Attorney: Race possible
motive in Kobe accusation

EAGLE, Colo. - Kobe Bryant’s attorneys suggested in open court Friday that the Los Angeles Lakers star may have been falsely accused of rape because he is black.

The comment from attorney Pamela Mackey came during a legal squabble over the notes of a rape crisis center worker who sat in on a police interview with Bryant’s 19-year-old accuser. The defense wants access to the notes, a request opposed by the crisis center.

Bryant, who completed Friday's hearing at about 5:20 p.m. MST, will be back in court on Feb. 2 and 3 for more pre-trial hearings.

Inga Causey, attorney for the Resource Center of Eagle County, said releasing more details about Bryant’s accuser would lead to fewer women reporting rapes. She said rape reports dropped in Florida after William Kennedy Smith was acquitted, a case in which his accuser’s medical background was targeted by defense attorneys.

At that point, Mackey urged the judge to focus on the Bryant case and avoid the “political agenda of the rape crisis center.”

“There is lots of history about black men being falsely accused of this crime by white women,” Mackey said. “I don’t think we want to get dragged down into this history any more than we want to get into the history brought up by the rape crisis center.”

Until now, defense attorneys had said only that the woman had a “scheme” to falsely accuse Bryant in hopes of winning attention from an ex-boyfriend.

The defense has previously accused the sheriff’s office of bias and labeled as racist T-shirts mocking Bryant that were purchased by someone in the district attorney’s office.

Mackey did not discuss the race issue further. Judge Terry Ruckriegle said he would decide later whether to hold a full hearing on turning the notes over to the defense.

Also Friday, an Iowa man pleaded guilty to leaving a profanity-laced death threat on the accuser’s answering machine last July. John Roche, 22, to making a threatening telephone call across state lines. He faces a sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine at sentencing June 4.

Bryant, 25, faces four years to life in prison or 20 years to life on probation if convicted of felony sexual assault. He has said he had consensual sex with the employee of a mountain resort where he was a guest last June.

Denver attorney Craig Silverman, a former prosecutor, said it was inevitable that race would become a point of argument in the case.

The defense “will give the jury a smorgasbord of reasons why the rape allegation was false,” Silverman said. “They’re giving jurors a hook to hang their reasonable-doubt hat on.”

The defense dropped other bombshells at pretrial hearings. Mackey drew a warning from the bench for repeatedly mentioning the accuser’s name in open court, and she has said the woman may have had sex with multiple partners before and even after her encounter with Bryant.

The top issue at Friday’s hearing was expected to be whether the accuser surrendered her medical privacy rights by discussing her medical history with others, including her mother and police. The defense has suggested the woman took anti-psychotic medication and twice tried to commit suicide in the months before her encounter with Bryant.

The medical privacy arguments, however, will be held behind closed doors: Ruckriegle ruled the evidence is too sensitive and potentially humiliating to the accuser.

The defense must win this fight to be able to present the woman’s medical history at trial, either through information from her records or through testimony of friends and relatives.

A Feb. 2-3 hearing will determine whether the medical history is relevant and should be admitted at trial.

Click for related content Bryant might return for Lakers on Saturday

For the first time, the Los Angeles Lakers guard entered through a side door of the courthouse. Bodyguards for Bryant met recently with authorities to discuss security in the high-profile case.

Eagle County sheriffs officials said they were varying Bryant's arrival and departure times and that the media will no longer receive notice as to which part of the courthouse Bryant would enter. Sheriffs officials declined to state if the steps were being taken in response to any threats that Bryant has received.

The Los Angeles Times cited a source close to Bryant as saying two weeks ago that "recent and credible" threats had been made, and that the star's security unit had asked the sheriffs for changes to be made in and around the courthouse. The source said that the star's security team was concerned that the arrival and departure of Bryant and his attorneys had become too predictable.