After Closing Arguments, Jury Is Given the Case in Tyson Trial

The jury in the Mike Tyson rape trial started deliberations Monday after prosecutors launched a sarcasm-tinged, slash-and-burn attack on Tyson’s defense team during closing arguments and called the former heavyweight champion “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The eight-man, four-woman jury is being asked to determine if Tyson raped a Rhode Island woman here July 19. If found guilty on three rape-related counts, Tyson faces a sentence between six and 60 years.

Vincent Fuller, who headed Tyson’s $5,000-a-day defense team, portrayed Tyson’s accuser as a spurned woman who sought Tyson’s wealth but wound up with a one-night stand.

Prosecutor Greg Garrison presented final arguments on the 13th day of the trial, sitting on the corner of a table and mocking much of Fuller’s presentation. “What we need to do here now is bring in some fans, blow out all of Mr. Fuller’s smoke, and then bring in some hoses and wash the mud off our shoes,” Garrison said.

Barbara Trathen, who assisted Garrison in the case, spoke for 54 minutes; Fuller for 1 hour 27 minutes and Garrison for 43 minutes. Judge Patricia J. Gifford read her instructions to the jury and they were sent to deliberate at 12:57 p.m., EST.

Most courtroom observers believed that Garrison was effective in his final arguments. In breezy, down-home fashion, he spoke without notes, much of the time half-seated on the corner of the prosecution’s table, arms folded.

“The world’s eyes are on us,” he said. “They’ve got to know if you 12 citizens of Marion County can do a hard thing. And if that’s what you believe what happened, that he raped this young woman, then you must convict him.”

In his cross-examination of Tyson, Garrison had goaded Tyson into saying that early in his career, he had been taught to deceive opponents, to hit them with “punches they never saw.”

Tyson’s claim is that the sex he and his accuser had in the early morning hours of July 19 in his hotel room was consensual. The accuser charges Tyson lured her to his hotel room to “pick up something” and “to meet his bodyguard.”

Garrison chastised Tyson’s attorneys for focusing their defense on the woman’s motives.

“We have seen a dissection and a massacre of the honor of this woman,” he said. “It was character assassination of a woman who teaches Sunday school kids, who is an honor student, who works with retarded children. Really, her only sins in this case are being 18 and using foolish judgment.”

Garrison mocked Fuller’s case, for portraying her as having a “lust for money.” He sarcastically called the woman “this sexual predator, this sexual monster,” again mocking Fuller’s case.

Of Fuller’s implication that the woman’s clothing did not appear heavily damaged, or as if it has been “stripped” from her, as the woman claimed, Garrison called across the courtroom to the accused while holding the garment.

“Hey, (the accuser’s name), next time you try to frame a man for money,” he said, “make sure you rip that thing right in two,” Garrison said.

Fuller appeared disorganized in his closing arguments. He fumbled for exhibits, including one that was never put into evidence. He also named the wrong month the rape occurred on two occasions.

Fuller kept asking the question of why Tyson’s accuser went to his room at 2 a.m., and why she didn’t leave when Tyson made a sexually explicit remark.

He appeared most forceful when he said: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that your intelligence is insulted when you are told that a young woman of this level of sophistication would enter a man’s bedroom at 2 a.m., sit on the bed, and not know what was coming.”

Fuller placed special importance on the fact that the accuser entered Tyson’s bathroom and removed her panty shield. He called it “the single piece of evidence that is most damaging to her own case. I submit to you that she removed her panty shield on the expectation of having sex with Mr. Tyson.”

Moments earlier Fuller couldn’t find a chart of the hotel bedroom he had wanted to show the jury.

“Mr. Fuller, that chart was never entered in evidence,” Gifford told Fuller, who was fumbling through a stack of charts below her.

“Oh, sorry, your honor,” he said.

Fuller also brought up the medical report that was filed 24 hours after the alleged rape.

“She told you this 220-pound man grabbed her and ‘slammed’ her on the bed,” Fuller said. “She weighs 105 pounds. Mr. Tyson is a former heavyweight champion of the world. Yet the physician found not one single bruise!”

Fuller said the woman was hurt and embarrassed over what turned out to be a one-night stand, after the boxer refused to escort her downstairs to his limousine.

In closing, Fuller told the jury: “It will be in your hands shortly, and I shall not speak to you again. I ask you to return a verdict of not guilty.”

A decision could come as soon as today.