Marv Albert + Charges + Forced Sodomy And Sexual Assault- Marv albert, charges, forced sodomy and sexual assault-NBC sportscaster Marv Albert's trial on sexual assault charges, which starts tomorrow, is a television talk show's dream: sex, sports and celebrity all wrapped up in one package.

Some two dozen television trucks are planning to park outside the Arlington courthouse for the duration of Albert's trial on forcible sodomy and assault charges. More than 50 media organizations, from the New York tabloids to Court TV, Sports Illustrated and ESPN, have picked up credentials. Brace yourself for daily reports of testimony that is almost certain to include descriptions of oral sex and biting and allegations of rough sex.


But this trial isn't just the biggest media circus seen at a Washington area courthouse since Lorena Bobbitt's 1994 trial for severing her husband's penis. It also could break significant legal ground, law professors and lawyers said.

That's because they expect the case's outcome to turn on two thorny social issues that bedevil jurors and lawmakers across the country:

In an era when most Americans have become more tolerant of unconventional behavior, what sex acts are still unacceptable? And how should the law handle an encounter that allegedly begins as consensual but then goes further than one of the participants wants?

"We're all agreed that when men use violence to coerce women's acceptance of sex, that's wrong. But there's a really difficult gray area between what's violent and what is vigorous sexual activity," said University of Virginia law professor Anne Coughlin. "The underlying cultural mores are ambivalent."

Albert's accuser, a 42-year-old Vienna woman, told police that Albert threw her on a bed, bit her and forced her to perform oral sex after a Feb. 12 argument in his Pentagon City hotel room. DNA tests by the state crime lab have linked him to genetic material taken from bite marks on her back and semen in her underwear.

Albert's attorney, Miami lawyer Roy Black, therefore, probably is going to have to convince a jury that the encounter was consensual. That's how he won acquittal for William Kennedy Smith on rape charges, and his strategy until now, which has included a constitutional challenge to Virginia's consensual sodomy statute, has pointed in that direction.

Black declined to comment on his trial plans. But a consent strategy would face several hurdles, legal observers said. Black surmounted the first one on Thursday, when Commonwealth's Attorney Richard E. Trodden said he wouldn't try to prosecute Albert for consensual sodomy. That means the sportscaster could admit to having oral sex without risking a five-year prison sentence for breaking the sodomy law.