Sleuths Set To Try Any Leads O.J. Has
Daily News (New York)
May 27, 1996, Monday
A team of sleuths from the land of Sam Spade has offered to probe the slay-ings of O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife and her pal for free but said yesterday they’ll need the athlete’s full cooperation.
The crack crew of six, led by legendary private eye Hal Lipset, was spurred by Simpson’s recent comments that there were leads in San Francisco the football great’s hometown but that he couldn’t afford to follow them up.
“We want to get to the bottom of it,” Joel Michel, a San Francisco investiga-tor and a vice president of the World Association of Detectives, told the Daily News.
“We’re not here to judge anyone, just to seek the truth,” he said, adding that the detectives were willing to forgo their usual $ 100-per-hour fees.
The gumshoes hatched the idea over lunch recently with the renowned Lipset a former Watergate investigator famed for designing a bug that looked like a mar-tini olive.
“We’ve talked about it, and we feel very good about what our offer is,” Sam Webster, WAD executive director, told The News. “We don’t think anyone has ever done this.”
Lipset, who turns 77 today, told the San Franciso Examiner, “If there are leads in San Francisco that somebody is not looking into, then I think they should be.
“We’re serious,” he added. “But if I find something, I want the right to tell the public and the San Francisco district attorney.”
Bill Pavelic, a former LAPD detective who worked for Simpson, 48, during his successful defense of double-murder charges, told The Examiner he welcomed the offer and would discuss it with the gridiron star.
He confirmed there were investigative leads in San Francisco, but declined to offer details.
Simpson is going to have to come clean with the San Francisco supersnoops if they are to determine whether the leads in the June 12, 1994, murders are real or just stuff that dreams are made of.
“We can’t get started until he gives us something to go on,” said Michel. “But so far, we haven’t heard diddly from him.”
The football star was widely mocked for his vow to devote his life to hunting down the “real” killer following his Oct. 3 acquittal in the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
During his publicity tour of England earlier this month, he cryptically re-ferred to the San Francisco leads in a speech at Oxford University, where he complained he was virtually broke.
Top Private Eye on The OJ Case
Daily News (New York)
May 27, 1996, Monday
A team of sleuths from the land of Sam Spade has offered to probe the slayings of O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife and her pal for free but said yesterday they’ll need the athlete’s full cooperation.
The crack crew of six, led by legendary private eye Hal Lipset, was spurred by Simpson’s recent comments that there were leads in San Francisco the football great’s hometown but that he couldn’t afford to follow them up.
“We want to get to the bottom of it,” Joel Michel, a San Francisco investigator and a vice president of the World Association of Detectives, told the Daily News.
“We’re not here to judge anyone, just to seek the truth,” he said, adding that the detectives were willing to forgo their usual $ 100-per-hour fees.
The gumshoes hatched the idea over lunch recently with the renowned Lipset a former Watergate investigator famed for designing a bug that looked like a mar-tini olive.
“We’ve talked about it, and we feel very good about what our offer is,” Sam Webster, WAD executive director, told The News.
“We don’t think anyone has ever done this.”
Lipset, who turns 77 today, told the San Franciso Examiner, “If there are leads in San Francisco that somebody is not looking into, then I think they should be.
“We’re serious,” he added. “But if I find something, I want the right to tell the public and the San Francisco district attorney.”
Bill Pavelic, a former LAPD detective who worked for Simpson, 48, during his successful defense of double-murder charges, told The Examiner he welcomed the offer and would discuss it with the gridiron star.
He confirmed there were investigative leads in San Francisco, but declined to offer details.
Simpson is going to have to come clean with the San Francisco supersnoops if they are to determine whether the leads in the June 12, 1994, murders are real or just stuff that dreams are made of.
“We can’t get started until he gives us something to go on,” said Michel. “But so far, we haven’t heard diddly from him.”
The football star was widely mocked for his vow to devote his life to hunting down the “real” killer following his Oct. 3 acquittal in the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
During his publicity tour of England earlier this month, he cryptically re-ferred to the San Francisco leads in a speech at Oxford University, where he complained he was virtually broke.
Making The Case;A Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Missteps, Tri-umphs, Animosities And Egos Of The Trial Of The Century
Time Magazine
October 16, 1995
BYLINE: BY HOWARD CHUA-EOAN AND ELIZABETH GLEICK, REPORTED BY ELAINE LAFFERTY, JACK E. WHITE AND JAMES WILLWERTH WITH PATRICK E. COLE, WENDY COLE, SHARON E. EPPERSON, DAVID S. JACKSON, JEANNE MCDOWELL AND RICHARD WOODBURY/LOS ANGELES AND ANDREA SACHS/NEW YORK
SECTION: COVER STORIES/SPECIAL REPORT THE SIMPSON VERDICT; Pg. 48
LENGTH: 6203 words
A mug shot, two gravestones, a smile. The trial can be reduced to these em-blems. Or to entries in a specialized gazetteer: Rockingham, Bundy, Brentwood. A bestiary: barking dog, white Bronco, blond Kato. Names on a list: Marcia and Johnnie, Darden and Shapiro, Fung, Lee, Scheck, Ito, Fuhrman. A weird alphabet: DNA, O.J., A.C., L.A.P.D., the N word. All are signposts to a greater geography, one uneasily contained on the premises of the California Superior Court. Televi-sion viewers saw the proceedings and were captured by the legal dramatics; and yet there were always hints of unseen details and untold tales. In the 474 days between the arrest and the release of O.J. Simpson, TIME’s reporters and corre-spondents attended confidential sessions, debriefing the principals; once the verdict was delivered, the major players cast even greater light on the drama’s hidden plots. Now the story behind the scenes can be revealed, providing deeper insight into courtroom strategies, missteps and triumphs, making manifest in-visible animosities. There is O.J. Simpson, angry at a bad turn in his trial, lashing out at his would-be defenders, laying out instructions as he marches about the room in manacles; Judge Ito, weighed down by petty concerns, summoning lawyers to revel in his celebrity; Christopher Darden and Johnnie Cochran fuming privately over their public spats; the juror who talked about the flaws in the prosecution’s case and the sacrifices she and her colleagues made during the nine-month ordeal; the police officers, including a duo nicknamed “Dumb and Dumber,” who fell short in their jobs. Here are the tales that help illuminate the trial that transfixed a nation.
