http://www.nydailynews.com/front/st...8p-206105c.html
This is an outrage. How could any ethical person continue to try to put a man in prison for life, knowing the accuser admitted to lying about such an important detail as being forced to wash her face?
Something got messed up with the first link. This should work:
Really?
While the incident (or lack) would provide the defense an opportunity to challenge her testimony, the three details about which she admits lying do not overturn the other testimony (such as that of the bellman who appears to have been the first to see her after she left Bryant’s room and trhe recollections her mother provided of their first conversation).
I do not know what really happened that night, but this rant seems a bit odd: Why should the police simply drop the case based on a couple of nearly irrelevant discrepancies? I suspect that nearly every case is filled with discrepancies, since few people have perfect recall or wander around video-taping their entire lives.
It was a largely he said/she said case. And she wrote in her letter that she lied about being forced to wash her face. From the ESPN article:
You point to the testimony of other people she told her story to as evidence. But if she lied to the police about this, how can we trust that she did not lie to the others as well?
Perhaps you consider this an insignificat lie? Saying someone forced you to do something is not a simple “mix up”.
Lying about washing her face does not seem to have the same effect on her testimony as a claim that she was forced to use a bidet.
I have no problems with people taking sides on the Bryant case; I simply found your utter outrage that the police could have the audacity to continue the case, despite knowing that she chose to wash her face, herself, and that she had overslept before work, to be a bit of an overreaction.
YMMV, obviously.
I think you are missing the date of her confession letter. It is July 31, 2004, after much of the preliminary hearing was over. (This should remind you that I am outraged at the prosecution, not the police who were no longer the main players, for continuing the prosecution. )
According to the New York Daily News article:
I do not think a mirror by the elevator would have any water, like a bathroom sink does. And there is likely a significant difference in terms of the amount of makeup or whatever else was supposedly on her face that you would expect from a water washing versus a hallway touch up. In that sense, the lie is relevant.
And the above quote gives her motive for lying. How can you argue it is insignificant if she says she did it because she thought it would make her story more believable?
You’re not thinking this through, launchpad. What Tom~ said was absolutely correct. These details in no way detract from the core of her accusation. There is a case to be made that the case should have been dropped long before it was, but not because of that.
By the way, I am not arguing anything based on her lie about why she was late to work. Although I agree that lying to the police should be a crime (as it is), I think there is a big difference between that and lying about being forced to wash your face. It makes Bryant look worse, and it distorts intepretation of physical evidence. (Because a hallway mirror and a bathroom sink will allow you to clean up your face in differing ways.)
This Year’s Model - her accusation was most of the prosecution’s evidence. If she admits to lying about being forced to wash her face to have a more believable story, how can you call any of her story evidence?
Because there was physical evidence that something happened. Absent clear and convincing evidence that she was making the incident up out of whole cloth, the case should have been pursued. Minor inconsistentcies are not clear and convincing. The real inconsistencies did not begin to arise until much later.
And it is clear that something did happen. I believe that both of them are telling the truth as they see it.
What then were the real inconsistencies in your mind, and when did they arise?
I’ll try to guess what you are refering to. Is it the same evidence that caused the prosecution to reportedly say:
“If in fact you were to rule that all of the rape-shield evidence were going to come in in this case, I’m thinking the prosecution is going to sit down and re-evaluate the quality of its case and its chances of a successful prosecution”
I got this quote from this article:
http://www.allstarz.org/kobe/trialgraphic51.htm
which seems to place the statement in the June 21-22 hearings, which is a little over a month BEFORE the letter.
So if you don’t have the timeline mixed up (in which case I think we agree), what is this other evidence of inconsistency?
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that the lie is insignifigent. It’s certainly relavent to her credibility. But saying that is not the same as saying once inconsistencies are found in an alleged victim’s testomony, the case should, of course be dropped.
I don’t find it hard to imagine (this is in the hypothetical now) a woman raped by a rich and powerful man, not particularly used to dealing with autority figures (like the police) making the mistake of lying to reinforce a story she worries will not be believed. She might make that mistake and still have been raped. I would hope the police would not give up the investigation based soley on that.
You are, of course, correct. I do have the timeline mixed up. Doesn’t invalidate my argument though! (Too much.) 
I was lazy in my initial post, and did not make sure to point out the date of the letter. At that point, the defense had pretty much decimated the prosecution’s case, and it seemed to me that the prosecution was relying almost entirely on her testimony and what she told her friends and family as evidence. This letter was not publicly released until very recently (I think it was last Friday). Knowing that the prosecution knew this, while they continued to appeal to the state supreme court to have the physical evidence from the defense supressed, indicated to me that they are highly unethical. I don’t think “highly unethical” is a strong enough term for what I think of them.