Chapter Seventeen
In the spring, Kato Kaelin ’s book deal with Marc Elliot was announced; sixteen hours of taped interviews that Kaelin had done with Elliot were turned over to the prosecution by the author. I saw Kaelin some time later, at an engagement party for Larry King. I made a deliberate point not to talk to him.
Marcia Clark could have recalled Kato after the news of the book deal came out and impeached his earlier testimony that there was no book in the works. For whatever reason, she made a strategic decision not to do so.
On May 1, L.A.P.D. criminalist Gregory Matheson took the stand for five days of blood-evidence testimony. The prosecution ’s DNA strategy had become defensive: Every single issue that we ’d raised in opening arguments or shown in our charts, which were required by the new rules of evidence, they immediately tried to counter. It was as if we had presented the case and they now had to rebut it.
One of the issues raised in Matheson ’s testimony was the finding of Nicole ’s blood on one of O.J. ’s socks, which had been retrieved at Rockingham.
When the socks were initially examined by the crime lab personnel immediately after the murders, no blood was present. They countered this with, “Well, this was a dark sock, and blood couldn ’t be seen.” However, twelve items of evidence, including a shirt, gloves, and a scarf, were collected from Rockingham and tested for blood traces, in a procedure called a phenothaline preliminary test. However, the thirteenth item, the sock, was never tested. Two weeks after the evidence collection, our experts, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Barbara Wolf, along with Michelle Kestler from the L.A.P.D. lab, had looked at the same sock, and no blood was noted. It wasn ’t until two months later that blood was found.
There were other questionable factors as well. For example, the sock was found on a pale Oriental carpet. If the sock was wet with blood when it was dropped there, why was there no trace of blood on the carpet? The blood was on the ankle of the sock, having seeped from one side of the sock to the other; if someone had been wearing the sock when the blood got on it, that seepage couldn ’t have happened.
As the prosecution heated up the DNA wars, Rock Harmon had reportedly been calling and talking to some of our expert witnesses, trying to get information from them beyond what we ’d presented in discovery. We prepared a motion asking for sanctions against him; Barry Scheck was low-keyed and understated as he presented the argument. Harmon, however, was absolutely obnoxious, referring to the defense as the “rogue ’s gallery, not interested in the truth.”
“They had a great April,” he said, “but now they ’re afraid of a bad May.” Although Ito didn ’t sanction Harmon, he did call his behavior reprehensible, which gave us a nickname for him: Reprehensible Rock.
When you have a blood test, the standard-size tube into which that blood goes holds ten ccs. There are thirty ccs to an ounce, so the amount in the tube is about a third of an ounce.
In the preliminary hearing, during my cross-examination of Thano Peratis, the L.A.P.D. nurse, Peratis testified that he drew 7.9 to 8.1 full ccs of O.J. ’s blood at the police lab on June 13. I then asked him how he knew he ’d drawn that precise amount. His answer was, “I looked at the tube”—which was calibrated. The prosecution was adamant that after being used in standard serology tests, there wasn ’t enough of O.J. ’s blood (and DNA) remaining to be planted anywhere. However, Bob Blasier, Scheck, and Neufeld had prepared a chart illustrating that after the amount of blood used for lab tests had been subtracted, approximately 1.5 ccs of O.J. ’s blood was unaccounted for. We wanted that chart admitted into evidence for when Peratis testified in the trial.
Consulting with Harmon, district attorney Hank Goldberg set up a pattern of objecting to almost every sentence out of Blasier ’s mouth, throwing off his tempo and irritating Ito in the process. “You ’ve made the same point about eight times, Mr. Goldberg,” Ito said. In the jury box, jurors were nodding off.
Ultimately, the chart was admitted into evidence; we planned to use it a few weeks later, when questioning Peratis again.
Early in May, we had a defense team meeting with Skip Taft, and one of the items on the table was my continuing lack of cooperation in signing photographs, specifically one of O.J., Johnnie, and me together. Taft estimated that he could realize between sixty and eighty thousand dollars per thousand autographed pictures, which were sold to a wholesaler in Florida.