THE PHONE RINGS
EARLY IN THE MORNING OF JUNE 13, 1994, the phone rang in the home of Marcia Clark. She immediately recognized the voice on the other end. It was Detective Philip Vannatter of the L.A.P.D., reporting a double murder and requesting the deputy district attorney’s help in obtaining a warrant to search a suspect’s home. To Clark it all seemed routine, if gruesome, until she heard one specific detail. “God,” she said, “sounds like a pretty tony address for this kind of thing.”
“Marcia,” said Vannatter, “It’s O.J. Simpson.”
“Who’s that?”
“The football player? Naked Gun?”
“Phil,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know him.”
Vannatter went on, enumerating more reasons for a search warrant: blood on the door handle of Simpson’s white Bronco, blood on the driveway at his Rocking-ham mansion, the bloody glove found by Vannatter’s junior associate, Mark Fuhr-man.
“Jesus,” said Clark, “It sounds like you’ve got enough for filing [an arrest warrant], much less a search warrant.”
Let’s take it slow, said Vannatter. He knew the case was a big one, perhaps the biggest in his career. He and his partner Tom Lange were popular, old-time cops who worked hard and enjoyed a drink or two, spending nights at the Central Cafe in a grimy section of downtown. But Lange and Vannatter were also known as “Mutts” or “Dumb and Dumber”–by the D.A.s who had to work around their sloppi-ness in court. By the luck of the duty roster, Lange and Vannatter were called to the crime scene shortly after midnight on June 13. Some homicide investiga-tors are so meticulous that they record their arrival at a crime scene with a video camera, making sure that nothing is touched and preserving that fact for posterity. Not so Lange and Vannatter–and for that matter Fuhrman, who linked up with them later that night.
BUNGLING THE CHASE
ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 17, CRIMINAL defense attorney Robert Shapiro informed O.J. Simpson that he would be arrested for the murders of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. “Mr. Simpson looked depressed and under a lot of pressure,” said Henry Lee, who arrived that morning with fellow criminologist Michael Baden at the house of Simpson buddy Robert Kardashian to start sifting through evidence. The last either scientist had seen of Simpson, he had gone upstairs to say goodbye to his family; the next thing they knew, the suspect had vanished with his friend A.C. Cowlings. According to a confidential interoffice memorandum from the D.A.’s office, Simpson’s cellular-phone records show that three calls were received or placed from a location near the cemetery where Nicole was buried. In a nontaped interview, Cowlings told police he saw a marked police vehicle near the cemetery when they arrived there and hid the Bronco in an orange grove.
At 6:25 p.m., however, two motorists spotted the white Bronco on the San Diego Freeway and called the police. The infamous chase then ensued–with one until now unpublicized stop. According to the D.A.’s memo, Cowlings, who was driving the car, pulled the Bronco over after police ordered him to stop. The cops, however, drew their guns as they approached the car. “F— no!” yelled Cowlings, slamming his fist against the driver’s door. “He’s got a gun to his head,” he screamed, referring to O.J., and then sped off. The pursuit resumed until the Bronco ended up at Rockingham, where Simpson and Cowlings were taken into custody.
Potentially incriminating evidence taken from the Bronco would never make it into court, including $ 8,750 in cash and six checks in a sealed envelope, items that might have been used to argue that Simpson was planning to flee the country (he had his passport with him). Lange and Vannatter, however, entered those items not as evidence but as the property of Cowlings–who was not charged with a crime. Reversing the designation would make the items procedurally suspect–and open to attack–as exhibits in court. “The detectives’ decision to book the cash as Cowlings’ personal property and not as evidence would be damaging to prosecution at trial,” concluded the internal memo, dated Oct. 27, 1994. The chase, which was never mentioned to the jury, was a “mixed bag,” according to prosecutor William Hodgman. “If you knew some of the evidence we were dealing with, you would understand what the cost-benefit analysis was.”
DARDEN AND CLARK
FRIENDS HAD URGED CHRISTOPHER DARDEN to steer clear of the Simpson case–he would look like the token black attorney in a case that had taken on ugly racial overtones. But the young prosecutor could not let it pass, and joined Clark and Hodgman in October 1994. “Most cases I prosecute aren’t a challenge anymore,” Darden told TIME. “The defendants are poor and they don’t have the resources. This case was a fair fight.” There was also the irresistible appeal of going up against one of the most respected black attorneys in the country, Johnnie Coch-ran, whom Darden admired. One friend warned Darden that he could not win. “I’m gonna be ‘the man,’” Darden told the friend. She shook her head. “You’re wrong. You ain’t gonna be the man. Johnnie’s the man.”
