Did Risky Defense "Hail Mary Pass" Help Doom Karen "Knee Pad" Supher In Extortion Case Against Rick Pitino? It Sure Didn't Help. Read More Below,

Risky defense gambit could derail facts for Karen Sypher jury
By Andrew Wolfson and Jason Riley

Through nearly two weeks of trial, Karen Sypher's lawyer had put up a great fight, said the jury's foreman, Glen Elder.

Attorney James Earhart raised at least some doubt about the testimony of nearly every prosecution witness, Elder said. “He was really quite intimidating.”

But then, in his closing argument, James Earhart seemed to abandon his carefully scripted defense, Elder and other jurors said.

First, the defense lawyer admitted that University of Louisville coach Rick Pitino had been the victim of extortion, after previously arguing that it was Pitino who bribed Karen Sypher. Then, Earhart abruptly offered up a culprit for all the threats delivered to the coach — Tim Sypher, Karen's then-husband, Pitino's longtime aide and equipment manager.

“It was a surprise,” Elder, 47, a human resources technology consultant at Humana Inc., said in an hour-long interview with The Courier-Journal. “It was the first time we had heard it. There was no evidence to support it. It almost was like it was an after-thought.”

It was a suitably surreal twist in a trial whose sensational and often sordid testimony both captivated and repulsed its Louisville audience — even as it fascinated the major tabloids and national media.

Earhart, who is appeal Karen Sypher's conviction, said in an interview that his cross-examination of Tim Sypher had raised questions about his role in demanding — then delivering — a note listing his wife's demands to Pitino.

But Earhart said he had no opportunity to flesh out his theory before his summation, and that it was not just a ploy.

“I still believe it,” Earhart said, noting that Tim Sypher never provided an answer as to why he gave Pitino a letter with Karen Sypher's demands on the night before U of L played an important basketball game in West Virginia.

Interviewed last week after they convicted Sypher of attempting to extort money from Pitino, lying to the FBI about it, and retaliating against him, jurors acknowledged they probably would have found her guilty regardless of Earhart's strategy.

“He put up a good fight, but the evidence went the other way,” Elder said.

Defense lawyers say that Earhart had no choice but to try to “pull a rabbit out of his hat,” as Brian Butler put it.

Earhart realized that the government's evidence proved that Pitino had been extorted, and he had to offer an explanation other than “my client is guilty,” Butler said.

“So he presented an alternate theory — that it was just as likely that Tim Sypher did it as Karen Sypher — to give the jury something to chew on,” said defense lawyer Alex Dathorne.

It is a risky strategy, lawyers say, but one that could create reasonable doubt in the mind of one or more jurors.

“Jim must have thought he didn't have a lot to present,” Butler said.

Jury deliberation a flurry of opinions

When their deliberations began Wednesday, the jury of six men and six women started to take a straw vote on each of the six counts against Sypher, Elder said.

But that quickly gave way to “a deluge” of opinions being tossed around by jurors eager to speak their mind, Elder said.

“We were going 100 miles per hour,” he said.

They decided to go around the room, allowing each jury to express their thoughts in turn, Elder said.

Starting with the first count — that Sypher had her friend Lester Goetzinger leave threatening messages for Pitino — “We all went around the room and came to the same conclusion” — that Sypher was guilty, Elder said.

They agreed that Goetzinger had admitted making all three calls to Pitino for Sypher, and cell phone records showed that Goetzinger and Sypher had talked 15 times the day before the first message was left, Elder said.

Voting unanimously to convict on the first count, the jury retired for the night.

Returning Thursday morning, jurors turned to the second extortion charge — the note Karen wrote requesting seven items from Pitino, including cars, cash and a house.

Tim Sypher had told his wife to make the list, but the jury believed him when he said he hadn't told her what to ask for, Elder said.

He also said the note's last sentence — “If all is accepted, I will protect Rick Pitino's name for life,” convinced the jury that it was extortion.

The third charge — that Sypher threatened Pitino through a letter sent by her lawyer, Dana Kolter, Elder said jurors found Kolter to be a “sympathetic figure” who was “infatuated” by Sypher.

“We all felt really bad for him,” Elder said.

Sypher's signature on the bottom of the letter convinced jurors that she was criminally culpable, he said.
Jurors say Sypher's, Pitino's morals weren't relevant

As for Sypher's extramarital affairs — Kolter was one of three men who said he had sex with her while she was married — Elder said the jurors never mentioned them.
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“Nobody ever brought up her morals,” he said. “Having affairs is not illegal.”

In fact, Elder said: “There was very little discussion of Karen Sypher, personally. We had no preconceived notions about what she had done.”

But it could have hurt her credibility, and it may have help convince them that she lied when she said Rick Pitino raped her, Elder and other jurors said.

Elder said there was just “too many inconsistencies in her version of what happened” the night she says she was raped at Porcini Restaurant in July 2003. And he said the jury found even less believable Sypher's claims that she was raped against at the condo of Tim Sypher, her future husband.

“She said she ended up marrying the guy who heard it and wouldn't help her,” Elder said. “Everybody had a problem with that.”

Smith and Elder both said the jury didn't consider Pitino's morals.

“He wasn't on trial here,” Smith said.

Earhart acknowledged that Pitino was “well prepared” when he testified and as a professional speaker he was able to put his “spin on things” with his testimony.

Elder said the jury quickly of Sypher guilty of the count charging her with lying when she told the FBI she didn't know who made the threatening phone calls because jurors had already concluded she directed Goetzinger to make the calls.

The other count that Sypher lied — by telling the FBI that her relationship with Kolter was “strictly business” — turned only on the question of whether it was relevant to the investigation, Elder said the jury concluded it was because it was crucial in the FBI's determination of whether the pair had a strictly attorney-client relationship.

Smith said that some jurors initially felt Sypher might not be guilty of the last count — retaliating against Pitino when she accused him of rape last summer.

But he said the fact that she made the accusation only after she was charged with extortion helped persuade the jury that she was guilty.

“Everybody felt comfortable it was a false report,” Elder said.
Defense decided not to present witnesses

He said that he wasn't especially surprised that Sypher didn't testify, but he said they were surprised when Earhart announced Thursday morning that he would put on no defense.

Scott C. Cox and other defense lawyers speculate that Sypher had intended to testify — over her lawyer's objection — but ultimately decided to take his advice.

“He probably had to shift gears,” Cox said.

Earhart said he had subpoenaed six witnesses to testify and Karen Sypher was prepared to take the stand, but he determined that all of the information he wanted to tell jurors had been introduced through the prosecution's witnesses.

“It was my call,” he said. “We did the best we could.”

Cox said Earhart was probably reluctant to present any witnesses on Sypher's behalf because if any of them — even her mother — had praised her reputation for being truthful, it would have opened the floodgates to testimony by government witnesses that she is not, Cox said.

Earhart said Sypher's mother, Judith Cunagin, may have been a good witness, but in the end, she would have been “highly suspect” because of their relationship.

“Your mother's not going to say something bad about you,” Earhart said.

Defense lawyers say that Kuhn and Ford presented an excellent case, and that Earhart probably didn't have a chance.

“This was probably as close to an unwinnable case as you're going to get,” Dathorne said, “other than a client who confesses on videotape.”

Elder said that all three lawyers — Earhart, Kuhn and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa Ford, did a fine job.

“If I was ever in the same seat and needed an attorney I would want one of them to be mine.”

Editor's comment: For what it's worth, I do believe that Tim Sypher is not totally innocent in the extortion scheme by his wife Karen.

But then he was not the one on trial; his wife was!