Cochran had asked for an opinion from the state bar, which said there was nothing unethical about it; he and O.J. had already signed a thousand. The argument, of course, was that it was one way to get a few of our bills paid.
I was more than willing to respond to requests from charities, who frequently auctioned off the trial memorabilia. I had sent autographed copies of O.J. ’s book (with signatures from Johnnie, O.J., and me) to at least one hundred of them, and sent signed photographs and ties that I ’d worn in court as well. However, I believed that selling signatures during the course of a trial was unprofessional, and I simply refused to do it. “If you want to make us into whores,” I told Taft, “don ’t make us streetwalkers.”
Early in May, I finally went to one of Grant ’s Little League games, at Roxbury Park. In the third inning, Kevin Upton, another player ’s father, turned to me and said, “Ronald Reagan ’s here.” I waited to hear what the joke was, and he said, “No, he ’s really here.”
I turned and there he was, wearing a baseball cap and a red, white, and blue jogging suit, walking between two Secret Service men. He went behind the home-plate screen and stood watching the kids for almost an inning. No one approached him.
I went into the dugout and told the kids that the President was there watching the game, that this was a historic moment for them. I wanted to greet him, and I wanted my boys to have this opportunity to shake hands with an American president, and perhaps to understand how unique a moment this was. I asked the Secret Service if we could speak with him, and they said yes.
I ’d seen President Reagan before; his office is in the same building as mine in Century City, and before his illness, he was often in, coming and going through the halls with one or two Secret Service men, waving as he got into his car at the end of the day. But this was the first time I had spoken with him. It was not long after Reagan ’s public announcement of Alzheimer ’s, yet he seemed in great shape, robust and clear-eyed, with color in his cheeks and a firm handshake. He stood perfectly erect, as though at attention, and was graceful and patient as the boys and their parents came up to be introduced. Grant stood right next to me, shaking hands with the President and smiling up at him.
It was the first time I had ever seen or talked to a president outside of an organized political setting, and it was with a certain awe that I spoke with him. Even though I hadn ’t agreed with his policies, I had great respect for him and for the office he ’d held for eight years. He had shown great courage in surviving a serious assassination attempt, and in spite of great criticism, he had never wavered about his beliefs or convictions. That, I said, was truly admirable. “Thank you very much,” he said, and smiled the legendary smile.
I watched as he and the Secret Service men continued on their walk. It ’s one thing to argue politics. It ’s another to actually meet a president. He had been the most powerful man in the free world, and there he was, on a Sunday afternoon, watching boys play ball in the park. I thought it was quite remarkable.
On May 8, the People called John Meraz, the tow-truck driver who had taken the Bronco from Rockingham back to the impound lot. It was Meraz ’s testimony that the car had been locked when he towed it. Cochran did the cross, and O.J. was concerned, as he always was with the civilian witnesses, that Johnnie was pressing too hard on Meraz about the car being locked.
“Do we have to attack everybody?” he asked.
We needed to know if Meraz saw blood either inside or outside of the Bronco, so Cochran asked him. Given my rule about how dangerous questions are when you don ’t know the answer, I tensed up for a momen
t. But we got the answer we wanted: No, Meraz didn ’t see any blood.
Each member of the defense team had an ergonomically designed chair that had been donated by a company in Los Angeles called Relax-the-Back. One day during court, while Johnnie was trying to adjust his, he hit the wrong button, released the back support, and nearly fell backward out of the chair. Then, in an effort to bring the back up, he pushed the middle button (which controls the seat height), and crashed to the floor. I started laughing and had to turn away, literally biting my cheeks. No one in the audience had noticed except the bailiff and Detective Vannatter, and Vannatter had gone red-faced with laughter, fighting to keep from making any noise. O.J. was looking down at Johnnie like he had just arrived from another planet.
