DA to review ‘voluminous’ Tyson files

Monday, Feb. 4, 2002 | 10:53 a.m.

Prosecutors in the district attorney's office this week expect to pore over a "voluminous" police file recommending sexual assault charges against boxer Mike Tyson.

"The file will be reviewed by our office to determine where we go from here," District Attorney Stewart Bell said this morning. "I rather expect it will take a week or two to go over it."

Bell said his five-member Case Assessment Division, headed by Chief Deputy District Attorney Ron Bloxham, will have the first crack at the police evidence and then report back to him. Bell will decide whether to file charges against the former heavyweight champion.

Tyson's Las Vegas lawyer, Booker Evans, has offered to cooperate in the investigation, but prosecutors haven't reached the point where they want input from Tyson's side, Bell said.

Police presented their criminal case to the district attorney's office during a well-attended, two-hour meeting Friday afternoon.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who was among those who heard the presentation, said officers asked prosecutors to file charges against Tyson stemming from two separate alleged sexual assaults at the former heavyweight champion's Las Vegas home -- one in November 2000 and another in September 2001.

"The record they presented to us is voluminous," said Roger, who is in the race this year to succeed the retiring Bell.

Assistant District Attorney Mike Davidson added: "I see it as pretty extensive stuff."

Davidson, who also is running for district attorney, said prosecutors asked police to obtain additional information from two other sexual assault cases involving Tyson elsewhere in the country.

"We don't want to make a hasty decision," Davidson said. "We'd like to see transcripts and interviews that may have been done."

Last week Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon, who heads the Special Victim's Unit, told the Sun that prosecutors wanted to review the evidence in other cases before deciding whether to charge Tyson here.

Herndon said prosecutors will look for a pattern in Tyson's conduct.

Tyson was convicted in Indiana in 1992 of raping a Miss Black America contestant and later served more than three years in prison. Last July a 50-year-old woman accused him of sexually assaulting her at a home he rented in Big Bear, Calif. while training. But investigators there decided against filing charges.

Bell has asked all three candidates running for his post to help him decide whether to file charges. The third candidate, Chief Deputy District Attorney Abby Silver, joined Roger and Davidson at Friday's meeting with police.

The Nevada Athletic Commission last week refused to grant Tyson a license to fight heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis in Las Vegas in April.

Both camps now are looking for a site outside of Nevada for the fight. 2