May 18, 9:31 PM (ET)
By TOM HAYS AND COLLEEN LONG
NEW YORK (AP) - Investigators cut out a piece of carpet in a painstaking search of a penthouse suite for DNA evidence in IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sex assault case, law enforcement officials said Wednesday as he made a new bid to get out of jail.
New York detectives and prosecutors believe the carpet in the hotel room may contain Strauss-Kahn's semen, spat out after an episode of forced oral sex by a hotel maid, the officials told The Associated Press.
Strauss-Kahn, jailed at Rikers Island since Monday, made a second appeal for bail and proposed to be confined to his daughter's Manhattan home 24 hours a day with electronic monitoring. He was set for another hearing Thursday afternoon.
The French politician said in court papers that he had surrendered his passport and wouldn't flee the country. "I do not intend to leave the United States of America without the permission of the New York Court," he said.
In addition to examining the Sofitel Hotel suite for further potential DNA evidence, investigators were looking at the maid's keycard to determine whether she used it to enter the room, and how long she was there, officials said.
One of the officials said that the DNA testing was being "fast-tracked" but that the results could still be a few days away.
The two officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because neither was authorized to speak about the case publicly and because it has gone to a grand jury.
The maid, a 32-year-old immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, told police that the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn came out of the bathroom naked, chased her down, forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear before she broke free and fled the room.
The AP does not identify alleged victims of sex crimes unless they agree to it.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly declined to comment Wednesday on the details of the evidence-gathering but said results of any DNA and other testing have not yet come back. He said the detectives investigating the case found the maid's story believable.
"Obviously, the credibility of the complainant is a factor in cases of this nature," Kelly said. "One of the things they're trained to look for, and what was reported to me early on, was that the complainant was credible."
One of Strauss-Kahn's attorneys, Benjamin Brafman, said at his client's arraignment this week that the forensic evidence "will not be consistent with a forcible encounter." That led to speculation the defense would argue it was consensual sex.
The woman's lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, has dismissed suggestions from some of Strauss-Kahn's defenders that she made up the charges or tried to cover up a consensual encounter.
