The Search for Justice

by Robert L Shapiro

  “Not specifically about this,” I answered. “Besides, Skip Taft is really watching the money, there ’s no way he ’d pick up the tab for you to be at the table.”

  “Well, you ’re wrong,” he said. “I ’ve rented a condo on Wilshire Blvd. I ’ll be there for the trial. And I ’ll be at the table. Why the hell do you think I ’ve been coming to all these meetings?”

  This was getting murkier by the minute. “Because you ’re a consultant on the case, because you wanted to be involved with what ’s going on. Harris is your computer guy, McKenna and McNally your investigators. But Lee, you ’re a consultant to the team, you ’re not one of the trial lawyers.”

  The conversation went downhill from there. Bailey wanted to know why he wasn ’t included in my fee agreement with O.J. and why, if he wasn ’t one of the trial lawyers, his name was on some of the pleadings. (Because I thought it would help out your career, I wanted to say.) The phone conversation ended badly.

  When I told Linell about it afterward, she said, “This is getting sad. You guys have known each other too long for this to happen, you have to clear it up.” So I called him the next morning. “Look, Lee, I feel awful about this,” I said. “If O.J. wants you at the table, then of course I do, too.”

  Later that afternoon there was a conference call, with Lee, Johnnie Cochran, Barry Scheck, Dershowitz in Boston, and Gerry Uelmen. F. Lee Bailey was now officially at the table. “Welcome, Lee,” boomed Johnnie. “Thanks, Johnnie,” answered Lee.

  At the end of the conversation, Johnnie closed by saying, “Oh, by the way, Bob, we ’re having a meeting in my office on the twenty-seventh.”

  “What? You said you were going to South Africa!” I said.

  “Nope, not going to South Africa,” he answered. “I ’m staying here. There ’s too much work to do. Plus we ’re having this meeting.”

  “Why didn ’t somebody tell me about it?” I asked. “You knew I ’d be here until after New Year ’s.”

  “Well, we ’ve just gotta move on, Bob,” he said. “We ’ve gotta do what we ’ve gotta do.”

  “Fine,” I said evenly. “I ’ll be back in time for the meeting.”

  “No, no,” he said quickly, “don ’t cut your trip short. You don ’t have to be here. It ’s really just my staff.”

  I then received a fax from Carl Douglas stating that Skip Taft was very concerned that costs had gotten out of hand. All future meetings would be held in Johnnie Cochran ’s office and all future travel arrangements would be made through Cochran ’s secretary. From now on, our out-of-town experts would be moved to a hotel that was fifteen dollars cheaper a night than what we ’d been paying, and in-town travel would be done by taxicab.

  The faxes really started flying. I said I ’d pay the extra money to keep Baden and Lee in the Marriott near my office, which had always given me terrific discounts. I ’d pay out of my own pocket, and I ’d also pay for the Lincoln Town Cars to get them back and forth. I wasn ’t about to have either man flagging down a cab with an armload of papers and files, trying to get downtown to the courthouse to give costly expert testimony. That would have been a waste of time and money.

  Then Bill Pavelic called me to report a phone call he ’d received from John McNally on Christmas Day. “Hey, Bill,” McNally had asked him, “what ’re you going to do once Shapiro ’s bumped from the case?”

  Pavelic was alarmed. “Bob, you know the files that left your office? They didn ’t go to Florida,” he said. “Everything went to Cochran ’s office.”

  Linell had been monitoring the goings-on with a growing concern. “Bob, something weird is going on here. What are they doing to you?”

  On the flight back to Los Angeles, Linell and I speculated on what I would find waiting for me at home. “You ’ve put your life, our lives, on hold for this trial, and now look what ’s happening,” my wife said. “People are working against you behind your back, and you ’re just too nice to see it.”

  I tried to take a more balanced approach. “Whatever ’s going on,” I said, “it ’s important not to make it bigger than it really is. With the trial about to begin, we ’re all under enough pressure, this is no time to start looking in the bushes for enemies. I don ’t want to start worrying about who I can trust and who I can ’t.”

