Alleged new investigation seeks to overturn Mike Tyson rape conviction based on juror testimonies and claims of victim credibility

4.2.12 WC: 191694 the transcript. After agreeing to do the appeal, I decided to start from scratch with a new investigation. My goal was to secure a new trial for the ex heavyweight champ. I assembled a superb team, which included my brother Nathan, my son Jamin, who had just completed a two year stint with the New York Legal Aid Society following his graduation from Yale Law School and a clerkship with the Chief Judge of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts. It also included my co-clerk for Justice Goldberg, who was a leading Indiana lawyer. On the basis of our investigation and the new evidence we uncovered, I was convinced that Mike Tyson did not intend to rape Desiree Washington, and that he got a bum rap. Several of the jurors agreed with me after learning of some of the new evidence. One of them said: "We [the jurors] felt that a man raped a woman... In hindsight, it [now] looks like a woman raped a man." Another juror told the media that Desiree Washington, the pageant contestant who accused Tyson of raping her, "has committed a crime." In order to understand why these jurors had such dramatic second thoughts about their verdict, we must go back to the trial itself and see how Desiree Washington, the alleged victim, was portrayed to the jury. During the trial she did not even allow her name or face to be revealed. She was presented as a shy, young, inexperienced, religious schoolgirl, who wanted nothing more than to put this whole unpleasant tragedy behind her. Her family said they had hired a lawyer for the express purpose of helping to "ward off the media," because she did not want any publicity. She said she had no plans to sue Tyson and she had certainly not hired a lawyer for that purpose. When she and her family were asked whether they had a "contingency" fee agreement with any lawyer -- the kind of agreement traditionally made with lawyers who are contemplating a money suit for damages -- they all claimed not even to know what that term meant. When Desiree's mother was asked whether there had ever been any "discussions" with lawyers about fees, she said no, and she swore under oath that there were no "written documents relating to the relationship between you and [the lawyer who was supposed to ward off the media]." Thus, as one of the jurors later put it: "When she [Washington] said she wasn't looking to get any money," I believed her and "thought then that we made the right decision." Another juror agreed, saying that at the trial, "she was very, very credible," because she had no motive to lie, since she was not intending to collect any money, or to benefit in any way from Tyson's conviction. Desiree Washington also pretended -- with the complicity of the prosecutor -- that she was an inexperienced virgin before she met Tyson. She testified that she was "a good Christian girl," and the prosecutor told the jury that she expected to go home after her date with Tyson "the same girl" that she was before her date, namely a virgin. She was an "innocent, almost naive" girl, according to the prosecutor. She knew 234 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017321