06/18/08 — Seven alleged phone calls and an e-mail in seven hours may send Lisa Miceli to jail for more than three years, separating her from the son she claims to be fighting for in her ever-escalating war of words and legal actions against former basketball superstar Michael Jordan.

The latest wrinkle in the battle between the Meadville woman and Jordan unfolded in the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday when Jordan’s attorney claimed Miceli violated a court order prohibiting her from attempting to contact Jordan or his representatives.

The day after that June 12 order was issued, Jordan’s attorney claims, Miceli called his office seven times, with five of the calls coming in a little over an hour. She also sent an e-mail, responding to a warning from him about the court order.

He is asking for a court hearing July 2 to find Miceli in contempt. If convicted, she faces up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail for each contact. The court hasn’t yet scheduled the hearing.

Transcripts of the alleged calls claim Miceli called Jordan a racist in the same call in which she used a racial epithet to describe him. She also accused the National Basketball Association star of rape and accused both his attorney, Frederick J. Sperling, and Crawford County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Gordon Miller, who handled her case, of what she claims are improprieties. In Sperling’s case, she claims he isn’t entitled to practice law in Pennsylvania. In Judge Miller’s case, she claims he had contact with her family during the time he was considering her case.

The transcripts lay out conversations that are at times hard to follow and that incorporate references as wide-ranging as Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 terror attacks, Barack Obama and the Weather Underground terrorist group.

“I’m tired of it all and when I go on the news media, Michael Jordan will be in prison for life. For life,” Miceli allegedly said during one of the calls.

In the court hearing that led to the June 12 ruling, Miceli predicted that the case would come to this point. When told by Judge Miller that he expected her to abide by an injunction, she said she would go to jail first.

Tuesday night she didn’t deny making the calls to Sperling, but said she would continue to fight. She questioned how she could be barred from contacting Jordan’s attorney when she is representing herself in the case. Although she has retained lawyers as the case unfolded locally since January, she has parted ways with them and represented herself most recently. However, she said she hopes to have a new attorney in place for the next hearing. She also took issue with Judge Miller’s behavior during her court appearances, accusing him of trying to intimidate her.

In his June 12 ruling, Miller wrote that he found it regrettable Miceli chose to represent herself. “It is obvious that she doesn’t, or isn’t willing, to grasp what this suit is about. This is a contract action, not a paternity action,” he said.

He wrote that Jordan set forth facts and theories in his lawsuit and Miceli was by law required to address each of those issues. Instead, she filed 33 paragraphs of which “nearly all of her allegations have absolutely no relevance to this contract action. Defendant (Miceli) seems to be writing a novel rather than filing a pleading in the nature of an answer,” Miller wrote after that hearing.

Locally, court action began in late January when Jordan initially filed for a preliminary injunction prohibiting Miceli from contacting him or his representatives.

In that filing, Jordan’s attorneys claimed Miceli was in violation of an August 2005 agreement between Jordan and Miceli. The agreement stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit Miceli filed against Jordan claiming he was the father of her son. Under the agreement, if DNA tests showed that Jordan wasn’t the father of Miceli’s son born in June 2004, she would have no further contact with him. The suit claimed that two separate DNA tests showed Jordan wasn’t the father, but that since the agreement was put in place Miceli had sent 400 e-mails and notes to him or his representatives.

Miceli has argued that the paternity testing could have been manipulated by Jordan to produce the negative result.

Since January’s filing by Jordan and his attorney, Miceli has been in and out of court. In February, she agreed to have no further contact but admitted no wrongdoing.

In April, she sought to have the February agreement voided and sought a paternity hearing to establish Jordan as the boy’s father. Both actions were denied by Judge Miller, who claimed that Miceli’s court filings were incomplete and lacked specificity. At about the same time, Jordan filed for a permanent injunction prohibiting Miceli from contacting him or his representatives. It was that filing that led to the judge’s June 12 ruling.

Miceli, a 1990 graduate of Meadville Area Senior High School, has said that her son was conceived during an ongoing relationship she had with Jordan after they met when she was living out-of-state. Jordan’s January filing was made in the Crawford County court because an injunction barring contact must be filed in the court where the person the injunction is against was located at the time contact was being made.