  But Linell was adamant. “Something ’s wrong, Bob, and it goes deeper than Lee Bailey fighting to get a seat at the counsel table or equal time on television. Hold your ground with O.J. He knows that you ’ve put this all together. Do things your way, because that will be the right way. And if they decide they want Bailey and Cochran to run the show, well, fine, you can just get out of it, and we can have our lives back.”

  “I can ’t ‘get out of it ’ unless the client shows me the door, Linell,” I said. “And you know that as well as I do, I made a commitment to him, and I have to honor that.”

  On January 2, I had to wade through a press phalanx to get into the jail. “So what ’s the deal on your demotion?” shouted one reporter. “Are you getting booted off the team?” yelled another. “Is Bailey taking over?”

  “It ’s been two weeks of no O.J.,” I answered. “So somebody ’s cranking up the wheels. If I had to spend any of my time worrying about the innuendoes, the speculation, the rumors, I wouldn ’t have any time for preparation.”

  When I got inside, Johnnie was already there. There was a tension between us that had not been there before. “What ’s going on?” I asked. “Am I out?”

  When I ’d hired Cochran, it was with the full understanding that he would have a more active role once the trial started, because he was good with downtown juries, he was good with blacks, and he had a good track record for trials. I wasn ’t exactly surprised that he had stepped forward, but where I had anticipated a power shift, there now appeared to be a power struggle—or a coup. Things had changed.

  “O.J. ’s not too happy that you ’re charging a thousand dollars a day for your conference room,” Johnnie said abruptly.

  “What?” I said. “Where the hell did that information come from?”

  “We ’ve got the records,” said Johnnie. “Go talk to Skip Taft, it ’s all in there.”

  It was true, we had been paying rent to the firm for the conference room. To the firm, in which I was not yet a partner and from which I didn ’t profit one cent. “Nine hundred and seventy dollars a month,” I told Johnnie.

  Since the case had begun, we ’d occupied the biggest conference room in the firm for seven days a week, almost around the clock. It was where the investigators had worked the phones, written their reports, stored their files. The paralegals and the temporary office help camped out there, sorting the stacks of mail, collating the fourteen copies of every memo and motion. It was where the take-out food was delivered and eaten on the lunch hours and evenings when no one left the office until late.

  “Well, there ’s more to it than that,” Johnnie said. “There ’s evidence that you leaked the story to the Star.”

  After the transcripts had shown up in the Star, Pat McKenna knew that he ’d be suspected of being the culprit, since he ’d signed the tapes out of the office to take them to O.J. in the jail. So he went to the magazine immediately, and they assured him that they ’d give him a letter stating that he wasn ’t the one who ’d given Star the material. That person, according to the Star, was me—and in fact had been paid five thousand dollars for it. McKenna reported this to Kardashian, who said, “I don ’t believe that. Go back and get a copy of the five-thousand-dollar check.”

  McKenna brought back a copy of the check, made out not to me but to a third party, because, he was told, “Shapiro is so sneaky, he doesn ’t want his name appearing on anything.”

  The transcripts were somewhat favorable to O.J., so of course it only made sense that I ’d made sure they showed up in print. The source of the leaks on our decision not to hold Kelly-Frye hearings—also me. In fact, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius had it on good authority: She ’d heard it from two of Larry Kin
g ’s staffers at a Washington dinner! The conduit to CNN, the print press, the networks—all me.

  I was totally dumbfounded. “You know this is absolute and total bullshit, Johnnie!” I said. “How can you even think I ’d do anything like this? I haven ’t busted my butt and pushed these people so hard the last six months just to see everything we ’ve worked for go south now!” As my voice grew louder, I knew I could be heard all the way down the hall. But I didn ’t care. I had found myself in the role of defendant, surrounded by circumstantial evidence that bore no relationship to the truth.

  Throughout our heated discussion, Johnnie never raised his voice. He seemed to take a quiet pleasure watching me grow angrier by the minute. It was all I could do not to say, “Let ’s just step outside and settle this.”

  The next morning we all met at Johnnie ’s office, with O.J. on the speakerphone. All the rumors and stories were on the table now, and everyone seemed to accept my absolute statement that I hadn ’t leaked to the Star or to anyone else. There were apologies all around, albeit some of them subdued, and an acknowledgment that we had to find a way to close ranks.

