Echoes of O.J. in Kobe Bryant Case?

Aug. 1 -- One of the key investigators in the Kobe Bryant rape case was also a key figure when the Eagle County, Colo., sheriff's office was successfully sued for racial profiling.

Bryant is charged with sexual assault for allegedly raping a 19-year-old woman. She worked at a lodge where he was staying when he was in Colorado for knee surgery in late June.

The Los Angeles Lakers guard, who is married and has an infant daughter, has admitted committing adultery with the woman but insisted the sex was consensual. He will be formally advised of the charges against him on Aug. 6 and is free on $25,000 bond.

The revelation that one of the lead investigators in the case was also a key figure in a racial profiling case could provide the defense with an argument that the investigation of Bryant, a prominent black athlete, was carried out unfairly, as the defense argued in the trial of O.J. Simpson.

"I think it's explosive evidence and I'm shocked that in fact the authorities in Eagle County had this individual and these people involved in this case," said ABCNEWS legal contributor Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, a former prosecutor. "This is shades of Mark Fuhrman and the O.J. Simpson case."

"If that investigator and the people involved in the profiling, they will be cross examined about it and it will be brought out in front of the jury, they saw them in the beginning trying to assert this was a racially biased case," she said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "Just the hint of it is damaging to the prosecution."

The Eagle County sheriff's office was successfully sued in 1995 for racial profiling of African-American and Hispanic motorists passing through the county on Interstate 70. There were 400 claims of profiling, and the department eventually paid $800,000 in the settlement.

Defense attorneys could use this to argue for change of venue or as part of their defense, wherever the trial is held, though legal analyst Craig Silverman said that Bryant's attorneys may be reluctant to hit the issue too strongly, for fear of alienating the jury pool.