Clark became obsessed with learning everything she possibly could about Nicole and her state of mind. “I have to defend a woman I never met,” she ex-plained to Candace Garvey, one of Nicole’s friends. “All I’ve seen is bloody pictures. I need to know a lot of things about her.” Nearly every night last fall, Clark would go home to put her two children to bed, then change into jeans and a sweatshirt to meet Darden and work on the case. One night, about 10 p.m., she joined Darden and Dr. Donald Dutton, an expert on domestic violence, at the bar of the Hotel Inter-Continental, one of the prosecutors’ favorite haunts. She playfully kissed Darden on the cheek when she arrived, sank into an overstuffed sofa and ordered a Scotch on the rocks. Darden asked for a beer. A half-hour of jokes and pleasantries followed. And then came work. Clark pulled out her white legal pad. “O.K., let’s go,” she said. She drilled questions into Dutton, trying to understand Simpson’s mind, his anger, his jealousy. Why did Nicole stay? Why would she smile when she didn’t mean to? What might have prevented Nicole from screaming just before her throat was slit? The session went on past 1 a.m.
Clark’s intensity was matched only by her mental agility. Once, while inter-rogating Kato Kaelin behind closed doors, Clark was suddenly interrupted by the phone. It was her children’s nanny, who speaks only Spanish. Clark’s tone com-pletely changed as she began speaking fluent Spanish, giving child-care instruc-tions. Says a clerk, Tracy Miller: “I couldn’t believe how quickly she could just switch gears. And I didn’t even know she could speak Spanish.” A short time later, another prosecutor was set to interview an Israeli housekeeper who worked for Simpson’s neighbors. The woman spoke little English. Says Miller: “Here comes Marcia into the room. She sits down and starts speaking fluent Hebrew with this woman. I thought, O.K., so what is it this woman doesn’t do?”
H-E-R-E’S JOHNNIE!
“HE STARTED CALLING ME AT HOME,” Johnnie Cochran says, explaining how Simpson began courting him a couple of days after his arrest. The accused murderer had until then been served by Robert Shapiro. “I still have the taped messages, and someday I might whip them out. His whole thing was, he wanted to get out and get this over with by Halloween so he could go trick-or-treating with his kids.” Cochran says he postponed getting involved until he saw how the preliminary hearing went, but that Simpson kept calling him. “O.J. would call me at night and he’d say, ‘Look, I want you in court with me.’ I was put on the team by O.J. Simpson, not Bob Shapiro.” Indeed, says Cochran, Shapiro tried to “lowball” him. At a meeting at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, Cochran says he asked about fees before joining the team. “Well, you know there’s only so much money,” Shapiro replied, according to Cochran. “I listened to him up to a point, and later on I discovered that what he carved out for himself was a lot bigger than for the rest of us.” Shapiro doesn’t deny trying to limit Cochran’s fee. “That’s true. But I wouldn’t say lowballing. I was given a budget … I was trying to hire people for the best possible fee.” Cochran came on board in July.
Still, Cochran says he was confronted by a morass of disorganization. “I mean, like we were team players, but we knew it was going to be real tough,” he says. “Ultimately, O.J. had to make a decision about who was going to run this thing.” Cochran places the blame for the defense’s failure to turn over key ma-terials to the prosecution early in the discovery process squarely on Shapiro’s shoulders. “O.J. saw this and he was smart. He stepped in and said, ‘I want Johnnie to be in charge.’”
In August 1994, before Cochran’s ascension, Simpson’s lawyers discussed a plea bargain for manslaughter. The talks took place in Shapiro’s Century City law offices. Cochran mainly listened, neither advocating nor dismissing the idea of a plea. However, says one source, Shapiro and F. Lee Bailey, the legendary trial lawyer brought on by Shapiro, were willing to entertain the idea, though they spent last week accusing each other of initiating the talks. People also reported last week–though Kardashian denies it–that Kardashian was prepared to accept a charge of accessory to murder if Simpson pleaded guilty to manslaugh-ter. Although the plea bargain was never formally presented to the district at-torney’s office, it was mentioned, carefully and informally, to one of the lead prosecutors. That prosecutor told Shapiro the district attorney would never agree.
In the ensuing months, Shapiro would be further eclipsed by Bailey. Simpson seemed to think Bailey had the same kind of star power he believed himself to possess. Soon, says a source, “O.J. started saying, ‘I want Bailey to do this, I want Bailey to do that.’ ” At Christmastime last year, the Bailey and Shapiro factions of the camp openly quarreled over who was leaking information to the press. Last week Shapiro said he would never again work with Cochran or speak to Bailey. Bailey responded by calling Shapiro “a sick little puppy.” (For his part, Bailey was never a constant O.J. favorite; for example, the defendant was furious after Bailey got silly during testimony related to the bloody Bruno Magli shoeprints. Says one source: “They were in love, out of love, back in love.”)
As Simpson’s designated team leader, Cochran swiftly set up a war room in his Wilshire Boulevard offices. The lawyers worked nights, weekends and holidays. Says Kardashian: “I got to hand it to Johnnie. When we were working, we always had a meal. We would work Saturdays, Sundays and nights. It was Mexican food with the platters laid out, or Chinese food or Italian food. We had great spreads! Ribs. We all gained weight.”
NOT READY TO RUMBLE
HARVEY GISS SAW MARCIA CLARK RISE through the ranks as a district attorney and considers her something of a protage. But back in July 1994, less than three weeks after the double murder, the veteran prosecutor was already saying her case was as good as lost. For two reasons: one, O.J. Simpson was an American hero and thus “an unconvictable defendant.” Second, “they’ve filed this case downtown, which means they’re going to get a downtown jury. A black jury will not convict this defendant. Forget it. It’s all over.” Says Cochran: “I know the downtown jury panel. So I felt that one of the first big breaks was obviously the case coming downtown.”
