February 6, 2010 in Nation/World

Copperfield, accuser both want trial to go on

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SEATTLE – The decision by federal prosecutors not to charge David Copperfield, and the recent prostitution charges filed against the woman who accused him of rape, have not ended the celebrity magician’s legal challenges, as evidenced by recent acrimonious legal filings.

Hundreds of pages of pleadings filed in the past two weeks by attorneys for Copperfield and Lacey Carroll, the 23-year-old woman who accused him of rape, bristle with accusations of complicity and dirty dealing, and that’s on an issue both sides essentially agree on: that a court-ordered stay on a civil lawsuit filed by Carroll be lifted.

The civil case was stayed while the criminal case was pending.

Carroll has asked U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to issue an order preventing the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI from returning to Copperfield documents and other items seized during searches at his home, warehouse and theater in Las Vegas as part of the now-closed criminal case. She’s also seeking testimony, reports and other documents accumulated during a two-year grand-jury investigation into her claim that Copperfield lured her to his private Caribbean island and then raped her in 2007.

Federal prosecutors informed the judge in the civil case last month that the criminal investigation had concluded without charges.

Copperfield’s attorneys argue that the order is premature and that the return of the property is unrelated to the civil lawsuit.

If Copperfield gets that material back, wrote Carroll’s attorney, Rebecca Roe, then it might be too difficult and expensive to retrieve through the civil discovery process.

“There is cause for concern that if documents and tangible things are returned, they could be relocated to (Copperfield’s) private island residence in the Bahamas,” she wrote.

“More worrisome, a party who regains custody of materials that were seized in 2007 may inappropriately damage or destroy” them, she wrote.

The court filings indicate that Carroll – the first runner-up in the 2010 Miss Washington USA pageant – will vigorously fight misdemeanor charges filed in January in Bellevue, Wash., alleging she went to a hotel room with a Bellevue businessman and then asked him for $2,000 to have sex. When he refused, according to police reports, Carroll went to the lobby and told staff that she may have been molested.

Carroll claimed she was in a blackout up until the time she awoke to find the man on top of her. The man said the woman had met him at a bar, was sexually aggressive and agreed to go to the hotel with him.

The Seattle Times has not identified the 31-year-old man because he is the alleged victim of a crime.

A breath test taken two hours after the incident showed her blood-alcohol level to be 0.14 percent, nearly twice the legal limit for intoxication.

Roe suggests detectives in Bellevue ignored witness statements that supported Carroll’s story, and she referred to a sworn declaration she obtained from Dr. Michael Hlastala, professor emeritus of physiology at the University of Washington, who postulated that Carroll’s blood-alcohol level could have been as high as 0.21 percent at the time of the alleged incident.

Police documents also showed that the detective, Jerry Johnson, called one of Copperfield’s attorneys about the arrest, Roe said. It’s not clear why.

Moreover, Roe raises questions about the 31-year-old man. The accuser, Roe claims, is an “unknown quantity” who began frequenting the restaurant where Carroll worked about the same time she was hired late last year. His “appearance at Ms. Carroll’s workplace may not be coincidence,” she said.

Copperfield’s attorney, Angelo Calfo, has said Carroll’s arrest proves she’s a gold digger and he’s upset that the government won’t admit it.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

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