At the prosecution table, Chris Darden and Marcia Clark were joined by Brian Kelberg. For the defense, in the front row sat myself, Cochran, O.J., Bob Blasier, Peter Neufeld, and Gerry Uelmen; behind us were Carl Douglas, Robert Kardashian, and Barry Scheck.
Looking very stern, Judge Ito addressed the jury. “It is now my duty to instruct you on the law as it applies to this case.… You must accept and follow the law as I state it to you, whether or not you agree with the law. You must not be influenced by pity for the defendant or prejudice against him. You must not be influenced by sentiment, sympathy, conjecture, passion, prejudice, public opinion, or public feeling. You must weigh the evidence, apply the law, and reach a just verdict regardless of the consequence.”
The jury was tired. Juror number one, our odds-on favorite for foreman, was the only one taking notes. When Ito read the instruction that the defendant had no obligation to prove who committed these crimes, she carefully wrote it down.
Number two was clearly exhausted, with heavy eyes and mussed hair, looking like a student who had just finished her last final. Number three determinedly showed no change in her expression. Number four looked sleepy, with bags under his eyes and the youthful smile fading. Number five had looked exhausted for weeks; we ’d heard the day before that she was taking pain medication for an infection, and I wondered about her ability or even her willingness to concentrate.
Juror number six had his right hand under his chin, looking stoic, ready to decide. Number seven seemed angry, as though she had no interest in the closing statements. “Why are they doing this?” her expression said. “I ’m ready to deliberate now.”
Juror number eight was very focused and seemed the least weary. Number nine had routinely shown more expression than anyone else and often seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve. Number ten was sitting up ramrod straight, looking directly at Ito.
Number eleven was the least expressive and most anonymous. Youth has its advantages, and throughout the trial, she had rarely showed any stress. Number twelve looked resigned, somehow pragmatic, as though thinking, “Life goes on. Let ’s get on with it.”
The two remaining alternates were clearly ready to go home. The man looked sharp, the only one in a suit and tie on a Friday when everyone else wore jeans and a T-shirt. The woman seemed downcast, isolated from the others now that she knew she was not going to be deliberating after months of hearing evidence.
As Ito delivered his instructions, O.J. was fingering the family Bible on the table in front of him. Ito ’s clerk, Deirdre Robertson, kept opening mail at her desk. It was so quiet in the courtroom, you could hear the paper tear.
Fred Goldman was leaning forward, his eyes on Ito. His wife was sitting back in her chair. They were holding hands and silently praying, their hands clasped so tightly the skin looked like marble. Their daughter Kim looked like she would burst into tears any minute. It was almost over for us, yet for them, it must have seemed endless. When I caught Goldman ’s eye, he looked back with pure hatred. And I understood it. I wanted to reach out to him, to tell him I was sorry. I knew I would never, never be able to do that.
Arnelle was the only Simpson family member in court that day. She was rubbing her head, a clear sign of stress and fear, and halfway through the judge ’s instructions, she began to cry. When Ito began, I noted the time: 10:20 A.M. and fifty seconds. At the finish, it was 11:57 A.M. and thirty seconds. Except for the sound of Arnelle weeping, the room was totally silent.
September 25, the night before closing statements were to begin, was Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish New Year. We attended services at Stephen Weiss Temple. Rabbi Zeldin gave me the Torah to hold throughout the entire service, announcing to the congregation that “Bob Shapiro has the honor of holding the Torah because he ’s going to need this blessing in the new year more than anyone.” It was an astonishing gesture of faith and support on his part, and one for which he would be roundly criticized in the days to come. I was profoundly grateful for it.
On September 26, the prosecution began their closing statements. Marcia Clark would speak first.
That morning, I arrived at the courthouse to the largest crowd since the beginning of the case. O.J. and I met in the lockup briefly. My adrenaline was pumping. I turned to O.J. and said, “I can ’t imagine how you feel.”
He was hyper, his words coming faster than usual. He was upset about his clothes. “They took the tie I usually wear with this,” he said distractedly. As we walked in, he said, “Marcia Clark ’s going to do a great job.”
