Shop guard lying, says Winona's legal team

Adding to the mudslinging that has characterised Winona Ryder's shoplifting trial, defence lawyer Mark Geragos sought yesterday to demolish the credibility of a security guard who claimed to have seen the actress snipping security tags off designer clothes and handbags in a department store dressing room.

Mr Geragos showed pictures of the dressing room door at the Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills and said it was impossible to look through the slats and see someone fiddling with sensor tags on the floor, as the guard, Colleen Rainey, had described.

He also asked Ms Rainey why, if what she had seen was so damning, she had omitted to mention what she had seen in her incident reports. He asked the same question of her other claim – that Ms Ryder had told her and other security staff on her arrest last December that she had shoplifted to prepare for upcoming film roles.

Ms Rainey, clearly rattled, said the incident had taken place a long time ago and she no longer remembered what she had reported at the time.

The exchange was typical of the increasingly vituperative atmosphere in Judge Elden Fox's courtroom. Mr Geragos has already accused Saks staff of lying in an effort to nail a celebrity.

The prosecution has done its best to demolish claims by Mr Geragos that Ms Ryder kept a credit card account open and intended to pay for the merchandise she was holding when confronted outside the store. Two shop assistants took the stand on Wednesday, both of them saying they had neither opened nor kept open any account for Ms Ryder.

Ms Rainey said in her testimony that Ms Ryder's first reaction on being stopped by security guards was to ask: "Didn't my assistant pay for it?"

Then, Ms Rainey said, she explained that she took the merchandise as preparation for two films, Shopgirl and White Jazz. Ms Rainey's boss, Ken Evans, previously offered similar testimony that the actress claimed to be getting into character for a part.

Ms Ryder's publicist, Mara Buxbaum, made clear that the defence team did not believe any such conversation had taken place. The idea that Ms Ryder would shoplift in preparation for a film was "utterly ridiculous", Ms Buxbaum said.

Shopgirl, based on a Steve Martin story, is going into production early next year without Ms Ryder. White Jazz, based on the James Ellroy novel, has yet to announce casting plans.

With the trial into its fourth day, and expected to last well into next week, the Ms Ryder's entourage is growing to impressive proportions. As well as her trial lawyer and her publicist, her trial is being attended by her entertainment attorney and a political spin-doctor, Pat Caddell, who is telling reporters that her trial is the biggest distortion of criminal justice since the infamous Chicago Seven case during the Vietnam War.

Mr Caddell told a Los Angeles newspaper that the charges against Ms Ryder were the most severe filed against a shoplifting suspect in Beverly Hills, and that she was being targeted for political gain by the LA District Attorney, Steve Cooley. One of the campaign slogans that got Mr Cooley elected as district attorney was his contention that, under his predecessor, "money talks, celebrities walk".

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