The woman suing Knicks point guard Derrick Rose and two pals over an alleged gang rape wept softly as her lawyer graphically described her ordeal during opening statements Wednesday.
“While [she] was going in and out of consciousness in her house, each one of the defendants took turns raping her,” lawyer Waukeen McCoy told jurors in Los Angeles federal court.
Rose’s lawyer vehemently denied the accusations during his opening statement, calling the suit baseless and a “sad effort” by the plaintiff to get money from the NBA’s former MVP.
“This lawsuit is fake,” attorney Mark Baute said.
“The evidence will show it’s a sad effort to get a lottery hit — nothing more, nothing less.”
The plaintiff’s lawyer, however, accused Rose of lying during a pretrial deposition when he testified that the woman grabbed a pink vibrator during sex, and that he tried to open the shades to let in some light.
“There is no light outside at 3 a.m. in the morning. He made up the story,” McCoy said.
“He wants to tell you that she was lucid, when she was not.”
The accuser claims she got drunk — and possibly was drugged — during a party at Rose’s Beverly Hills home, after which Rose, Randall Hampton and Ryan Allen trespassed in her apartment and had their way with her early on Aug. 27, 2013.
She’s suing all three men, who claim the sex was consensual, for $21.5 million in damages.
“It’s certainly not a case about a gang rape,” Michael Monico, the lawyer for Rose’s pals Hampton and Allen, said in his opening statement. “This is a case about money and manipulation. There was no gang rape. There was no rape at all.”
McCoy said the woman remembers Rose “pulling her to the edge of the bed,” and how he was “undressed from the waist down and was inside of her.”
“Mr. Rose will tell you when he was done having sex with plaintiff, he took his condom and put it back in the wrapper like he was never there,” McCoy added.
Rose’s lawyer offered an unexpected explanation as to why his client took the used condom with him when he left the woman’s apartment.
“You’re doggone right he takes the condom with him,” Baute said. “If you’re an NBA player, you don’t leave your sperm around for someone to get pregnant with it — the stories around this are legion.”
The woman later woke up with her black dress around her neck and her body smeared with lubricant, with an unused condom on her bed and a used one on the floor, McCoy claimed.
The next day, she told her two roommates and a co-worker that she had been raped, but “did not go to the police immediately because she was embarrassed,” McCoy said.
Rose was excused from attending so he could play in the Knicks’ Tuesday-night preseason opener, and is expected to be in court on Thursday.
On Tuesday, defense lawyers complained in vain about the paucity of African-Americans in the 50-member jury pool, and the panel wound up not including anyone who is black.
During jury selection, Rose defense lawyer Mark Baute previewed his aggressive, free-wheeling style while questioning prospective panelists on a host of sensitive subjects.
His inquires including asking women “If your daughter came home with a black man, would that be OK?” and “Does a fact pattern involving three men having sex with a a woman offend you?”
The intense probing caused members of the jury pool to laugh nervously and shoot shocked stares at each other.
But they were spared having to answer if they ever used hook-up apps like Tinder or Bumble, with the judge scolding Baute: “Counsel, that is inappropriate.”
The potential jurors included a Loyola University sports announcer with a soft spot for Rose’s new team.
“It turns out that one of your favorite teams is the New York Knicks. Can you give your fandom of the New York Knicks up until the end of this trial and just pretend the preseason isn’t going forward?” Judge Michael Fitzgerald asked.
The man insisted he could, but got booted from the case anyway.