LOS ANGELES (CN) - An attorney representing pro basketball player Derrick Rose in a civil rape case rebuked his accuser's attorneys on Tuesday for tapping into "racial stereotypes" and filing a meritless lawsuit.
Attorney Mark Baute's no-holds-barred closing argument capped the end of a two-week long trial in which jurors sat through hours of lurid testimony. Baute told the six women and two men of the jury that the 30-year-old Californian accuser's claims are baseless, calling her one of "the biggest liars you will ever see" who had filed to win a big money settlement from Rose.
Baute also reserved plenty of scorn for her lawyers, referring to them as "greedy" and accusing them of tapping into "racial stereotypes" of young black men in their claims that Rose and his friends broke into the woman's Los Angeles apartment and raped her.
"These guys are so far from trespassers and rapists it's almost comical," Baute said, describing Rose and his two friends — co-defendants Ryan Allen and Randy Hampton — as "bumbling" individuals who had gone to the apartment for a night of consensual sex.
But Rose's former girlfriend, whose name has been revealed during the trial despite her requests for anonymity, tells a different story. She says Rose, Allen and Hampton sexually assaulted her during the early hours of Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013, after driving across town from Rose's rented Beverly Hills mansion.
She claims that the assault occurred after she visited Rose's residence the night before. In a cab on the way there, the Latina woman said she drank vodka and red wine and had shots of Tequila later that evening. She also claimed she was drugged that night.
Though she detailed the rape in her lawsuit, her civil claims were for sexual battery and trespass. She sought $21.5 million in damages, but her attorney, Waukeen McCoy, did not specify a damages amount on Tuesday. He said he would leave it up to the jurors to decide.
During his closing argument, McCoy urged the jurors to deliver a verdict in his client's favor, arguing that the evidence showed she was too incapacitated to give her consent.
The attorney pointed to multiple contradictions in the three men's testimonies and asked jurors why three men who said they we sober the night of the incident came up with starkly different accounts.
"Because none of them are true," McCoy said.
The attorney also took aim at Rose's team for painting his client as a sexually aggressive instigator who had texted Rose the day before the incident to let him know she had bought a "sex belt."
"It's an attempt to slut shame the plaintiff, which generally happens in these cases," McCoy said.
Rose and his friends have strongly denied the sex assault claims. All three men have taken the stand during the two-week trial to testify that the sex was consensual, claiming that the woman greeted them after they arrived at her apartment complex in Los Angeles.
According to the men, the encounter at the apartment capped a sex-fueled night during which the plaintiff had jumped in a swimming pool and had sex with Hampton on a cabana bed, had performed oral sex on Rose and had had sex with Allen in his room.
While McCoy left a damages amount to the jury, Baute was more forthright. He urged the jurors to answer "no" to each question on the verdict form, cautioning them that one "yes" answer could put Rose's lucrative contracts with the Knicks and Adidas at risk.
Even a $20 judgment would be "a disaster for Derrick," Baute said.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald sent the jury home after closing arguments. Deliberations will begin Wednesday morning.
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