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ttp://www.latimes.com/la-sp-bryantwires6nov06,0,6063701.story?coll=la-home-
headlines
EAGLE, Colo. - Fourteen months after she accused Kobe Bryant of raping her,
a young Colorado woman sat on the witness stand testifying about the
encounter, answering probing personal questions and trying to explain
sketchy details. But the scene did not play out in this tiny mountain
community, where the national media already were gathering to cover the
trial.
Instead, it occurred in secret, two hours away at the Jefferson County
Courthouse in the Denver suburb of Golden, where prosecutors staged a mock
trial two days before jury selection was to begin. They wanted to gauge how
their chief witness would hold up under hostile cross-examination.
The answer: Disastrously.
For more than three hours, a lawyer playing the role of Bryant defense
attorney Pamela Mackey pounded away at the accuser and the account she had
given police. The lawyer pointed out that in her police statement the woman
said she had kissed Bryant consensually for five minutes before the alleged
assault.
"All right, let's start now," the lawyer said, looking at his watch.
For the next 60 seconds the courtroom was silent.
"You're still kissing him," the lawyer broke in, continuing to look at his
watch. "You kissed him for four more minutes." "That's too long," she
responded. "We didn't kiss that long."
The lawyer pounced: "Well, you said five minutes."
The woman crumbled, and seven days later so did the criminal case against
Bryant, superstar guard of the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the nation's
wealthiest and most celebrated sports figures.
The rehearsal left the woman shaken and leery of taking the stand in an
actual trial, proving to be perhaps the most significant event in the case's
complex final stages.
"She was literally cut open," said Ingrid Bakke, a prosecutor who was
present. "The mock exam was a big turning point for her. There were a lot of
issues that went into her decision to withdraw. One of them was that she los
t some faith in the prosecution."
The 20-year-old accuser had wavered for months about testifying, overwhelmed
by death threats, media scrutiny and repeated court gaffes that revealed her
name and explosive sealed testimony.
As her family shifted from a shielding posture to a more aggressive one, she
became the subject of a tug of war between her private attorneys, who wanted
her out of the criminal case, and prosecutors, who pushed to proceed with a
trial even as two of them had quit talking to each other.
Cementing the woman's decision to withdraw was an apology from Bryant -
direct, public and painstakingly fashioned in talks so secret that some
members of the prosecution and defense were unaware of them. At no time was
there a discussion of money, according to sources involved with both the
accuser and the defense. The woman has filed a civil lawsuit against Bryant.
In reporting on the collapse of the People vs. Kobe Bean Bryant, the Los
Angeles Times conducted dozens of interviews with lawyers and others
associated with the accuser and the prosecution. Defense lawyer Mackey said
neither she nor anyone at her law firm would comment for this article,
citing ethical obligations; defense sources who spoke did so on the
condition of anonymity. Through their representatives, Bryant and the
accuser declined to be interviewed.
Several sources said the Aug. 25 mock court proceeding was devastating not
only because it left the accuser determined to pull out, but also because it
brought to the surface the battle for her trust and the feud between
prosecutors.
After the woman stepped down from the witness stand that day in Golden, lead
prosecutor Dana Easter suggested that the defense be notified in writing
that she had changed her story about how long she had kissed Bryant. Less
than a month earlier, the woman had written a letter admitting she had been
dishonest with investigators about two other details.
Bakke openly disagreed, and Lin Wood, an attorney for the accuser, sided
with Bakke.
"If you file one more letter saying she's changing her story, you'll destroy
her as a witness before she ever has a chance to take the stand," Wood said
angrily.
Suddenly, a fire alarm rang out, forcing everyone to evacuate the
courthouse. Wood said he wanted to talk privately with his bewildered
client. But in the chaos, Easter whisked her into a vehicle and drove away.
Furious with Easter, Wood cornered Bakke outside and said: "She's your
witness, but she's my client. I control her." Wood had wanted the accuser to
withdraw from the time he had joined her legal team in early July.
"I had visions of Kobe Bryant coming out of court waving the victory sign
and saying, 'One down, one to go,'." Wood said, referring to the criminal
and civil cases. "And this girl would walk away remembered as the young girl
who falsely accused Kobe Bryant."
Her other lawyer, former Eagle County prosecutor John Clune, had maintained
that she should testify - until the mock exam convinced him otherwise.
"The three of us knew the plug had to be pulled," Wood said. "The question
was, can we get there?"
The rape allegedly occurred June 30, 2003, in Bryant's room at the Lodge &
Spa at Cordillera, where the accuser worked at the front desk and the Laker
star stayed while having knee surgery nearby.
Shortly afterward, the accuser's parents hired Clune to guide her through
the legal system and protect her privacy. A year earlier, Clune was chief
deputy in the Eagle County district attorney's office, where he had
prosecuted more than 50 acquaintance rape cases during a six-year career.
Clune said at one point the woman received hundreds of e-mails daily, some
containing death threats, others from men asking for dates. The FBI became
involved and three men were arrested in separate incidents, two of them
going to prison for their threats.
"Thousands of people were trying to contact this girl," Clune said. "Men
were threatening to kill and assault her. Tabloids were tracking her every
move."
Clune shut down her e-mail account and cellphone and helped her relocate. In
the first 11 months after Bryant's arrest, she lived in five states,
sometimes moving several times within a state. Even prosecutors weren't
allowed to contact her without going through Clune.
Her anonymity was further compromised because of mistakes by court
personnel, who inadvertently posted her name on a court website three times.
In the most consequential blunder, a court reporter e-mailed transcripts
from a closed hearing in late June dealing with DNA evidence to seven news
organizations, including The Times. Judge Terry Ruckriegle tried to keep the
material from being published, but the news organizations appealed to the
U.S. Supreme Court and Clune realized it was only a matter of time.
Clune had spoken periodically with Wood throughout the case, but Wood's
confrontational style and penchant for generating headlines cut against the
family's wish to remain invisible. When the sealed transcripts were
released, the accuser's parents reached a breaking point.
Clune made a phone call that would change the course of the case, contacting
Wood at a vacation spot in Florida. "The family has had enough and they're
ready to fight back," Clune told him.
Wood gained national acclaim by securing large
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