The prosecution team decided to reject professional help in selecting the jury. “I brought into the case the best jury consultant in America, the father of the art of jury selection, Donald Vinson,” says San Francisco litigator John Martel, a prosecution adviser. “And on the first day of the trial, Dr. Vinson was asked to leave the courtroom because the prosecutors were concerned that the public might feel that the jury or the jury system was being manipulated if they were using a jury consultant.” “Meanwhile,” Martel continues, “Jo-Ellan Dimitrius was literally steering the ship at that point for the defense–and you saw the jury that resulted.”
Even without his jury consultant Dimitrius, Cochran would have relished jury selection. “When the prosecutors kicked off 10 of the first 11 jurors, the [per-emptory challenges] they used were against blacks. But every time they would do it, we would get other blacks. We had 18 [prospective] jurors in view. So I knew when they kicked one off, I could see who the next one was coming, and the next one after that. So I’ll tell you quite frankly, when we got to the point where I had eight black jurors, and the alternates were so good also, I knew at the time we would at least have a diverse jury.”
Repeatedly, says Martel, the prosecutors were limited by, of all things, their “high ethical standards” and what appeared to them a tremendous circum-stantial case. “When I would suggest they should perhaps be preparing their wit-nesses very carefully, they would say, ‘We don’t want to be telling witnesses what to say,’ ” he recalls. “They were playing cricket in an alley fight.” Coch-ran agrees: “See, they had convinced themselves they had this slam-dunk case. They really believed that. But every day things would go wrong for them.”
THE JUDGE
MARCIA CLARK DISLIKES JUDGE LANCE Ito. She felt she had to pretend to play a deferential, submissive female role with him. According to one source, the judge bears no fondness for Clark either. But he was also a goad to the defense law-yers, who had to trek into Ito’s chambers to see to what they called his “petty needs.” Says defense attorney Peter Neufeld: “I was very disappointed with Judge Ito, the fact that he was so concerned with his status as a celebrity, his will-ingness to entertain personalities in chambers, to show the lawyers little videotapes of skits on television.” One day, says Neufeld, Ito brought all the lawyers into chambers to show them a clip of the “Dancing Itos” from Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. “He had thought it was great and loved it and wanted all of us to see it in chambers. You may find that amusing on a personal level, but I can as-sure you that on a professional level it is so unacceptable, for a judge who is presiding over a murder where two people lost their lives in the most gruesome and horrible fashion, and where a third person has his life on the line, to bring the lawyers into chambers to show them comic revues.” Ito even told the lawyers Simpson jokes that he had heard. Says Neufeld: “As someone who has tried cases for 20 years, I found it deplorable, and I was shocked.”
WHO OWNS YOU, BABY?
“JOHNNIE COCHRAN MAY BE THE QUARTERback, and Bob Shapiro is a running back, but O.J. Simpson is the team owner,” Alan Dershowitz, a defense consultant, told TIME last spring. Says Cochran: “If we were taking a break for 15 minutes, we would spend the whole break talking to O.J. I mean, he knows the facts and cer-tain things he wanted me to say.”
And if the trial was not going his way, Simpson went into action. Simpson was particularly alarmed in February when his friend Ron Shipp, a former cop, took the stand for the prosecution. Shipp testified that he had taken L.A.P.D. classes on domestic violence and had sat down with O.J. and Nicole–at Nicole’s request–to warn O.J. that he fit the pattern of an abuser. Worse, Shipp told the court he had been with Simpson the night he returned from Chicago and had listened as his friend described dreaming of killing Nicole. On cross-examination, Cochran’s associate Carl Douglas attempted to bully Shipp into sub-mission, bringing up his history of alcoholism and suggesting he was merely one of O.J.’s hangers–on rather than a friend.
To many observers this tactic backfired, making Shipp more sympathetic, rather than less credible. Simpson was furious. From jail, he organized a tele-phone conference with the Dream Team and announced, “I’ll decide who the running backs are in this game!” Says writer-producer Larry Schiller, who co-wrote Simp-son’s most recent book, I Want to Tell You: “The Shipp thing brought a sense of immediacy to the trial for O.J. The trial was like the Gaud mosaic in Barcelona. That was the day O.J. truly understood that any little stone out of place could cause him to spend the rest of his life in jail.” Douglas, though he remained crucial to the defense organization, never again cross-examined a major witness. And Simpson became more and more like a lawyer himself.
The testimony by neighborhood housekeeper Rosa Lopez was another low point for Simpson. A tape was played that made it appear she had been aggressively coached by Shapiro’s investigative consultant, Bill Pavelic. Simpson demanded an emergency meeting with his entire team. The lockup facility off the courtroom was not big enough, so Ito gave the lawyers special permission to use his emp-tied courtroom. By this time Simpson had changed out of his suit and back into prison garb. He was angry. “It was like a football coach of a losing team at half time just reaming everybody out,” says a participant. “He kicked ass like a football coach does. It was really surreal because he had to bawl everybody out in his handcuffs.”
Simpson could also work the nuances. though. At one point, Peter Neufeld had to argue that it was inappropriate for a defense expert to be questioned about past LSD use. Neufeld told Simpson he was thinking of comparing it to attacking Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity on the grounds of his socialist views. Says Neufeld: “O.J. turned to me and, without batting an eyelash, said, ‘Bad ex-ample. More on point, what about criticizing Sigmund Freud’s views on psycho-analysis because he used cocaine?’ ”
RACE MATTERS
SINCE FEBRUARY, CLARK HAD BEEN SEEKING advice in handling race–and the ra-cism of Mark Fuhrman–from Melanie Lomax, a prominent black attorney who is cur-rently L.A.P.D. chief Willie Williams’ lawyer. Lomax would discuss the issue with Clark during late-night phone calls. “Marcia was trying to get a handle on how the race card was being played on the jury. She was always asking what the jury was buying. She was eager to hear any idea, and she was consumed with try-ing to read the jury.” Lomax said Clark would have no credibility with the jury if she were to handle any of the race issues. Darden would have to address the matter in court.
