NEW YORK—Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a wealthy French politician accustomed to high living and globe-trotting, wants off Rikers Island, one of America’s largest and roughest jail complexes.
Placed under suicide watch on Rikers since Monday, the newly resigned head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is scheduled to return to a Manhattan court on Thursday afternoon to again ask for bail on charges he sexually assaulted a chambermaid of the posh Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan.
“I want to devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence,” the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn said in his resignation letter released by the IMF and dated May 18.
In court papers filed by his defense team on Wednesday, Strauss-Kahn said he had surrendered his passport to preclude his fleeing the country.
His lawyers proposed posting a $1-million cash bail and confining him to the home of his daughter, Camille, a Columbia University graduate student, 24 hours a day with electronic monitoring.
Strauss-Kahn “is a loving husband and father, and a highly regarded diplomat, politician, lawyer, economist and professor, with no criminal record,” his lawyers wrote.
They proposed similar conditions at an earlier bail hearing but added the promise of a 24-hour house arrest on Wednesday. The woman judge denied him bail on Monday.
Bail process
Defense lawyers may raise the issue of bail as many times as they like, and it’s common to make new proposals and try again after a client gets high or no bail, according to Stuart P. Slotnick, a New York defense lawyer not involved in the case.
Such attempts can succeed if a judge is persuaded that new information reduces the perceived risk that the person won’t come back to court if released.
Living elsewhere is often seen as raising that risk, but it’s not insurmountable, according to Slotnick.
In a case like Strauss-Kahn’s, bail “is not going to be a slam dunk, but if they can convince the judge that he’s not a risk of flight, that he’s going to come back, then he’ll get bail,” he said.
Manhattan prosecutors didn’t immediately comment on the new bail motion.
Another hearing had been scheduled for Friday, the deadline for prosecutors to bring an indictment, agree to a preliminary hearing or release him.
DNA evidence
Investigators have revisited the penthouse hotel suite to cut out a piece of carpet in a painstaking search for DNA evidence, according to two law enforcement officials who requested anonymity because neither was authorized to speak about the case publicly and because the case has gone to a grand jury.
Detectives and prosecutors believe the carpet in the suite may contain Strauss-Kahn’s semen, spat out after an episode of forced oral sex.
The maid, a 32-year-old widowed immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, told police that Strauss-Kahn came out of the bathroom naked, chased her down, forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear before she broke free and fled the room.
Maid believable
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly declined to comment on the details of the evidence-gathering, but he said investigators had found the maid’s story believable.
“Obviously, the credibility of the complainant is a factor in cases of this nature,” Kelly said. “One of the things they’re trained to look for, and what was reported to me early on, was that the complainant was credible.”
One of Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, said at his client’s arraignment this week that the forensic evidence “will not be consistent with a forcible encounter.” That led to speculation the defense would argue it was consensual sex.
The woman’s lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, has dismissed suggestions from some of Strauss-Kahn’s defenders that his client had made up the charges or tried to cover up a consensual encounter. Associated Press