DENVER, 27 June 2004 — Basketball star Kobe Bryant’s rape trial will begin on Aug. 27, about 14 months after a 19-year-old Colorado woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in his hotel room, a judge ordered on Friday.

At a pretrial hearing this week lawyers defending the Los Angeles Lakers star and prosecutors both told the judge they would be ready to present their case by August.

Bryant’s accuser, who is now 20, had urged the judge to start the trial as soon as possible, saying she had grown weary from the strain of intense media scrutiny.

Bryant, 25, has pleaded not guilty, acknowledging he had sex with the woman at the Vail-area hotel where she worked last June 30 but insisting their encounter was consensual.

In setting the trial date, Judge Terry Ruckriegle said the court would not send prospective jurors a questionnaire in advance with extra questions about issues that might surface in the high-profile case because to do so would cause a delay.

Instead, they will receive a routine summons, then fill out a questionnaire when they appear on Friday, Aug. 27, in the Eagle, Colorado, courthouse.

The judge has yet to rule on a defense motion to make details about the woman’s sexual history admissible as evidence in the trial. Under Colorado’s Rape Shield Law, such information is not allowed in a sexual assault case unless it is deemed relevant by the court.

The defense, which claims the woman had consensual sex with another man within hours after she said Bryant raped her, has argued that injuries she received could be explained by sex with other men.

While pretrial testimony on the young woman’s sexual background has been kept confidential, transcripts from this week’s closed hearing on the subject were mistakenly sent by e-mail to seven media outlets. The judge ordered recipients to destroy the e-mails without revealing their contents or risk contempt-of-court citations.

Also awaiting the judge’s decision is a defense request to throw out a tape of an interview Bryant gave police about 24 hours after the woman said she was raped.

Bryant’s lawyers said he did not realize at the time that police were recording his statements outside the hotel and that he should have been advised of his constitutional right to remain silent. Prosecutors have argued Bryant was not in custody and was free to walk away at any time.