I thought, I have to get a grip here or I ’ll explode. Concentrating as hard as I could on getting Johnnie up, then helping him to readjust his chair, I finally conquered my overwhelming desire to giggle. Vannatter and I studiously avoided eye contact the rest of the day.
Larry Schiller, O.J. ’s book collaborator, had worked with Norman Mailer on the research for The Executioner ’s Song. When Mailer came to Los Angeles to launch the book tour for his new novel, Schiller invited Linell and me to attend a small dinner party at Spago in Mailer ’s honor. Johnnie was there with his wife, Dale, and Bob Kardashian and Barry Scheck also attended. It felt a little like we were all out on a school night.
I ’ve always been a fan of Mailer ’s, and we share a love for boxing. He told me that he ’d become interested in it later in life, as I did, although he had boxed a bit as a kid. We had both boxed with our own kids. Mailer said he thought there was probably something very tribal in that.
My boys, on their own and with little encouragement from me, had begun to develop an interest in boxing, especially Brent, who was talking about getting involved in Golden Gloves. He was going through a growth spurt, getting tall and leggy, and becoming tough as nails. The competitive instinct was there between him and Grant, and between them and me. I didn ’t mind giving them the advantage when we were sparring—I didn ’t need to boost my ego by beating my kids at sports.
Once I told Brent he could hit me as hard as he wanted, as long as he hit below the neck. I ’d be defensive, but I wouldn ’t hit back. He obligingly pounded away at my stomach, and then without warning threw a right to my face. Instantly, almost as a reflex action, I came back with a short jab, and connected. His nose bled, his mouth was cut, and I ended our session washing the blood off my son ’s face with a hose in the yard. I felt absolutely horrible about what I ’d done. And I knew that I wouldn ’t be able to keep up with him much longer.
One of my dinner companions that night at Spago was the actor Martin Landau, who ’d won an Oscar that spring for Ed Wood. When he asked how the trial was going, I made a crack about Mission: Impossible. I was rewarded with a smile from my wife, who was used to my Hollywood faux pas and had been holding her breath in case I didn ’t know to whom I was talking.
“How are you doing with all the celebrity stuff?” Landau asked.
“I ’m mixed about it,” I said. “I like being acknowledged for being good at my job. And we all know that this has more to do with O.J. than it does with any of us as individuals. The tabloid stuff is pretty hard to take for my family, though.”
He nodded. “I can imagine,” he said. “Actors put our hands up for celebrity. We want people to know who we are, and losing privacy is the trade-off. But it ’s different for you guys.” He was watching Barry Scheck across the room, surrounded by a circle of admirers.
Later in the evening, Warren Beatty came in. Beatty is known as something of an expert on reluctant celebrity. His private life has been the subject of intense press scrutiny for three decades.
Beatty ’s also a student of the American political and legal system, and our conversation about privacy included his acknowledgment of the right of the press to “get the story.”
“There ’s a downside to it, though, Bob,” he said. “Once you forfeit your right to privacy, you never get it back.”
On May 8, we got our first look at George “Woody” Clarke, who had come from San Diego to work through the prosecution ’s DNA analysis testimony with Cellmark lab director Robin Cotton. It was immediately apparent that Clarke had poise and style, and his presentation with Cotton was well prepared. Good graphics, easily understood questions, and an easy manner on both their parts made the dense material somewhat easier on the palate.
If I had been one of the prosecutors, I would ’ve been beaming all through Cotton ’s testimony, she was that good. Highly educated, warm and affable, she was the high school teacher you hoped you ’d get. If she didn ’t know something, she readily admitted it. What she did know, she did her best to make understandable to the jury, rather than boost her own ego by staying with esoteric or indecipherable scientific technology.
However, DNA isn ’t inherently fascinating to the lay audience, even in this case, and thus the effective Clarke-Cotton team lost their audience. By the third day, the most diligent note-taking jurors had put their pencils down, Cochran and I were both fading, and O.J., who had only his cell to go back to, was nevertheless gazing longingly at the door.
