LOST CASE. Hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo with her attorney Kenneth Thompson.(AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)
The coda to one of New York’s most gripping and erratic criminal dramas lasted all of 12 minutes.
A prosecutor spoke first, quickly summarizing what had been obvious for weeks: the Manhattan district attorney’s office had little confidence in its case, and even less trust in the accuser it had initially championed.
A defense lawyer was next, saying simply, “We do not oppose the motion.” Then the judge spoke.
And just like that, the criminal case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn was dismissed, bringing an abrupt end to what had been a three-month episodic investigation, each chapter offering a sensational twist on the underlying storyline: The former International Monetary Fund chief, a man of international power and prestige was accused of sexually assaulting an immigrant hotel housekeeper after she entered his suite to clean it.
The decision to drop the charges in a case that has attracted global attention as a cauldron of sex, violence, power and politics had been widely expected.
Prosecutors on Monday filed court papers saying they could not trust the word of the hotel housekeeper accusing the man who was once a potential French presidential candidate of attempted rape.
“Our inability to believe the complainant beyond a reasonable doubt means, in good faith, that we could not ask a jury to do that,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said in formally recommending the case be dismissed.
Noisy demo
Strauss-Kahn arrived at court in a six-car motorcade and was greeted by protesters wielding signs carrying such messages as “DSK treats women like property” and “Put the rapist on trial—not the victim.”
The shouting could be heard inside the courtroom of Justice Michael J. Obus of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The accused appeared resolute in the courtroom, wearing a dark gray suit, blue shirt and striped tie. He smiled and shook hands with his biographer as his wife, journalist Anne Sinclair, sat nearby. The couple left court without speaking to reporters but issued a statement in English afterward.
“These past two and a half months have been a nightmare for me and my family,” Strauss-Kahn said in the statement.
“I want to thank all the friends in France and in the United States who have believed in my innocence, and to the thousands of people who sent us their support personally and in writing. I am most deeply grateful to my wife and family who have gone through this ordeal with me,” he added.
“We will have nothing further to say about this matter and we look forward to returning to our home and resuming something of a more normal life.”
Later, Strauss-Kahn appeared outside the posh Tribeca town house where he was held under house arrest until July—when prosecutors first publicly admitted they had doubts about the woman’s credibility. He summed up the statement in French and was mobbed by reporters.
Precipitous fall
For the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, the dismissal of the charges against the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn capped a precipitous fall.
Prosecutors initially portrayed Diallo as a credible and powerful witness, but then said that her myriad lies about her past—including a convincing, emotional but ultimately fraudulent account of being gang-raped by soldiers in Guinea—ended up undermining the case.
Diallo, who has made her identity public, has filed a civil suit against Strauss-Kahn for unspecified damages. Her attorneys said they would aggressively litigate the civil case—though they expect it would take two years to go to court.
Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, has been relentless in his assertion that Strauss-Kahn had forced his client to perform oral sex and that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. should have taken the case to trial.
After the hearing, Thompson said Vance “has abandoned an innocent woman and has denied an innocent woman a right to get justice in a rape case. And by doing so, he has also abandoned other women who will be raped in the future or sexually assaulted.”
“No man, no matter how much power, money and influence he has, has a right to sexually assault a woman,” Diallo’s lawyer added. “We are disappointed that District Attorney Vance apparently does not believe in equal justice under the law and has denied an innocent woman a day in court.”
Thompson’s partner addressed members of the French media in Paris, expressing similar concern and frustration. Diallo’s lawyers had no plans to appeal.
One last attempt
Thompson made one last attempt on Monday to keep the criminal case alive, filing a motion asking that Vance’s office be disqualified in prosecuting the case.
BACK TO NORMAL. Former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn, left, and his lawyer Benjamin Brafman listen to proceedings in Manhattan state Supreme Court in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011. A New York judge dismissed the sexual assault case against Strauss-Kahn, but the order is on hold until an appeals court rules on his accuser's request for a special prosecutor. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, Pool)
But about an hour before Tuesday’s hearing, a court clerk handed out a one-page decision in which Justice Obus denied Thompson’s motion.