“Chris was very angry,” says a person familiar with the consultations. “Part of his rage is that he was dealt a bad hand. Both he and Marcia were focused on trying to neutralize the Fuhrman issue. They didn’t know the depth or detail of Fuhrman’s racism. They finally decided they had to call him as a witness. If they didn’t, the defense would.”
Cochran claims he did nothing manipulative during his famous exchange over the “N word” with Darden, who insisted that the word as uttered by Fuhrman on tape was too incendiary to be heard by the mostly black jury. “First of all, I had told Darden not to take Fuhrman,” Cochran recalls. “But I was really disap-pointed with him. He came into the judge’s chamber with a copy of Andrew Hacker’s book, Two Nations. He gives Ito one of these things. I can’t believe he’s doing this. And basically, he’s saying, if you allow these jurors to hear the word it’s the most vile word in the dictionary; it’ll turn this trial into whether these jurors believe that the brothers on the street think ‘the man’ is getting a fair trial. My first reaction was to say to Darden, ‘Nigger, please…’” (The phrase is used by some blacks to silence other blacks talking nonsense.) “I was so furious with him. I felt it was an insult to all black peo-ple.” Cochran argued passionately to Ito that the jurors could hear the word and remain impartial. “When I got up and spoke, that was not scripted. That was just from my heart.”
Still, Cochran acknowledges that this was a turning point in the case. “If you look back,” he says, “people at that time understood this is gonna be a war. When it came to issues of race it was not gonna be any patty-cake.” The war would climax over the Fuhrman tapes, a pyrrhic victory for the prosecution. Says defense lawyer and Santa Clara University law-school dean Gerald Uelmen: “When I think of how close we came to not having those tapes, it sends shivers down my spine.”
Chris Darden was devastated on the day a portion of the tapes was played for the jury. After court he sat in his office more despondent than anyone had ever seen him. Though he appears to be something of a loner, in fact Darden likes to be surrounded by people. During the trial his clerks often took him out for a beer or would just sit in his office with him, saying nothing. The day the jury heard Fuhrman use the word nigger, deputy district attorney Alan Yochelson said, “Hey, Chris. Let’s get outta here. Let’s go work out.” But at the Los Angeles Athletic Club Darden could barely concentrate on exercise. He sat on a bench in front of his locker, put his head down and kept saying, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” Says Yochelson: “It was very painful for Chris, because he recognized that he was being forced to vouch for someone who was repugnant in his community.”
IF THE GLOVE FITS
DARDEN WANTED HIS FACE-OFF WITH Cochran. And he got it. “I know Chris is a mano-a-mano guy,” says Cochran. “He likes to one-up you. He likes to put it away. He likes to be real tough in trial and really impressive.” Cochran says. During a break in testimony about Simpson’s purchase of the leather gloves from Bloomingdale’s, Shapiro and Cochran decided to try the gloves on for themselves. “They felt small to me,” Cochran says, “and we both told [Simpson], ‘They’re go-ing to ask you to put the gloves on.’” It was the kind of dramatic touch Darden liked. Says Cochran: “Sure enough, just like we said, Darden said, ‘Your honor, we’d like to have a little demonstration.’”
Darden had been told by his supervisors not to make a show of the gloves, but impetuously he went ahead. Darden’s bosses sat upstairs watching television in disbelief. If Darden hadn’t asked Simpson to try on the gloves, would Cochran have? “I don’t know,” Cochran says now. “I don’t like to ask questions or do things when I don’t know what the answers are going to be. Darden forgot that. That’s something he is going to have to learn.” Hodgman offers this assessment: “If we had to do it over again, we would do the glove demonstration differ-ently.”
TO SPEAK OR NOT TO SPEAK
BY ALL ACCOUNTS, SIMPSON WAS EAGER TO speak in his own defense. Says one de-fense source: “Bailey was the only member of the team who kept arguing that O.J. should take the stand. That’s one reason O.J. liked him. He wanted to take the stand. Bailey kept saying, ‘You’ve got great charisma. You’ll blow them away.’” Cochran says he put his client through mock cross-examinations, and that he was “a very compelling witness.” In the end, though, Cochran acknowledges, “We were just concerned about all these things we had kept out. I mean there were doors we had kept closed about alleged domestic violence stuff…lots of [other] stu-pid stuff that they never proved.”
EVIDENCE
THE PROSECUTION HAD PROBLEMS. Some incongruities were never straightened out in the 16 months of investigation and trial. Why wasn’t there more blood in the Bronco? How did Simpson, if he committed the murders, manage to get rid of the clothes and weapon so fast? All that might be explained if Simpson had had an accomplice. Both the cops and the D.A.s were convinced, and still are, that Simpson, though he committed the murders himself, had some assistance. Soon af-ter the crimes, a member of the prosecution team told TIME: “There was a clean-up. He had help.” In the weeks following the murders, the cops placed a tail on Simpson’s son Jason and followed him around town. Two female detectives rented a house across from where O.J. Simpson’s friend A.C. Cowlings was staying and also followed him. However, prosecutors never gathered enough evidence to prove Simp-son had help.