We would get only one chance in front of the jury; the prosecution, since they were allowed to rebut, would get two. “We ’re ready,” Johnnie said, reassuring O.J. “We ’re ready.”
Before court started, Juditha Brown and Eunice Simpson, in her wheelchair, were whispering out in the hall, their heads close together. They may have been sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom, but the most important thing to them was always that they were grandmothers to the same children. Juditha later came into the courtroom with Tanya Brown; neither Denise nor Lou was there. Arnelle and Jason Simpson weren ’t there; O.J. ’s mother and two sisters were. The three Goldmans were there.
Behind the families were the friends. From where I sat at the end of the defense table, I could see them all. Steve and Candace Garvey. The musician David Foster and his wife Linda, formerly married to Bruce Jenner. Bruce Jenner with his wife, Kris, formerly married to Bob Kardashian. In spite of their differences and personal histories, all of these couples had raised children and stepchildren together, going to O.J. and Nicole ’s for birthdays and barbecues. Since the murders, many of the friendships had ended. Now they were sitting uncomfortably close, waiting tensely as the story moved to its conclusion.
As Marcia Clark began speaking, Tanya Brown dropped her head into her hands and sighed audibly enough to be heard. O.J. was breathing heavily. The jury was completely riveted on Marcia. She was almost matter-of-fact, yet soft.
She knew that she had to separate her own credibility from Mark Fuhrman ’s. She came down hard on him. “Did he lie about the n word?” she asked, and then answered, “Yes. Do we wish no such person belonged to the L.A.P.D.? Yes. Do we wish no such person were on the planet?” she asked, and again answered in the affirmative. She was eloquent in her dismissal of him, and in the dismissal of the planted-glove theory. But I wondered: Is this good enough to get the sound of his voice on the tapes out of the jurors ’ memories?
She weakened a little at the motive, and what she called the planning, noting that O.J. borrowed cash from Kato. However, as she moved to the murders themselves, O.J. and Tanya Brown started crying at the same time. Fred Goldman had his jacket off. Arnelle sat with her head buried in her hands, her aunt ’s hand on her back.
Suddenly there was an interruption. A camera had focused on O.J. ’s hand as he wrote something on the legal pad in front of him. Judge Ito stopped the proceeding, saying that what had happened was a clear intrusion on the attorney-client privilege. He was thinking of ending the camera coverage, he said. Soon, however, he relented, and once again, Clark continued her closing.
“These are not efficient murders,” Clark said. “They are slaughters.” As she spoke, O.J. and Tanya again started to cry. I could hear Fred Goldman breathing heavily behind me, and as his son was mentioned, he too began weeping. “Open up the windows,” Clark said. “Let the cool wind of reason come in.”
Chris Darden ’s closing came after Marcia ’s, and it was his best lawyering of the entire trial. He was passionate, straightforward, and spoke from the heart, with complete conviction.
When he talked about Nicole ’s move to Bundy, O.J. leaned over and whispered, “He ’s got the dates wrong, what ’s he talking about?” When he talked about Simpson being a time bomb ticking away, O.J. said, “That ’s wrong. I gave it a year; we broke up, we agreed it was best. Why is he saying I was angry at the recital? He ’s stretching like I can ’t believe. All anybody has to do is lo
ok at that video. I wasn ’t mad.” Judge Ito gave me a now-familiar look. He could hear every word O.J. was saying.
We were haunted by Johnnie ’s opening statements. Darden and Clark hammered on Rosa Lopez, on Mary Anne Gerchas and the four men running away from Bundy. These were all witnesses we never called. “I ’m just the messenger for Nicole,” Darden was saying. “She wanted you to know, she left you a road map.”
We recessed for the day before Darden had completed his statements, so he finished the next morning when we all returned to court. He attacked Aronson and Mendel, our two straightforward, credible timeline witnesses. I would ’ve ended with the 911 tapes. Darden made an error, closing by trying to rebut the defense case.
