Kobe team rips DA over T-shirts



By DAN LUZADDER in Eagle, Colo.
and LEO STANDORA in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

The judge in the Kobe Bryant rape case ordered the prosecutor's office yesterday to turn over the names of staffers who got shirts showing a person hanging and a reference to the accused basketball star.
Bryant's lawyers asked for the information to determine whether the prosecutor's office and the sheriff's department were biased against Bryant.

The T-shirts show a stick figure hanging from a gallows on the front of the shirt. On the back are the words "I'm not a rapist; I'm just a cheater."

Defense attorney Pamela Mackey called the shirts inflammatory and derogatory and said they've been characterized as racist and "evocative of [a Ku Klux] Klan lynching."

Bryant, 25, is charged with attacking a 19-year-old employee at a Colorado resort in June. He has said the two had consensual sex.

At Mackey's request, Judge Terry Ruckriegle ordered the prosecution to turn over the names of 78 people in the prosecutor's office and sheriff's department.

Mackey says the defense wants to find out who got the questionable shirts - or tried to get them.

In an embarrassing admission, Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert said someone in his office ordered the shirts and that he and chief deputy prosecutor Greg Crittenden were each given one by "an unknown source."

Hurlbert said he immediately destroyed his shirt, but Crittenden held on to his until Thursday. Neither wore the shirts, he said.

Even Hurlbert supporters said his office goofed up.

"The shirts may be souvenirs from the Trial of the Century," said former Denver prosecutor Norm Early, "but they're in bad taste and give the defense the kind of ammunition to try to prove bias."

The judge also put off until Jan. 23 testimony on a defense request for access to the alleged rape victim's medical history.

The defense hopes to argue the woman, who recently underwent rehab for drugs or alcohol, had mental problems that could have clouded her perception of what happened in the Colorado hotel room. She also twice tried to commit suicide.