  “We ’re being driven apart by the rumors and the leaks, and it ’s hurting the case,” I said. “I think we should all take lie-detector tests.”

  “That kind of thing wouldn ’t work in this instance,” said Bailey.

  “What about a confidentiality agreement?” Skip Taft asked. “It doesn ’t guarantee anything, of course, but it would formalize where we go from here.”

  “No, no, we don ’t need formal agreements,” Bailey said. “We ’re all professionals here.”

  It was agreed that Johnnie would be the lead lawyer at the trial, Carl Douglas would be the case manager in charge of all discovery, and I was once again the quarterback in charge of the overall defense team and strategy. We would make the decisions as to who was in court and who would examine witnesses on a day-by-day basis.

  After the meeting, I went down to the jail with Alan Dershowitz to talk quietly with my client. I was prepared to resign if that ’s what was required, and I wanted Alan with me for what might have become a difficult session. However, when we left the jail and were met by the reporters, I was able to report that no one was leaving the defense team and we were prepared to go to trial.

  The very next day, in Cochran ’s office, Bailey was ready for another fight. “You went down to the jail behind our backs,” he snapped at me. “You went down there to undermine us, to convince O.J. to see it your way.”

  Dershowitz got mad at this. “Lee, you weren ’t even there. I was. Bob wasn ’t undermining anybody. He even offered to resign, if that ’s what O.J. wanted.”

  At that point, it wasn ’t clear to me what O.J. wanted. He was on the inside, we were on the outside, and he needed us. Maybe, because of this, he wanted to be everything to everybody, so that we ’d all stay with him and keep up the fight.

  That day, someone faxed me a New York Daily News column, written by Mike McAlary. It gave all the details about the trip to Maui—Linell and me in first class, the kids in coach, the name of the hotel, the Tony DiMilo alias. I was a “Hollywood character tan-deep in makeup and significance” who had been demoted by Cochran and Bailey, both “appropriate, decent men.” Johnnie was quoted as saying, “I think Shapiro ’s gone off the deep end.”

  However, McAlary reported, Bailey was now “on the case. Even Cochran defers to his judgment now.” Hmm, I thought, wonder what Johnnie ’s response was when he saw that line.

  Directly beneath McAlary ’s column was another piece, this one equally detailed, on my demotion to a “lesser role” on the defense team. “O.J. told him in no uncertain terms that Cochran and Bailey will be taking control of the trial,” it stated.

  For Skip Taft, this was the last straw. The jury members were still out there in a post-holiday haze, not yet sequestered, and no doubt picking up reports about the squabbling defense team. Inside information was being sold, and our confidence in each other—and O.J. ’s confidence in us—was eroding. Skip asked Bill Pavelic to begin an official investigation of the leaks. Where, Skip wanted to know, was our weak link?

  In the meantime, we had to go back to court for motions, specifically on domestic abuse and Fuhrman. One night I got a call from Bailey. “Robert, do I have the privilege of riding with you to court tomorrow?”

  “You do not,” I said.

  I picked up Johnnie as usual the next morning, and when we got to court, we were both surprised to see Bailey there. “You ’re not needed today, Lee,” Johnnie told him. After court, we went back to Cochran ’s office for a closed-door strategy meeting. There came an insistent knock. “Johnnie, Bob, I ’ve got to talk to you,” said Bailey.

  I looked at Johnnie. “It ’s up to you,” I said. “I ’m not talking to him.”

  Johnnie went to the door, stepped outside for a few moments, and then came back into the room. “The source of the leaks and stories,” he said, “is John McNally.”

  Bailey had evidently decided to make retired N.Y.P.D. cop McNally his fall guy. After all, he was already off the case and safely out of Los Angeles. But I knew that McNally hadn ’t been present for my “demotion” meeting. The information from that meeting, no matter who had passed it on to the Daily News, could only have come from someone in the room with us at the time.

  A lot of things made sense now. How and why Barry Hostetler (”Spence ’s guy,” Bailey kept calling him) had been eliminated from the investigative staff. How reporters always knew where my kids ’ parties or hockey games were going to be. How Mike McAlary knew about Tony DiMilo. And why so much of the negative stuff was coming from the New York papers and columnists.