The defense, however, could count on the cool expertise of forensics experts Baden and Lee. Says Cochran: “One talked about the length of the time of the struggle, the other talked about the crime scene. The prosecution had nobody who could match them. Juror No. 6 said Henry Lee was the most impressive witness in the trial.”
WORDS TO JUDGE BY
MARCIA CLARK HAD DECIDED WAY BACK in June 1994 how she wanted to conclude this case. The trial, she always knew, would have to end with the voice of Nicole Brown’s terrified voice on tape pleading for police help. Chris Darden stayed up until 4:30 in the morning writing his closing argument. What the ju-rors never heard was a line he considered in an early draft about Cochran and the role of racism in the trial: how the right of free speech does not include the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire.
To the end, however, Cochran found himself annoyed with Darden. After the prosecution rested its case, according to Cochran, Darden said, “Now Johnnie, you’re in trouble. It’s time to put up or shut up.” That was too much for Coch-ran. “Man, you know, that was an invitation. That was not wise. I took umbrage at that.”
In his closing arguments, Cochran’s most effective pitch played off the Dar-den glove gambit, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The rhythm might be that of a black Baptist preacher, but the inspiration came from Uelmen. “I first sug-gested [the phrase] after the glove experiment,” he recalls. “But what I was really proposing was that it would provide a good theme for the whole argument, because so much of the other circumstantial evidence didn’t fit into the prose-cution’s scenario.” The slogan–and the idea behind it–proved pivotal. “I was really heartened by what I’ve heard from jurors so far that they really under-stood what proving beyond a reasonable doubt was all about,” says Uelmen.
MONDAY JITTERS
ON THE EVE OF THE VERDICT, MARCIA Clark was tense. Says Lomax: “She seemed resigned. She wanted to talk about what if any good was going to come of all this, what reform of the system might happen.” Cochran was in San Francisco on Monday afternoon when he learned that the jury had reached a verdict and would deliver it the next day. By 5:45 p.m. he was at the San Francisco airport, where a small group of well-wishers surrounded him at Gate 78. “I think it’s going to be all right,” he said quietly, flashing a smile. “But we’ll see.” But as he boarded the plane, a crack showed in his mask of confidence. “It’s in God’s hands,” he said resignedly.
He spent most of the flight sipping a cola, reading, and being videotaped by a passenger. He stepped off the plane at LAX into a mob of flashing lights and anxious reporters: Did the quick verdict favor the prosecution? one asked. “Not necessarily,” Cochran replied. Was he surprised at the brevity of the delibera-tions? “Yes,” he said. “I am surprised.” Then he added that he had confidence in the jurors. “This,” said Cochran, “has been a very good jury.” He shook off the crowd and, flanked by several airport policemen and two bodyguards, at least one of them with the shaved head, suit and bow tie of a member of the Nation of Islam, ducked into a waiting black limousine, its windows darkened against the lights of Los Angeles.
IN THE D.A.’S OFFICE
THE MORNING OF THE VERDICT, THE people who worked on the 18th floor of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts building moved in a blurred slow motion. If they spoke at all, the prosecutors at the district attorney’s office did so quietly and only of matter-of-fact things like their morning cup of coffee, not about the impending decision. L.A. County sheriffs posted extra security staffers on the inside of the locked doors of the D.A.’s office. The Goldman family huddled in the prosecutors’ sanctum sanctorum, a drab room occupied mostly by cubicles and shelves lined with material from the trial–hundreds of videotapes and black three-ring binders bearing such labels as DIVORCE RECORDS and FOOTPRINTS. Fred Goldman, Ron’s father, chewed on a bagel as his daughter Kim explained that she felt O.K., actually hopeful, even amid the tension. She might even be ready, she confided, to marry her longtime boyfriend Ricardo.
As 10 a.m. approached, the Goldmans went downstairs to take their places in the courtroom. Upstairs about 40 people crowded around the single television, some sitting on the floor, some on tables, a few in chairs. Plainclothes L.A.P.D. officers mingled with young clerks for whom The People v. Orenthal James Simpson was the first exposure to the practice of law. In the room too was an assembly of friends of the prosecution, including Ron Shipp, and Nicole’s friend Candace Garvey. Also present were Garvey’s famous husband Steve, the re-tired baseball player, and Olympian Bruce Jenner and his wife Kris, who was at one time married to Robert Kardashian. While the court clerk read the verdict, Shipp closed his eyes and gripped a friend’s hand.
As the words “not guilty” sounded, as an uncertain smile flickered across Simpson’s face, the watchers were frozen–until Marcia Clark’s assistant Patti Jo Fairbanks leapt from her chair. “Oh, God, I gotta get the families up here,” she cried. Her sudden movement set the others talking or crying like a lot of windup toys. Bruce Jenner stared at the screen, muttering, “You got away with murder, you got away with murder” over and over. Deputy district attorney Yochelson blocked the television, saying to the group, “I want to tell all of you that we did the best we could. I am sorry. But I need to ask you all to please try and stay calm.” Two young African-American D.A. assistants shook their heads. One of them wept quietly. “He never did anything for our commu-nity,” she said. The D.A.’s office worried about the emotional Darden, and sev-eral people from work spent the night with him.
FREE AT LAST
BRENDA MORAN HAD SERVED ON FIVE JURIES before being picked as Juror No. 7 in the Simpson case. On two of them, her panels had found men–one of them black–guilty of murder. Moran does not take kindly to the criticism that her sixth jury was predisposed to acquitting a black man. “If we had come back with a guilty verdict in two hours, would you be seeing all of this clamor?” she asks. “I doubt it.”