I had been talking with Dr. Henry Lee about how much blood can come from a nick or a scrape, and how a drop of blood expands upon contact with the ground. I started doing experiments at home with water in an eyedropper, dropping it on different surfaces from different heights. I was surprised to find that a drop from three feet would end up between the size of a nickel and a dime. I then tried it with cooking oil, and got the same result. But I wanted to see what would happen with blood.
While shaving, I took the razor and made a little slice in my chin. I was immediately rewarded with blood—far more than I had expected. Even hitting what I thought was the right pressure point, I couldn ’t shut the blood off with a hand towel, and in minutes there was blood all over the tile on the bathroom floor. Minutes after that, the towel was soaked through.
Once the bleeding had finally stopped, I made sure I took the towel in the car with me. I picked Johnnie up on the way to court and showed him the towel.
“Bob, you ’ll do anything for a client, won ’t you?” he said, laughing.
I put the towel into my briefcase and took it into the courthouse. I showed it to Judge Ito and the prosecution team, telling them I would have liked to be able to show it to the jury. No one was amused.
Perhaps the greatest misconception in this case is the prosecution ’s “mountain of evidence” versus the amount of blood that was actually found. At the Bundy crime scene, the blood from the victims was of course enormous, as large an amount as the police had ever seen. But the amount there that was not the victims ’ that was available for analysis—the drops of blood leading away from the Bundy crime scene—amounted to four blood drops inside the walkway, and one outside the walkway, each the size of a dime. If these were all left there at the same time, as the prosecution contended, each should ’ve had relatively the same amount of human DNA. A drop of blood will contain approximately fifteen hundred nanograms of DNA. However, the four drops inside the walkway had amounts varying from two to ten nanograms, much less than anyone would expect, even with degradation. The drop outside the walkway contained thirty-five nanograms. The blood on the sock found in O.J. ’s bedroom contained upward of one thousand nanograms of DNA—ten times more than all the other blood samples combined.
Bacteria causes degradation, and degradation causes a loss of sample. The blood on the gate behind the Bundy residence wasn ’t seen by any of the detectives or technicians until three weeks after the murders, long after everything had been washed down. Yet that blood had more DNA than the samples found on the ground, and was less degraded than the blood on the ground. How was this possible?
It was not the obligation of the Simpson defense to prove how the blood got there, when it got there, why it got there, whether it was planted there, whether it had been th
ere for some period of time, whether it was contaminated, whether it came from sloppy techniques in the lab, or whether the reference samples of O.J. ’s blood, when they were opened in the lab, spewed out onto other samples. This was not our job. Our job was to ask the questions, point out the improbables. For every single item—sock, glove, knit hat, blood—we were able to show doubt, reasonable and real.
Early in May, Gerry Uelmen and I met with the judge and the prosecution away from the jury to discuss the admissibility of the autopsy photographs. Uelmen had been teaching full-time but had agreed to return for motions whenever we felt we needed him in court.
The assistant district attorney who would be arguing for the prosecution was Brian Kelberg, a medical/legal specialist who had attended medical school before law school. He would be examining the deputy coroner, Dr. Golden, and trying to diminish the impact of his performance in the preliminary hearings.
Kelberg wasted no time in telling us how he was going to present Golden as a witness. He was first going to go through the mistakes that Golden had made during his career as a coroner, and then the specific mistakes he ’d made on the autopsies. His tactic was to show that this doctor had made mistakes throughout his professional life; that in fact mistakes were endemic to his career.
Kelberg ’s strategy called for the prosecution to take the lead in destroying Golden, so that we could not. And they would argue that the autopsy photographs had to be admitted into evidence, in order to show Golden ’s errors. There were wounds that he said existed that didn ’t exist; there were others he ’d referred to in his report that weren ’t evident in the photographs.
The photographs were as unimaginable as any I had ever seen, and Ito agreed. The close-up shots of the cleaned wounds, especially the ones in the neck areas, were simply incomprehensible. There was a hole in Ron Goldman ’s throat large enough for a fist, and Nicole ’s throat seemed open from end to end.
The Search for Justice Page 29