For our side, Cochran began his close by taking direct aim at the L.A.P.D., calling it “an infected investigation by a corrupt detective and a bumbling cesspool of a lab.” He challenged the mountain of evidence, especially the so-called blood trail. “If he had bloody clothes, bloody gloves, bloody shoes, then where ’s the blood on the doorknob? On the carpet?” Yet Cochran also lapsed into phony histrionics. He put on the knit cap, asking, “Who am I? I ’m Johnnie Cochran, with a cap on. If it doesn ’t fit, you must acquit.” He took a swipe at Chris Darden ’s “messenger” reference by recalling Mark Fuhrman ’s message. “The message can ’t be trusted,” he said.
The next morning, Cochran came back to continue his close. At first, he talked from his heart, he talked from his soul, he talked from the Bible. It was almost as if he was preaching. His rhythm would get going, and you almost expected the jury to fall into a call-and-response pattern. “If you ’re untruthful in small things, you cannot be believed in large things,” he said.
It was a musical style, a cadence that had served him well throughout his career, especially with black jurors. My concern was that the majority of the black jurors were already in our camp and that Johnnie ’s arguments now should be addressed to those who we ’d felt were pro-prosecution. We needed to woo those who might be on the fence. How would they hear what Johnnie was saying?
And then he made a terrible mistake. He linked Fuhrman, a banal, petty, mindless racist, with the most monstrous murderer of all time, Adolph Hitler. In less than a minute, he accelerated from a corrupt Los Angeles cop to the Holocaust itself, suggesting to this jury that they could stop Fuhrman, as the Germans had not stopped Hitler. “Maybe this is why you ’re sitting here, the right people, at the right time,” he said. It was gratuitous, inflammatory, and just plain wrong. Worse, as far as this case was concerned, it was completely unnecessary.
Barry Scheck ’s portion of the closing statement went a long way toward restoring my faith. “Ladies and gentlemen, as you ’ve heard, my partner Peter Neufeld and I are from New York. More specifically, we ’re from Brooklyn,” he began, and then proceeded, point by point, to rebut the prosecution ’s forensics evidence.
Using Dr. Lee ’s example of cockroaches in the bowl of spaghetti, he pointed to Nicole ’s blood planted on O.J. ’s socks, and O.J. ’s blood showing up after the murders on the rear gate at Nicole ’s condominium. “How many cockroaches do you need?” he asked.
“Every explanation that they ’re desperately trying to come up with is a highly improbable influence,” Scheck said. “The most likely and probable explanation is the one that is not for the timid or the faint of heart: Somebody played with this evidence!”
That ’s what this case is all about, I thought. Ito had told the jury from the beginning that a defense team has no burden— they don ’t have to prove anything. But we had proved something. We ’d proved reasonable doubt.
“That ’s a reasonable doubt for this case,” Scheck continued. “Period. End of sentence. End of this case.”
Johnnie then came back to finish. He defined reasonable doubt for them, with a simple emotion and articulation that surpassed Ito. He quoted Abraham Lincoln, he quoted the philosopher Cicero, he once again quoted the Bible. “You can ’t trust their message,” he told the jury. “If it doesn ’t fit, you must acquit.”
The following morning, the prosecution came back for their rebuttal arguments. Chris Darden spoke first, briefly confusing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence but nevertheless acquitting himself reasonably well. But he was tired, as we all were, and could not bring back the emotion of the day before.
When Clark followed him, she, too, made mistakes, only this time it was because she went too far with her emotion, leaving simplicity and logic behind. She pleaded for the jury to believe her. “You can trust me that this evidence is good evidence,” she said. “I wouldn ’t bring this case before you if I didn ’t believe that it was a good case.”
Johnnie Cochran and Barry Scheck interrupted Clark ’s second close with more than sixty objections to her personal assurances to the jury that all the prosecution ’s evidence was solid and reliable.
Objecting during closing arguments is a matter of style. The general rule is that people don ’t interrupt the other side. Not only is it discourteous, but jurors tend to hold it against you. They don ’t like it when you ’re rude. Lawyers will generally hold or reserve an objection until the very end, unless it is something that is so harmful and inappropriate that it must be addressed immediately by the judge. That was the case here. Ito sent the jury out of the room, and then he strongly cautioned Clark not to use her personal opinions in the case. “We ’re close here, Counsel,” Ito said.
