Stage Set for Tyson’s Most Crucial Test : Jurisprudence: Jury selection will begin Monday for rape trial of former heavyweight champion.

The stark, linoleum-floored courtroom is across the street from a better-known venue, Market Square Arena. It was there that a teen-aged Michael Gerard Tyson suffered one of the few losses of his career, at the 1982 national amateur championships.

This time, a defeat for Tyson would mean far more--even more than missing a $15-million payday for not fighting heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield. It could mean 63 years in prison.

Tyson is charged with raping a 5-foot, 95-pound Rhode Island woman. Jury selection will begin Monday morning, a process Marion County Superior Court Judge Patricia J. Gifford said Friday would take two days. That in itself came as a surprise to most courthouse observers, some of whom had estimated that selection would take a week to 10 days. And Gifford said the trial itself, which she wants to begin Wednesday, would last two weeks, including Saturday sessions. Others had predicted three weeks.

The former heavyweight champion, 25, faces four counts of rape, digital sex, oral sex and confinement. The indictments were handed up Sept. 9, six weeks after the woman told police Tyson raped her in the early morning of July 19 in Room 606 of the Canterbury Hotel in Indianapolis.

While a special grand jury last summer considered the rape allegation, Tyson, two aides and four women were buying $40,000 worth of jewelry in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. “I’m very confident,” he said. “Anybody with any common sense would know I’m innocent.”

Days later, he was indicted.

The woman, who attends a prominent New England college, was an entrant in the Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis last July, to which Tyson had been invited. Before Tyson’s alleged attack on the woman, several other women in the pageant charged they were abused by Tyson.

One, 1990 Miss Black America Rosie Jones, filed a $100-million suit against Tyson, alleging Tyson fondled her buttocks. Also, J. Morris Anderson, founder of the Indiana Black Expo, sued the fighter, calling him a “serial buttocks fondler” and accusing him of uttering obscene language to pageant contestants.

The focal point of the case, it is believed, will come when the woman accusing Tyson of rape takes the stand to explain what she was doing in a hotel room at 2 a.m., alone with Tyson.

The woman is said to be a college freshman, a member of the National Junior Honorary Society, a Sunday School teacher, a K-mart employee and is active in team sports.

Another key figure expected to testify is Virginia Foster, a chauffeur hired by Tyson to drive him during his 38-hour visit to Indianapolis. Foster is said to have driven the woman from her hotel to Tyson’s hotel and back on the night of the alleged rape.

Some are predicting Tyson will not testify. When

he testified on his behalf before the special grand jury last summer, he did nothing to help his case. The grand jury vote for the indictments was 5-1. Had it been 4-2, there would have been no indictment.

The cast of characters continues with a judge who says she has never seen a Tyson fight, or any boxing match.

Gifford, 53, is a tall, soft-spoken woman who once defeated F. Lee Bailey in court when she was an Indiana state prosecutor.

She went up against Bailey when he represented a company accused of running a pyramid financial scheme.

She prosecuted rape cases--and was successful in 48 of 52--for the Indiana Attorney General’s office, until she ran for a judgeship and won, in 1978. When she was a prosecuting attorney, Vice President Dan Quayle was once one of her law clerks.

Gifford, who lists membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution on her resume, says she opposes the presence of TV cameras in courtrooms, but there will be cameras at this trial. But the feed will go only to four TV sets in an overflow media viewing room in the courthouse basement, two floors beneath the courtroom.

“I feel when people in a courtroom know cameras are on them, they behave differently,” she said Friday. “Lawyers have a tendency to ham things up anyway, and with cameras it gives them an even bigger chance.”

Tyson’s lead attorney is Vincent J. Fuller, 60, senior partner of the powerful Washington, D.C., firm of Williams & Connolly. Fuller defended Tyson’s promoter, Don King, in a 1985 income tax evasion case and won an acquittal.

But Fuller is even more famous for persuading a jury in 1982 that would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Fuller’s courtroom style is described as loud, combative and aggressive. He is expected to be at full volume when he questions Tyson’s accuser.

Fuller will be assisted by Jim Voyles, called by some Indiana’s Marvin Mitchelson. Voyles once successfully defended an Indiana State University professor accused of being an accomplice in the mutilation murder of a student.

Heading up the prosecution’s case against Tyson is Marion County prosecutor Jeffrey Modisett, who has hired Greg Garrison, another well-known Indiana lawyer, to try the case along with staff attorney David Dreyer. In addition, five deputy prosecutors are assisting Garrison and Dreyer.

In pretrial motions this week, the prosecution lost what some saw as an important point. Dreyer and Garrison wanted to call University of South Carolina rape trauma expert Dean Kilpatrick, presumably to explain why Tyson’s accuser waited 24 hours before reporting the case to police.

Gifford turned them down because their request came after a Nov. 15 listing of witnesses to be called.

Gifford also turned down a motion by Fuller and Voyles to expand the pool of jurors’ names beyond the normal voter registration lists. They complained that Marion County’s minority population is only 22%. Voyles cited a 17-day period in 1990 when only 12% of jurors serving in Marion County were minorities.

Tyson’s 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law would be violated by a jury with too few minorities, Voyles said. Gifford turned him down.

Tyson and King seemed to be drumming up support in Indianapolis during the holidays, when they gave away 2,000 turkeys as part of a local feed-the-hungry program.

Garrison questioned the authenticity of their charity.

“Isn’t it a striking coincidence that Tyson would give away turkeys in Indianapolis just 30 days before the trial?” Garrison said.

Neither Tyson nor his accuser have granted interviews about the case.