  “There ’s one thing to be learned from this,” I said. “Don ’t ever judge anyone on circumstantial evidence. It ’s impossible to defend yourself.”

  A few weeks later Bill Boyarsky, who wrote “the spin” column in the Los Angeles Times, called Star magazine directly.

  “What about the release of O.J. ’s police interview transcripts?” Boyarsky asked Kaplan. “Was it Bailey or Shapiro?” The answer, which the Times printed: “We can tell you this—it wasn ’t Shapiro.”

  While Bailey ’s betrayal was deeply painful for me and my family, other people paid a price, too. For nearly six months, McKenna, McNally, and Howard Harris had been trusted members not just of the defense team but also of my office family. They had all been together constantly, under the same pressure, eating the same take-out food and rolling their eyes at the same bad gallows humor, going to Bonnie ’s home to play pool and unwind over Mexican food and a few beers. Out of necessity, everyone ’s world had narrowed, and it was like being in the trenches or, as someone else said, like working in an emergency room. These had become close, trusting friendships.

  For me, loyalty is the key to everything worthwhile in my life. The friendships that mean the most to me are the longterm, going-back-a-long-way ones. Long-term marriage isn ’t the norm in my neighborhood, and I deeply cherish my own. The loyalty of O.J. ’s friends kept me believing in and committed to his case. And loyalty was what led me to bring Lee Bailey in on the Simpson case to begin with. Now that was over.

  In his carefully detailed report to Skip Taft a few weeks later, Bill Pavelic wrote that his investigation had revealed a “systematic and elaborate campaign of disclosures to the press, principally to columnists for Eastern papers, CNN, and supermarket tabloids. The object… to denigrate Shapiro ’s skills and his ability to keep client confidences, and to enhance Bailey ’s own modest role in the case so far.”

  Soon after the Bailey fallout, I was at home, on a conference call with Johnnie and Bill Pavelic. Bill was outlining the pointby-point chronology of everything Bailey had done, in the weeks before I was in Hawaii, and in the days since, including the leaks to the press about conversations only the lawyers could ’ve been privy to. I was adamant that Bailey be removed from this case, from anything having to do with O.J. and the upcoming trial.r />
  “Don ’t you understand, Johnnie?” I said angrily. “This isn ’t a disagreement over tactics, or style. This isn ’t some kind of personality conflict Bailey and I are having about how to conduct a defense. The man betrayed me—and the entire defense team, and O.J., too—on every conceivable level. And he undercut the public perception of the defense of this case in the process. The jury ’s not sequestered; they ’re hearing this garbage. This isn ’t me being wounded by a couple of nasty press clippings! This man lied, he cannot be trusted!”

  “I didn ’t know you felt so strongly about this, Bob,” Johnnie said on the other end of the line. “I thought this was something you ’d get over, for the good of the client.”

  “Good of the client?” I said. “It ’s the client that I ’m talking about here, don ’t you get it? Bailey took confidential information, and it sure looks like he or his people went to the press with it. Bad enough that I ’ve been insulted and betrayed by someone I ’ve trusted with my own son, for God ’s sake. O.J. ’s been betrayed too. For fame, for ego!”

  My home office is just off the master bedroom, and Linell could easily hear my end of the conversation grow more and more heated. Finally she could take it no more and came around the corner. “What ’s Cochran ’s problem?” she asked, not bothering to keep her voice down.

  “Here,” I said, handing her the phone. “You talk to him.”

  Linell had met Johnnie before he was involved in O.J. ’s case, at fundraisers or law functions. He had always been cordial to her, and pleasant, as she had been to him. Now, however, that was about to change.

  “Johnnie, this is Linell Shapiro,” she said angrily. “I have to tell you, I ’ve been listening to Bob ’s end of this conversation tonight, and I don ’t understand this. After what Lee Bailey did, why is there even a question in your mind about this? The man stabbed Bob in the back, and O.J., too. He was responsible for confidential stories about the case being leaked everywhere. This isn ’t about two men having a professional disagreement. This is about someone who ’s evil, who can ’t be trusted—by us or you or anybody else, but especially by O.J. Simpson!”