But it had been an ordeal. “A lot of us put on weight,” says Moran, 45, a computer technician. “I grew depressed and cried a lot and had headaches. I sac-rificed a relationship. It ended because I didn’t want to worry about him out there any more. The financial hardships were bad. Some jurors ended up borrowing from each other. There were expenses on the weekend outings that we had to pick up ourselves.” And there had been some racial tension among the jurors in the beginning. “The whites and the Mexican would sit at one table for meals, the rest of us at another. Then one day Gina Rosborough, Juror No. 10, and I just went and sat down at their table and started talking, and that’s how we got to know them. The problem seemed to go away. It was kind of forced integration.”
The last night of sequestration–after the verdict had been reached–was spent in high spirits in the spectacular $ 1,200-a-night Presidential Suite on the 17th floor of the Hotel Inter-Continental. The jurors laughed, schmoozed and sang together as a pianist performed jazzy sing-along tunes on the suite’s baby grand. Said hotel general manager Lewis Fader, who was at the party: “They were like a fraternity. They seemed so close to each other. There was a lot of hug-ging and kissing.” A juror went back and forth drinking beer, wine, beer, wine, said one hotel staffer. “I’m sure a few of them had hangovers the next day.”
The jurors had had smaller parties before. In May, Gary Nelson, an actor-comedian from San Francisco, performed for them. Says he: “One of the ladies made a comment that they were planning a party after the trial, some kind of get-together with all the jurors, and they wanted me to come and entertain. So I said, ‘Sure, but can I bring a guest?’ And she said, ‘We’re going to bring O.J. Don’t you think the man needs a good party after all this?’ I was pretty shocked.”
Moran has good feelings about Simpson. “I felt like he was a close neighbor. If I saw him out on the street in trouble, I would help him.” She does admit that the “prosecutors had their high points. I sort of fell for [Nicole’s] 911 tape and some of the DNA testimony.” She says, however, that “they dwelled so much on the beating case. They might have won me if they had hit it and then got off it. But the prosecution seemed to make that its foundation.” The prosecu-tion’s weakest link was Vannatter. “He was my biggest doubt. Him carrying that vial of [Simpson’s] blood around for hours. There was an opportunity to sprinkle it here or there.”
“She sounded like my closing remarks!” says Cochran. “And we had been worried about her the whole time! The first time we thought we would be successful with her was when she started crying during my closing argument and went out and came back in, eyes all red, and the clerk later told me that she had said, ‘It just welled up in me after all these months.’ I thought, this may be pretty good.”
Moran won’t take more criticism. “Did the judge pick the world to hear this case? Because if he did, then somebody owes me a lot of money for doing their work. All the dollars in the world aren’t worth my sanity.” She is putting her diary and notes together for a book. And there is good news. “My boss feels sorry for me, and so he is giving me a month off.”
THE HOMECOMING
BY 11 A.M. ON OCT. 3, O.J. SIMPSON WAS home, back at 360 North Rockingham, the mansion whose gates, landscaping and layout Americans have come to know so well. One of the first things the former football star saw was the silver-haired L.A. district attorney Gil Garcetti on TV, announcing that he had no plans to look for other killers. “Garcetti!” Simpson said aloud. “He wouldn’t even give me that! Why doesn’t that guy give me something–just say he’ll look into it?” Simpson then retreated into his bedroom, sitting down on the edge of his huge bed and gazing at the space he hadn’t seen in 474 days.
Simpson made some calls. He tried to reach “those guys from Brooklyn”–defense attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld–who spent their first night of freedom enjoying another win: watching the Yankees beat the Seattle Mariners. He telephoned his former in-laws, the Browns, and made the case, yet again, for his innocence. When Simpson’s mother Eunice settled into a chair, a friend said, “he just sat down beside her and looked into her eyes. No words.”
As longtime friends, including personal assistant Cathy Randa and business attorney Skip Taft, streamed into the house, a party started up. Someone sat down at the piano, and soon everyone was singing gospel songs. One favorite that both Cochran and Simpson sang was Amazing Grace, its lyrics filled with poign-ancy.
Amazing grace- How sweet the sound– That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see …
–Reported by Elaine Lafferty, Jack E. White and James Willwerth with Patrick E. Cole, Wendy Cole, Sharon E. Epperson, David S. Jackson, Jeanne McDowell and Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York
LOAD-DATE: October 13, 1995
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO: LAPD–AP, [Mug shot of O.J. Simpson]; COLOR PHOTO: MYUNG J. CHUN–POOL, NOT GUILTY Simpson is hugged by his lead attorney Cochran as Kar-dashian and Bailey listen to the verdict [F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian, O.J. Simpson, and Johnnie Cochran]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, BEFORE THE BATTLE The defense team and the Simpson family on the trial’s first day; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, PAPERWORK From left, detectives Vanatter and Lange go over the case with district attorneys Darden and Clark [Philip Vannatter, Tom Lange, Christopher Darden, and Marcia Clark]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, ANOTHER PHONE CALL Each day during the trial, when lead defense attor-ney Cochran returned to his Los Angeles office, he would find between 60 and 100 messages waiting for him [Johnnie Cochran sitting at desk]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, WORK HORSE Clark felt over-whelmed by trial duties and looking after the victims’ families [Marcia Clark]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, NO REST ON SUNDAYS Darden worked on the trial seven days a week, often at home [Christopher Darden]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, BOMBSHELL As Fuhrman, with Vannatter at left, prepared to give his testimony, he himself became a target of investigation [Philip Vannatter and Mark Fuhrman]; TWO COLOR PHOTOS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, CLUES Evi-dence from the trial is catalogued, above; criminalists, below, search the Bronco for blood and prints [Woman with boxes and envelopes; two men checking Ford Bronco]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, POWER WALK In the early hours before court, Cochran took to the hills near his home [Johnnie Cochran]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, LETTING GO Shapiro goes after a punching bag for relaxation [Robert Shapiro]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, THE DRESSER Kardashian often brought Simpson a choice of three suits to wear to court [Robert Kardashian]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, PRIVATE EYE In April, Bailey scouted the Bundy crime scene [F. Lee Bailey]; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, CHANGING OF THE GUARD Until Cochran took over in December, the lawyers and in-vestigators met most weekends in Shapiro’s offices; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER E. SANDLER FOR TIME AND LIFE, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY After rising before dawn and spending all day in court, Clark gathers her team, and herself, for a 9 p.m. meeting [Marcia Clark]; COLOR PHOTO: REED SAXON–AP, VICTORY Simpson’s daughter Arnelle and sister Carmelita Durio celebrate his acquittal [Arnelle Simpson and Carmelita Durio]; COLOR PHOTO: STEVE STARR–SABA FOR TIME, THE END When Cochran, with his wife, saw a juror in tears during his final argument, he says, “I thought, ‘This may be pretty good’” [Johnnie Cochran and Dale Cochran]; COLOR PHOTO: OLGA SHALYGIN, REMEMBER RON AND NICOLE Kim Goldman at her brother’s grave
TYPE: COVER
Copyright 1995 Time Inc.
