PROSECUTING MIKE TYSON: BOXING WITH THE MEDIA

Pages145-163
Published date28 April 2005
Date28 April 2005
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1016/S1521-6136(04)06008-7
AuthorJeffrey A. Modisett,Judge David J. Dreyer
PROSECUTING MIKE TYSON:
BOXING WITH THE MEDIA
Jeffrey A. Modisett*and Judge David J. Dreyer
ABSTRACT
In 1991, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was charged with rap-
ing an 18-year-old beauty contestant in Indianapolis, Indiana. The county
prosecutors approached their strategy in the legal case separate and apart
from their handling of the intense media scrutiny. The chapter details how
this bifurcated approach helped to win the trial, though it may have lost the
public relations battle. The study finds that, while the media is not neces-
sarily the prosecutor’s enemy, its presence and involvement in high-profile
cases is so great that it does in fact have an impact on the investigative
and prosecutorial aspects of the case. In such cases, even in the midst of
public attention, misunderstanding, occasional hostility, and often erroneous
commentary, the prosecutormust accept, understand, and manage the media
intrusion.
Jeffrey A. Modisett was the elected Prosecuting Attorney for Marion County (1991–1994) and was
later elected Attorney General of Indiana (1997–2000). Judge David J. Dreyer was Modisett’s Chief
Counsel (1991–1994) and was elected to be a Marion County Indiana Superior Court judge in 1997.
The more common title is “District Attorney,”but in the State of Indiana, both the state constitution
and myriad state statutes use the term “Prosecuting Attorney.” For accuracy, we use the technically
correct title in this article rather than the more commonly-used title.
Ethnographies of Law and Social Control
Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume6, 145–163
Copyright © 2005 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1521-6136/doi:10.1016/S1521-6136(04)06008-7
145
146 JEFFREY A. MODISETT AND JUDGE DAVID J. DREYER
INTRODUCTION
When Santayana said that another world to live in is whatwe mean by religion, he could hardly
have foreseen how his remark might apply to the sports mania of our time...Set beside the
media-promoted athletes of our time and the iconography of their success, the average man
knows himself merely average...Boxing is not to be seized as a metaphor for life, but its swift
and sometimes irremediable reversals of fortune starkly parallel those of life, and the blow we
never saw coming – invariably, in the ring, the knockout blow – is the one that decides our fate.
Joyce Carol Oates, Life Magazine, “Mike Tyson”,March 1987.
On July 19, 1991, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tysonlured a naive
18-year-old girl to his Indianapolis hotel room and raped her. Six months later, a
racially-mixed Marion County jury found him guilty. In between, and as occurs
in all date rape cases, the prosecutors and defense attorneys battled to investigate
the facts, collect evidence, and build their cases. However, as the prosecutors were
to quickly learn, this fight was destined to be waged on two fronts. While the
prosecutors fought to hold the rape prosecution together – a notoriously difficult
and delicate effort evenin non-celebrity cases – they would also be required to fight
a separate battle with the media, sparring with cameramen and reporters on a daily
basis. At stake was not only control of public opinion in one of the highest-profile
celebrity trials of the late 20th century, but also access to untainted evidence, an
impartial jury pool, a fair trial, the truth, and justice itself.
We served as two of the four main prosecutors for State of Indiana v. Michael
Tyson in 1991–1992. As veteran criminal prosecutors, we were well-acquainted
with the highly technical legal and procedural terrain ahead of us; it was what we
had been trained for and had experience in. But we had no experience as the focus
of frenzied media attention, we were inexperienced. Even past political campaigns
had ill-prepared us for the onslaught to come. Wewould have to learn a whole new
set of skills that our law school professors simply did not teach – and we had to
learn them quickly and “on our feet.”
Immediately after the guilty verdict was handed down by the jury, the entire
experience still had not quite hit us. Our outlook was simple: the Tyson case was
largely unremarkable as a basic criminal rape case, but had been blown up by
the media because of Tyson’s celebrity. However, with the benefit of hindsight,
we now believe that proving the criminal rape case under such intense media
scrutiny (and interference) was in many ways very remarkable. Our achievement
was more significant because we learned to overcome the media, and because they
completely missed this aspect of the story. By focusing on a defendant who was
arguably among the most recognizable persons in the world, the media missed
what was a significant part of the “real story”: that local prosecutors had secured a

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