NEW YORK — A judge Tuesday dismissed all charges
against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
a day after prosecutors said the hotel maid who had accused him of
trying to rape her could not be trusted.
A total of seven charges — four felonies and three
misdemeanors — were dropped and Strauss-Kahn was a free man for the
first time since May 14, when he was taken off of a jet about to leave
New York for Paris and put in jail. He left the courtroom smiling after
Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted about 13 minutes.
“I am satisfied the people’s application was made in
good faith … I see no basis to deny the people’s application,” Judge
Michael Obus said in upholding the prosecution’s request to drop the
case.
Obus also said his decision was contingent upon an
appellate court upholding his decision handed down earlier Tuesday to
reject demands that a special prosecutor be assigned to the case. The
attorney for the alleged assault victim filed a motion Monday accusing
the district attorney of being biased against his client. Obus turned
down the motion; a request for it to be reviewed by an appellate court
was considered a formality and was not expected to affect the eventual
outcome of the case.
Strauss-Kahn was indicted by a grand jury May 18 and
released on bail. But his bail was lifted in July and the case began
unraveling after prosecutors said that his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo,
had lied to investigators about several things.
Strauss-Kahn arrived at the courthouse Tuesday about
30 minutes before the hearing with his wife, Anne Sinclair. Neither
spoke to reporters. As the hearing got under way on the 13th floor of
the courthouse in lower Manhattan, chants from activists demanding that
the charges not be dropped could be heard from the hallway outside.
Strauss-Kahn always denied guilt and said the brief
sexual encounter between him and the maid in his Sofitel hotel suite was
consensual. While prosecutors acknowledged that they had no way of
knowing whether his account was true, they said Diallo’s “pattern” of
lies — including one in which she claimed to have been gang-raped in her
native Guinea but then recanted it — made it impossible to trust her.
“If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt,
we cannot ask a jury to do so,” they said in the motion for dismissal
filed Monday.
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