By Jason Riley, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal
After Karen Sypher's defense rested without calling a single witness, a federal jury of six men and six women deliberated for about 90 minutes Wednesday before deciding to stop for the afternoon and resume Thursday morning.
The sensational case involving allegations of extortion and extramarital sex was given to the jury shortly after 3 p.m. following closing arguments in which a federal prosecutor called Sypher's threats against University of Louisville coach Rick Pitino "a pure shakedown," and Sypher's lawyer claimed it was her ex-husband who was behind the scheme.
The jury will return to U.S. District Court in Louisville at 9:30 a.m. to resume deliberations on the six counts against Sypher, 50, who is accused of threatening Pitino with the intent of extorting money and gifts, lying to the FBI and retaliating against Pitino for reporting the alleged extortion attempts.
Speaking for one hour on the eighth day of Sypher's trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa Ford told the jury that "this is a case about a defendant who was looking for a golden parachute" and "looking for something for nothing."
"She had information that was embarrassing to him, and she was shaking him down," Ford said.
But Sypher's lawyer, James Earhart, suggested for the first time during the trial that Tim Sypher, Pitino's former equipment manager and the current director of the YUM! Center, was broke and masterminded the scheme to get cars, cash and a house from Pitino.
"Tim Sypher was the one person who stood to gain," Earhart said.
Earhart, who again argued that Pitino raped Sypher twice in 2003, called the Louisville Metro Police Department's review last year of her allegations "the most ridiculous rape investigation I've ever heard of," saying it was designed to protect Pitino and the "multimillion dollar basketball program."
"The rules don't apply to the privileged," Earhart said. "You've seen that in this case."
In a brief rebuttal argument, First Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Kuhn Jr. dismissed Earhart's argument that Tim Sypher was behind the extortion plot as a "bizarre theory" that is "illogical, doesn't fit any of the evidence and is based entirely on speculation."
The government's argument
Ford told the jury there was no dispute that Pitino and Sypher had consensual sex in 2003 and that she later had an abortion.
"You may not condone what Mr. Pitino did," Ford said. "I don't condone it. The man was married.
"But it was not criminal. People make mistakes. They are human beings."
Ford cited Sypher's numerous "inconsistencies, lies and things that are completely implausible," noting for example, that in a conversation with Pitino that Sypher recorded in February 2009 she said she was "four-months pregnant" when she aborted the child she claimed he fathered.
But medical records show she was five weeks pregnant, at most.
"That was a bald-faced lie," Ford said.
Ford also reminded the jury that Sypher told her divorce lawyer, Dana Kolter, that it was "snowy" on the night of the first rape – the last day of July in 2003 — and that she told police she was professionally dressed in a skirt that reached her knees, when several witnesses agreed she was wearing a mini-skirt.
"When you are not telling the truth about something, you can't keep your facts straight," Ford said.
She told the jury that Sypher thought up the extortion scheme because she insisted on living in a "$1 million house in Lake Forest" and her husband at the time, Tim Sypher, couldn't afford it.
Addressing the six counts against Sypher one by one, Ford recalled how Sypher's longtime friend and occasional sex partner, Lester Goetzinger, testified that she "begged and pleaded" with him to leave three threatening messages on Pitino's cellphone and performed oral sex on him the day before the first call.
She recalled how Sypher wrote a list of seven demands for Pitino — promising to protect him for life if he complied with them — and had her husband deliver it across state lines to the coach in West Virginia.
And she recited how Sypher falsely told FBI agents that she didn't know who made the phone calls and that her relationship with Kolter was "strictly business."
"It is a crime to lie to federal agents," Ford said. "The defendant lied."
She also said the lies were "material" to the FBI's investigation — a requirement to obtain a conviction — because the FBI didn't know at the time that Goetzinger made the calls, and it didn't know whether Kolter was representing her strictly in his capacity as a lawyer or because she was "exercising undue influence over him" through sex.
Ford described the final charge — that Sypher retaliated against Pitino by accusing him of rape only after she was charged with extortion — as "payback, pure and simple."
"This is not conduct we can condone as a society," Ford said.
She challenged the claim that Sypher had Goetzinger — who also was her sex partner — make the three threatening messages left for Pitino in February 2009, and asserted that the last of the three calls was made by someone else.
Playing the three calls for the jury, Earhart told the jury that "you don't need the FBI's voice-recognition laboratory" to know the third caller was a different person.
He cited no evidence to support the claim, but said Tim Sypher was behind the calls and had "somehow gotten to Goetzinger."
Earhart said Tim Sypher "hunted" Karen down on March 6 and forced her to write a demand note to Pitino listing items that Pitino already had agreed to provide.
"Tim tells her he needs to take the list to West Virginia," Earhart said. "She had no intention of writing that list whatsoever."
And Earhart said Tim Sypher decided on his own to give the note that night to Pitino, on the eve of the final basketball game of the season.
"Tim Sypher is broke," Earhart said. "He thinks there is a way to cash in if Karen gets something and he can preserve their marriage."
The defense lawyer said Tim Sypher's scheme broke down when Karen, "finally fed up," went to Kolter and had him write a letter making "legitimate demands" to Pitino for the alleged rape six years earlier.
The last word
In a brief rebuttal argument, Kuhn reminded the jury that Goetzinger, who received a pretrial diversion after he was charged with aiding and abetting Sypher, exchanged 15 calls with her on the day before the first threatening message was left on Pitino's cellphone.
Kuhn said there was no record of any calls between Tim Sypher and Goetzinger.
Kuhn also noted that Sypher eventually admitted that Goetzinger made the calls, and that she had given him Pitino's private cellphone number.
Kuhn said it was "totally implausible" that Karen would have married Tim Sypher and taken him into her home if her allegations were true — that he ignored her cries for help when she was allegedly raped by Pitino in his condo and threatened to put her and her four sons in "concrete" if she didn't get an abortion.
Finally, Kuhn cited the testimony of another of Sypher's former boyfriends, Tyree Fields, who testified that three days after she was initially charged in April 2009 with extortion and lying to the FBI, Sypher admitted that she had done it and that it was "stupid."
No defense witnesses
The morning began when Earhart surprisingly announced that the defense would rest without calling Sypher or any other witnesses.
In a brief interview later, Earhart said he made that decision because the jury had already heard from Sypher in three hours of video interviews with a television station and police — without having to be examined by the prosecution.
"How could I do better than that?" he asked.
Under the law, the defense is not required to present any evidence because the defendant is presumed innocent and the burden of proof is on the government.
Lawyers who aren't involved in the case say that Earhart might not have wanted to expose Sypher to cross-examination that would delve into inconsistencies in her statements.
Also, federal sentencing guidelines allows a judge who believes a defendant lied on the witness stand to increase the sentence, according to Scott C. Cox, a former federal prosecutor. That could mean an extra year in prison for Sypher, if she's convicted.
"It's better to put on no witnesses than a bad witness," said
Marc Murphy, a defense lawyer who is a former commonwealth's attorney.
However, several of the lawyers said they expected Sypher to testify because she had said she was looking forward to telling her side of the story at trial, and because Earhart had emphatically stated that she was raped.
"I would think that jurors would expect to hear her get up and say that," Cox said.
