice on the ultimate destination to the clerk of the Colorado Supreme Court, who chooses based on a court's availability, Wayne said.

"It's a crap shoot because there are no guarantees of where you will go," Wayne said. "Talmey may suggest a place, but that's simply a recommendation."

Other legal experts have wondered whether Bryant's attorneys might want to move the trial from Eagle County, given its low minority population - only three-tenths of 1 percent of the 41,660 residents are black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But Wayne said Colorado juries generally are fair on race - if defense attorneys raise the issue early.

"As long as you bring it out in jury selection and you make people cognizant of it, they are very unlikely to bring it back into deliberations," Wayne said.

Carrie Thompson, a Colorado public defender, said a court would be hard-pressed to find any place where the press coverage hasn't been pervasive. Thompson won a change of venue for Nathan Thill, the self-proclaimed white supremacist who was convicted of the 1997 murder of an African immigrant, two years after the initial news reports.

"Sometimes the publicity goes away, but a lot depends on how memorable the case is," Thompson said. "You can't get rid of it 100 percent."

Wayne, who attended last week's hearing in Eagle, argued that Bryant's lawyers might want to keep the trial there.

"I think (residents) are embarrassed about how the prosecution has gone forward at this point," Wayne said. "And my sense is, from conversations I've picked up, a lot of them know her, and that doesn't work for her benefit."

lowep@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5482

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