If At First You Don’t Succeed?

Last week, a federal court heard the appeal of Monica Los Rios, the woman who claims NBA star Derrick Rose and two friends gang-raped her in 2013. She never called the police but filed a civil case against him two years later, asking for over $21 million in damages. And she took her case all the way to trial, staging a conference call with the media less than a month before trial in a last-ditch effort to embarrass him into a settlement.

She’s filed the appeal because, in 2016, a jury of six women and two men unanimously rejected her claims entirely. They disbelieved her. And they had very good reason to.

Her story, on one hand, was that she willingly went to Rose’s house that night but later was raped at her home after she left. She said she felt drugged as she left the party, and when she got home, she threw up, passed out on her bed, and drifted in and out of consciousness as the men broke into her home and had sex with her.

Their story was that she partied with them at Rose’s house, had sex with more than one of them while there, invited Rose to her place after she left, and willingly had sex with all three when they got there.

You can find any number of stories about the actual evidence. Read three of them here, here, and here.

But even her own friend and roommate, who was also her coworker, leaked text messages between the two of them and testified against her. She said she came forward because what Ms. Los Rios was doing was false, financially motivated, and morally wrong.

Now she wants another trial. She’s lucky she’s not in prison.

You can watch video from last week’s argument yourself. You’ll see how politely judges can tell a lawyer his case is garbage and his client a liar.