Kato Kaelin Chastised for His Testimony
CNN
March 27, 1995
SHOW: NEWS 11:07 am ET
Kato Kaelin Chastised for His Testimony
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BYLINE: GREG LaMOTTE
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 1102 words
HIGHLIGHT: Prosecutor Marcia Clark has issued a public scolding of Kato Kaelin, who she says has withheld information in his testimony in the O.J. Simpson trial. Kaelin seems to have selective recall in his testimony.
DONNA KELLEY, Anchor: Welcome back to our CNN Morning News. About 8 minutes after the hour. It’s a new week, and there are some new developments in the O.J. Simpson double murder case. CNN’s Marc Watts is in Los Angeles with the details for us. Marc?
MARC WATTS, Anchor: Donna, the Simpson trial resumes in about one hour with more testimony from O.J. Simpson’s former houseguest. Now, with more on the trial, let’s go live to the courthouse and CNN’s Greg LaMotte. Greg?
GREG LaMOTTE, Correspondent: Well, Marc, the last time we were in the courtroom, prosecutor Marcia Clark had launched a blistering attack on the world’s most fa-mous houseguest, Brian ‘Kato’ Kaelin. Clark appeared to be trying to show that Kaelin may have been willing to hide the truth in order to protect O.J. Simpson.
Now, Kaelin is a prosecution witness who has been able to support the prosecu-tion’s contention that no one knew the whereabouts of O.J. Simpson for at least an hour and a half the night of the killings. Kaelin is the one who says he heard the three thumps at about 10:40 to 10:45 the night of the killings, and then about 10 to 15 minutes later, saw O.J. Simpson in front of Simpson’s home. Now, near where Kaelin heard those thumps, a blood glove was found that matches one found at the crime scene. Kaelin says he heard the thumps while talking to a friend on the telephone. That friend’s name is Rachel Ferrara. She is ex-pected to follow Kaelin on the witness stand and corroborate Kaelin’s testimony about hearing unusual noises. Her testimony is expected to be brief. We then anticipate hearing from limousine driver, Alan Park. He says no one answered the phone at Simpson’s estate when he arrived to take Simpson to the airport. Park said only after he saw a 6-foot-tall African-American enter Simpson’s front door at about 11:00 p.m. did Simpson then answer the telephone and let the driver into the gated estate. Joining me this morning is Jim Willwerth with Time Magazine. Good morning, Jim.
JIM WILLWERTH, ‘Time’ Magazine: Good morning, Greg.
GREG LaMOTTE: Your assessment of how Kato Kaelin performed on the witness stand last week?
JIM WILLWERTH: Well, I think Kato did a fine job for the prosecution in the sense that he provided the timeline they were looking for. He made it clear that he cannot be an alibi witness for O.J. in terms of having been in the house that night, and he also saw the blood drops early that morning, which means it would have been pretty hard for the police to plant them later in the day.
On the other hand, Kato is being extremely fuzzy in some key areas. He could have provided a much better timeline. And a number of Marcia’ questions where she said, did you not say to ‘Friend X’ or ‘Friend Y’ the next day or that day or the following day that, you know, so-and-so - those friends say, my informa-tion at least is, those friends say he said those things. So why isn’t he say-ing them now? It’s a pretty good question.
GREG LaMOTTE: Kaelin also has, certainly, hedged on the issue of O.J. Simpson’s demeanor the day of the killings and after he saw him the next day.
JIM WILLWERTH: Yeah. Again, I mean, Kato seems to be developing a selective fuzziness. He has said a number of things, including one particular thing to friends that O.J. was extremely frazzled that night. He’d never seen anything like it, he told at least one friend. And yet, now, on the witness stand, he doesn’t seem to be able to remember telling those things to those friends. Again, what’s going on here?
GREG LaMOTTE: O.J. Simpson’s demeanor certainly changed in the courtroom with Kaelin on the witness stand.
JIM WILLWERTH: Well, I think he sees Kato as friendly. I think he likes Kato. I think Kato has provided a certain amount of tension relief. And also, O.J. has to be pleased that Kato doesn’t seem to remember some of the things which are quite so incriminating, at least in mood. And a lot of this trial is about mood and motive and opportunity. So that O.J. finds himself being depicted in a much, you know, friendlier, a much less frantic way than the prosecution would like to depict him.
GREG LaMOTTE: Thank you very much. That’s Jim Willwerth with Time Magazine. I might add that today will be a shortened day in the courtroom. Apparently, a juror has a prior commitment that they must attend to - some sort of meeting or appointment that they had - we don’t know if that’s with a doctor or not. At any rate, court will be ending today at 12:00 noon Pacific, 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Marc?
MARC WATTS: All right. Greg LaMotte at the courthouse. Thanks, much. We’ll see what happens later today in the courtroom. Besides what Greg mentioned, to-day’s proceedings in the Simpson trial will also include a hearing on a defense team request that Judge Ito reconsider his punishment to defense attorneys. CNN’s Charles Feldman reports now, the actions that got the defense attorneys sanctioned are not the only thing troubling other defense lawyers.
CHARLES FELDMAN, Correspondent: When O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark blew up at defense attorney F. Lee Bailey on the ‘ides of March,’ she gave voice to something a growing number of defense lawyers already think.
MARCIA CLARK, Prosecutor: That shows you what kind of- what we have over here in the way of ethics on this side of the table. They’ll get up and they’ll misrep-resent till their heart’s content until they get caught, and then they have ex-cuses. And then they start splitting hairs. And then they have - well, this means this, and oh, no - that means that. I felt like we were in Alice in Won-derland-
CHARLES FELDMAN: The Simpson defense team has been sanctioned twice by Judge Lance Ito for violating California law - a law that requires defense lawyers to turn over certain information to prosecutors to insure a fairer trial. Johnnie Cochran and Carl Douglas have been fined $950 each for telling the Court there was no audiotape of investigator Bill Pavelic’s interview with Rosa Lopez.
F. LEE BAILEY, Simpson Attorney: It’s a situation where we told the truth. We didn’t know. There was no malice there. Nobody intended to withhold anything. I mean, when we discovered these things, Bill Pavelic simply forgot to mention that he had a tape.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distri-bution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.
LOAD-DATE: March 28, 1995
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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