“Your Honor, this has been highly improper,” said an agitated Scheck, still standing from his last objection.
“Sit down!” the judge told him. And then he repeated, “You ’re close, Miss Clark.”
“When Counsel takes off the gloves,” Clark argued, “saying basically that we ’re criminals, then we have the right under the law to correct that misimpression.”
“But this is way, way over the line,” Scheck said. “I mean, I ’ve been teaching law for eighteen years, and I ’ve never heard this kind of stuff.”
Finally Ito said, “Miss Clark, I don ’t want to hear any more ‘I ’ s. ’”
“Right,” Clark answered.
When closing arguments had been completed, Judge Ito at last sent the jury out to deliberate. As he did, he reminded them, “You are not partisans or advocates, but impartial judges of fact.”
As I watched them leave the courtroom, I began to replay the last sixteen months in my mind. We gave him the best we had, I thought. Every area of reasonable doubt had been explored, examined, and exposed. I truly did not expect a conviction. The worst-case scenario was that it would be a hung jury; Garcetti had already said if that happened, he ’d retry the case.
I expected the verdict to come in two, maybe three weeks. Johnnie needed to make a business trip east, so he asked that we be put on twenty-four-hour call. Ito denied that, saying that everyone had to be available immediately. He simply was not going to inconvenience this jury one more day.
Three minutes after the jury left the courtroom, the buzzer from the jury room sounded: They had picked a foreman. It was their first unanimous decision. As we ’d expected, they had selected juror number one, Armanda Cooley. From the very beginning of the trial, juror number one seemed to take everything in stride. Whenever there was a crisis, she came into meetings with a smile on her face, willing and able to make suggestions that found agreement from the judge, the lawyers, and the rest of the jury. Whenever hostilities came up, her name was never on the list of transgressors. For months, she had been the center of warmth and common sense toward which the other jurors seemed to gravitate.
On Monday, after one more sequestered weekend, the jury would begin to deliberate.
Chapter Twenty-three
The reward for winning is to be tossed right back into the pit.
GERRY SPENCE
Aside from the judge ’s instructions to the jury, which are pertinent to each case, there is no primer, no rule book from the American Bar Association or the Supreme Court, no words from the judge, that
tell a jury how to do its job. There are only two basic directives: The first is to elect a foreman, the second is to keep an open mind. There is no set procedure that dictates what follows.
The jury had spent 266 days in sequestration; only half of those had been spent in court. The rest were spent in limbo, wondering what it was that had sent them out of court this time, and destined not to know until after they ’d completed their deliberation and delivered a verdict—unless, of course, conjugal visits had delivered contraband information. There was no way for any of us to gauge what effect the enforced isolation would have on them, or on their deliberation process.
The lawyers, their families, and their staffs spent that weekend knowing there was nothing else that could have been done, and nothing else to do. For months, we had all led our lives inside that courtroom, and the first order of business was housekeeping. Pack it up and move it out. Files, computers, fax machines, more files. And all the while, the random thoughts kept coming into my head. Second-guessing myself. What will the jury do? And after they do it, what will I do? What will O.J. do?
I suspected that we were going to get a hung jury and the case would go back to court for a second trial.
“What will you do if that happens?” Linell asked one evening. It was easy to read her face, to see that she was anxious, afraid of what she might hear from me. I knew that if she didn ’t like what she heard, she was ready to put up a fight.
At first, I wasn ’t sure how to answer her.. For the past eighteen months, I had worked on nothing but this case. I went to sleep thinking of it, woke up thinking of it, and often dreamed about it in between. Although I worked on one civil matter that fortunately was settled without a trial, I hadn ’t accepted any new clients, nor had I appeared on any other case. I hadn ’t read a book, other than judicial books or DNA books. I saw only three movies. Oh, sure, I ’d spent time with my wife and kids and done things with them, but my mind was always someplace else, and they knew it. Unwittingly, I ’d become a kind of silent member of my own family.
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