Thompson then appealed the decision. But an appellate judge struck down the appeal on Tuesday afternoon, clearing the way for Strauss-Kahn to return to France, though his lawyers said he would not head there immediately.
Diallo, who did not attend Tuesday’s hearing, claimed that Strauss-Kahn attacked her and sexually assaulted her when she arrived to clean his luxury suite at New York’s Sofitel hotel on May 14.
When prosecutors brought charges against Strauss-Kahn, they touted their evidence as strong but later noted that DNA evidence didn’t prove a forced encounter. Strauss-Kahn denied the maid’s allegations all along.
Diallo came forward in a series of interviews with the media after it became clear prosecutors were losing faith in her credibility.
Earthquake
Assistant District Attorney Illuzzi-Orbon said the prosecutors’ decision to drop the case “does not mean that we, in any way, condone the defendant’s behavior.”
A news conference with Manhattan District Attorney Vance was postponed after a 5.9-magnitude earthquake in Virginia was felt in New York City.
Shortly after Vance took to the podium, earthquake tremors were felt and the room was evacuated. Vance smiled and said to a member of his security detail, who was hurrying him out: “I’m O.K. O.K. O.K. I’ve been through earthquakes in Seattle all the time.”
Opinions mixed
On the streets of Guinea’s capital, Conakry, on its airwaves and on the editorial pages of its major newspapers, opinions were mixed. A small and unscientific sample indicated that women tended to back Diallo, while men questioned her version of events.
“Since the beginning of time, the powerful have always won. Nafissatou Diallo didn’t stand a chance against DSK,” said Pepe Bimou, a computer programmer. “The only possible outcome was that she would lose.”
The stakes were high for Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as IMF director general, spent nearly a week behind bars and then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for house arrest. He was arrested on a plane bound for Paris after Diallo told police he chased her down, grabbed her crotch and forced her to perform oral sex.
There is no dispute that something happened inside Strauss-Kahn’s suite: DNA evidence showed his semen on Diallo’s work clothes and prosecutors on Monday revealed additional details that led them to believe a sexual encounter occurred.
But Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys argued it wasn’t a forcible encounter. “You can engage in inappropriate behavior, perhaps, but that is much different than a crime. And this case was treated as a crime—when it was not,” one of the defense lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, said outside court.
Disappointed
In Guinea, people identifying themselves as Diallo’s relatives expressed deep disappointment at the prosecutors’ call to drop the case.
“I don’t think my cousin lied about DSK,” said Tidiane Diallo who owns a tea shack in Labe, which is near the village where Nafissatou was born.
“Maybe there is a still a chance that they will find a resolution to this problem. You can’t tell Nafissatou Diallo to give up on the criminal case,” the hotel maid’s cousin added.
Like many sexual assault cases, in which the accused and the accuser are often the only eyewitnesses, the Strauss-Kahn case hinged heavily on the maid’s believability.
Troubling falsehoods
Early on, prosecutors stressed that Diallo had provided “a compelling and unwavering story” replete with “very powerful details” and buttressed by forensic evidence. The police commissioner said seasoned detectives had found her credible.
On July 1, however, prosecutors said the maid had told them a series of troubling falsehoods, including a persuasive but phony account of having been gang-raped in her native Guinea.
She said she was echoing a story she had told to enhance her 2003 bid for political asylum, but there was no mention of it on her written application, prosecutors said in Monday’s filing. She told interviewers she was raped in her homeland under other circumstances.
Prosecutors continued investigating. On Monday, however, they uncovered further damning information that prompted them to believe they could not ask a jury to believe her story.
Diallo has maintained that the truth about her asylum application did not change the fact that she was wrongly attacked by Strauss-Kahn.
New rape case
Strauss-Kahn faces another sex assault case in France. Novelist Tristane Banon, who filed the criminal complaint in France, says Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in 2002. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have called her account “imaginary.”
For her part, Banon’s mother said she was displeased with the move to drop the New York case.
“I am revolted and indignant,” Anne Mansouret, a Socialist official who herself had a brief affair with Strauss-Kahn, said in a radio interview. Reports from AP and New York Times News Service