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August 12, 2004
Good move.
We are so inured to the ridiculous there has been no outcry at the systematic attack on the alleged victim's rights by . . . well, by the court itself. Maybe we've seen so much Judge Judy this is what we expect.
Attacks were to be anticipated from Bryant's high-priced defense team. We got an early taste when Pamela Mackey defied Judge Fife's predecessor - Floyd the barber, I believe it was - by pronouncing the alleged victim's name out loud, in open court, in violation of an agreement not to do so, not once, not twice, but six times.
"This is difficult for me," Mackey explained, and didn't we all sympathize?
"Tsk, tsk," said Floyd the barber.
Of course, high-priced defense attorneys are paid to do whatever is necessary. If there are no consequences in Los Angeles, it's silly to expect any in Mayberry.
Much more disheartening for the alleged victim must have been assaults by the court, which at least twice posted her name on its Web site in violation of its own order and then, unbelievably, e-mailed defense testimony from a closed hearing to seven media organizations.
The media, of course, immediately took up the cause of freedom of the press - in this case, that bedrock constitutional right to plumb the depths of a 19-year-old's panties.
As Rocky media critic Michael Tracey has pointed out, this, too, was to be expected.
While brave photographers, reporters and editors struggle to tell the truth in the face of tyranny and violence around the world, American editors demand the right to publish the intimacies of an alleged rape victim because somebody in Mayberry sent them out by mistake.
Assuming it was a mistake. It cannot be ignored that all these mistakes have hurt the alleged victim and helped Bryant, the multimillionaire celebrity defendant. Is this a coincidence? Just imagine if the situation were reversed, if repeated errors by the court helped the alleged victim and hurt Bryant. Wouldn't that be suspicious?
Consider for a moment if the court had sent out a different transcript. Instead of a defense witness contending the alleged victim had sex with someone other than Bryant before her rape kit, imagine it sent out a transcript of Bryant's interview by Eagle County sheriff's detectives just after midnight July 2, 2003.
I have no idea what's in it because no one has hit that particular "Send" key. I do know the defense did its best to have it excluded, and failed.
And we know from court documents released last month that Bryant cried at some point during the interview. His story is he'd just had consensual sex. Why would that make him cry?
Well, maybe it was the sheer seriousness of the circumstan- ces, the sudden threat the investigation posed to his well-being. That's certainly possible.
But a release of that conversation, depending on what's in it, might have cast a damaging shadow over the jury pool. Now, if the rumors are true that the criminal case will be dropped and the civil case settled for a check, we might never know what he said.
We know all about the alleged victim, though. What's in her panties, her sexual history, her mental history, her medication, and so on.
It makes no more sense to blame Eagle County officials for this than to blame a 6-year-old for wetting the bed. It's not their fault. Eagle is a tiny, charming place that couldn't support a Class A baseball team. Suddenly, it's in the big leagues.
The case should have been titled, Kobe Bryant v. Chihuahua.
Evidently, the alleged victim has come to this realization somewhat late in the day, abandoning Goober and friends for some big-league legal help of her own. Obviously, Lin Wood and John Clune are better prepared to deal with Mackey and Hal Haddon than Eagle County prosecutor Mark Hurlburt is. With any luck at all, Richard Matsch's federal court staff won't be e-mailing titillating testimony to media organizations by mistake.
Our court system is full of grand, egalitarian verbiage on which it cannot deliver. In this case, a small-town courthouse tried to conduct a trial of great public interest on a big stage and it couldn't even get to the beginning.
And, yet, that's the jurisdiction in which the alleged crime took place. Remember all the brave assurances from Eagle County that it could handle it, no problem?
In the end, these guys made Lance Ito look good, and that's hard to do.
As the wheels come off the Kobe Bryant prosecution, his alleged victim seeks refuge in federal court in Denver.
In the recorded annals of American justice, perhaps only Mayberry RFD has surpassed the Eagle County Justice Center in pure competence and efficiency. Who knew Barney Fife moved to Colorado and became a judge?
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