August 5, 2004

Start with Mr. X. Or start with the yellow panties. Or start with the cervical swabs.

It doesn't matter. You get to the same place.

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Follow them on their tortured journey, via the mistakenly released court transcripts, to your morning newspaper and then all the way to the set Wednesday of Good Morning America.

If you can't find the way, Judge Ruckriegle will point you there.

It was on Good Morning America that the lawyers of the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant case blasted the court for errors "so harmful not only to this case but to this young woman" that the attorneys felt obligated to get themselves on TV as quickly as possible.

But I hope Ruckriegle doesn't take it personally. Is it really his fault if a staffer has an itchy send-button finger?

And, in any case, this was not really about the judge. Or the staffer. Or, for that matter, how you don't always want to turn your e-mail into hot mail.

This was its own version of Court TV.

The judge made a devastating ruling against the prosecution - that the alleged victim's sexual activity in the three days before her hospital examination could be used during the trial. Then comes the release of the Mr. X-rated transcript.

And soon afterward, L. Lin Wood and John Clune - the alleged victim's lawyers, and is there anyone out there who still doesn't know her name? - were on the tube to outline an exit strategy. Or, at minimum, to outline the outline of an exit strategy.

Every lawyer I talked to saw the same likelihood - that the alleged victim would opt out (giving the Eagle County DA a desperately needed way out) and a civil suit would follow.

Why else would a lawyer rush to tell America and that part of America that is the potential jury pool that your client has "obviously got to rethink what she's going to do"?

Go to Dan Recht, past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar who called the TV interview "graceful posturing."

He said: "If the prosecution goes forward, the likelihood is that there will be a not guilty verdict, the whole world will know about it, and the civil case will be tainted by the prior trial."

If this is how our journey ends, it isn't quite farce and it isn't exactly tragedy. It's more like both.

And it isn't quite an ending, of course, either. Clune said so himself.

"This young woman is not going away. Whether it proceeds criminally or civilly or both, justice is going to be had for this young woman," Clune would tell a reporter after the TV interview.

Ah, justice.

Let's go back to the beginning, back when the case broke and all we knew was that there had been an incident that had gone, somehow, wrong. Come to think of it, that's all we know now - Bryant is still very much innocent until proven guilty - except for all the ugly details that have been released about the accuser even without benefit of a trial.

Back then, Cynthia Stone, of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, was saying how difficult it is for women to report a sexual assault and what effect the Bryant case might have. "Victims," she said, "will be afraid to report until our society and our institutions learn to treat them with dignity and to respect their privacy."

Imagine what a victim would think today.

Whatever you can say about this case, you probably won't use the the words dignity, respect or privacy.

I talked to Stone again Wednesday. She said she was unconvinced that the case wouldn't go forward. But she had another concern.

"We support victims in whatever choice they decide to make," Stone said. "What I would hate to see is this young woman, who has been through so much, feel like that she has this extra burden of carrying this torch for all victims. That's way too much to ask of one person."

As I've said before, we don't know what happened that night. But we know what has happened since. And burden is a good word. No one could have been prepared for what followed. No one who hasn't been through this kind of intense glare - meaning, almost everyone - could imagine the scope of it.

We've seen the limitations of the rape-shield law. We already knew - but now know with, let's say, a renewed emphasis - that money and celebrity are a very difficult combination to beat in a courtroom, Martha Stewart notwithstanding.

The burden, then, was on the prosecution to be sure that the case was strong enough to make it worth, well, the weight. If the alleged victim decides that the burden is too great, who could blame her if she walked away?

Mike Littwin's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-5428 or e-mail him at littwinm@rockymountainnews.com.

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