Magician David Copperfield has some sharp words for federal prosecutors who have refused to acknowledge that they dropped a sexual assault investigation against him because of the accuser's lack of credibility.

A Washington state woman has alleged Copperfield raped her in 2007 while she was a guest on his private island in the Bahamas. Proceedings in Lacey Carroll's civil lawsuit against him had been stayed while the U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) in Seattle conducted a criminal investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan M. Roe announced Jan. 7 that she had decided to drop the investigation, telling Carroll's lawyers that “no federal criminal statute directly addresses” the facts of the alleged assault. Much to Copperfield's chagrin, she has not attributed her decision to an investigation of Carroll by Bellevue, Wash., police for making a false rape claim against another man.

Bellevue prosecutors today charged Carroll, a former Miss Washington USA beauty pageant contestant, with misdemeanor counts of prostitution and falsely stating to officers that a Seattle businessman assaulted her in a hotel room Dec. 2, 2009. She allegedly asked the man for $2,000 after performing a sex act on him.

“It is hard to imagine that information as material as that contained in the Bellevue police report would not have affected the USAO’s decision to decline to proceed with Carroll’s 'other rape case' being handled by the USAO,” Copperfield says in a court brief filed Jan. 25.

In a notice filed in the civil action, Roe said only that the “investigation has been concluded and is no longer a basis that supports a stay.”

The government's reasons for declining a criminal prosecution are important to the civil litigation because Carroll has filed a motion for a court order to lift the stay and direct prosecutors to “retain possession and control over” their investigative materials, including those seized by FBI agents during a search of Copperfield's Las Vegas warehouse.

“[T]here is a risk that the government will return these items to the Defendant and third parties, and that they will be damaged, lost, inadvertently destroyed, or removed to a location that makes production more difficult to obtain,” the motion says.

A link between the federal prosecutor's decision not to charge Copperfield and the Bellevue investigation could support his argument that the investigative materials in the Carroll case should be returned to him and be provided to Carroll only under the normal rules of discovery.

“[W]here Carroll has already been found by law enforcement to have made a false claim of rape, it would seem appropriate for the Justice Department to exercise its discretion to decline to provide internal investigative materials," he argues. "Why should investigative materials from a taxpayer-funded investigation be provided to support a civil rape claim made by someone who has a history of lying to law enforcement to extort money from private persons?”

According to Copperfield, prosecutor Roe received the Bellevue police report on or about Dec. 17 but she has “refused to acknowledge ... that the Bellevue Police Department’s recent investigation of Lacey Carroll, for making a false claim of rape against a different man, had any bearing on the USAO’s decision to drop the federal investigation of Copperfield.”

“Based on the content of the Bellevue Police report of the investigation, and the timing of its disclosure to the USAO, AUSA Roe’s claim is puzzling if not lacking in credibility,” he says.

Carroll attorney Rebecca J. Roe (no relation to the prosecutor) has called the Bellevue report “overblown.” “I'm fully aware that Copperfield's lawyers are trying to shine a light on her instead of what he did and his modus operandi of luring young girls to his private island,” she told the Associated Press.

By Matthew Heller
1/26/10