Kato Kaelin Chastised for His Testimony
CNN
March 27, 1995
SHOW: NEWS 11:07 am ET
Kato Kaelin Chastised for His Testimony
GUESTS: LEXIS-NEXIS Related Topics Full Article Related Topics Overview
This document contains no targeted Topics.
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
Transcript # 901-15
TYPE: Package
Key Defense Witness Flip-Flops on Alibi for Simp-son
CBS News Transcripts
March 02, 1995, Thursday
SHOW: CBS EVENING NEWS (6:30 PM ET)
KEY DEFENSE WITNESS FLIP-FLOPS ON ALIBI FOR SIMPSON
ANCHORS: CONNIE CHUNG
BYLINE: BILL WHITAKER
LENGTH: 693 words
CONNIE CHUNG, co-anchor:
A bad day for the defense at the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Simpson’s key alibi witness conceded she could not say for sure that Simpson’s car was at home at the time of the murders. Prosecutors tried today to destroy Rosa Lopez’s credibility in testimony the jury may never see. Correspondent Bill Whitaker is covering the O.J. Simpson case.
BILL WHITAKER reporting:
Under grueling cross-examination, videotaped to play later for the jury, Rosa Lopez admitted she’d falsified an unemployment application, deceived the court about having a plane reservation to El Salvador, and first denied telling a re-porter she’d heard voices from Simpson’s yard the night of the murders, until prosecutors played the news tape.
Ms. ROSA LOPEZ (Defense Witness): (From previous footage) …I don’t know; I can hear only voice. I don’t know what they talk or nothing because I can’t hear nothing very well.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER DARDEN (Assistant Prosecutor): When you told the reporter that you heard voices, didn’t you tell him that you didn’t know what time it was that you heard the voice?
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) Yes, sir.
WHITAKER: Prosecutor Chris Darden scoffed when she told him her attorney’s advice.
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) We talked about my always telling the truth, sir.
Mr. DARDEN: Ha!
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) And that’s what I’m saying now, sir.
WHITAKER: Against a barrage of questions, Lopez said she couldn’t remember the time of day, not even the time of year she first was interviewed by defense investigator Bill Pavelic.
Mr. DARDEN: What year was it?
Unidentified Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) I just know that it was in ‘94.
Mr. DARDEN: You have a hard time remembering times?
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) If I don’t have it written down, how can I remember?
WHITAKER: And what could be a stunning setback for the defense–Lopez said she couldn’t be sure of specific times the night of the murders.
Mr. DARDEN: OK. And the reason you said 8:30 to nine was because you were-n’t sure of the exact time, correct?
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) Yes, sir.
Mr. DARDEN: You were giving him your best estimate, correct?
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) That is what I told him, sir.
WHITAKER: The timing is crucial. Lopez has said she saw Simpson’s Bronco parked outside his residence at 10:15, the time prosecutors say the murders oc-curred. Today, she was less certain.
Mr. DARDEN: Did Mr. Pavelic tell you or mention to you first that you saw the Bronco at 10:15 or 10:20?
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) All I said was that it was after 10.
WHITAKER: Several times Prosecutor Darden accused Defense Attorney Cochran of coaching Lopez on the witness stand.
Mr. DARDEN: You never saw Mr. Cochran make a motion like this…
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Mr. DARDEN: …with his hands?
Translator: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) No, sir.
WHITAKER: Now Cochran called that ludicrous and said he was only signaling the court reporter. Judge Ito accepted his explanation.
Lopez is still on the stand. Some observers see her as a liar, others as sympathetic. What matters is how the jury sees her and whether they get to see her videotaped testimony at all. Connie.
CHUNG: Bill Whitaker in Los Angeles.
One more note about the Simpson trial: Marcia Clark’s estranged husband is suing for custody of their two children, saying the Simpson case is keeping her from giving the children the attention they need. In response, Marcia Clark says she is devoted to the children and they are more important to her than any-thing.
DAN RATHER (Co-anchor): Fraud on wheels: taxi companies stealing millions of dollars from you. That story still ahead. Also tonight, busting the fugitive who busted the bank. And should fox hunting be hounded out of existence? The fur is flying.
LOAD-DATE: March 02, 1995, Thursday
LANGUAGE: English
TYPE: Newscast