Without a Doubt

The Empty Chair

CAR TAPE. It’s now January sixth. Fifth. Something like that. It’s Thursday after New Year’s Eve. We worked all through New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. Finally took Monday off.

We mapped out our whole trial strategy. Bill wasn’t there Saturday and we finished the whole thing. Me and Hank and Chris got through the whole map of the case, which was wonderful. Bill came in on Sunday… Having Chris in there-he’s tough, he’s a fighter, he’s smart and when he gets in to do something I know he’s gonna do it perfectly.

By New Year’s, just three weeks before opening statements were set to begin, Bill Hodgman was fading before my eyes. He grew thinner and more haggard with each passing day. He wouldn’t talk to me about what was bothering him. All he would say was that he wasn’t sleeping well.

That was clear. His eyes were always bloodshot. His face was etched with fatigue. He was trying to hang in there with all the strength he could muster; I could see him struggling to get through the inhuman workload we labored under every day. But after his scuffle with the seventy-one-year-old black juror back in October, he had been out sick with the flu, or some mysterious stomach ailment, almost constantly. Bill was clearly wrestling with his own demons. Believe me, I could sympathize. Yet neither of us felt comfortable confiding our personal problems to the other. So I could only guess at what was eating him.

Bill just didn’t seem prepared to do what was required in this case: get in there and kick the shit out of the defense. Shortly after that weird episode with the juror, he got sucked into another bullshit controversy.

O. J. Simpson had been receiving jailhouse visits from Roosevelt Grier, a former NFL defensive lineman who was purportedly now a minister. Grier and the defendant met regularly in a visiting room, where they sat on either side of a glass partition. They spoke to each other by telephone. On December 14, a sheriff’s deputy who had been manning the control booth supposedly heard Simpson slam down the receiver and blurt out something that could have been interpreted as a confession. (The National Enquirer would later report an unidentified source at the jail as saying that Simpson, who was holding a Bible at the time, had exclaimed, “I did it.”)

But when all this came down, no one in the D.A.‘s office had a clue as to what Simpson had actually said. Ito had ordered the sheriffs not to say anything, and they were so scared of bad press they wouldn’t even tell us on the QT. The deputies filed a report with the court, but it was kept under seal. And so we found ourselves in a ridiculous position: the Sheriff’s Department, the judge, and the defense team all knew what Simpson had said-but we didn’t. Roosevelt Grier, of course, knew, but he wasn’t telling. He claimed that Simpson’s outburst was protected by clergyman-penitent privilege.

We took the position that it was not. For all we knew, Grier had gotten his credentials through a diploma mill. So we filed a motion compelling him to testify. Bill and I huddled to decide who should take him. I’d handled most of the motions so far. “It should be you,” I told him. I expected that this would be the sort of civilized exchange to which Bill was well suited. Grier had a reputation as a decent, principled guy. I thought he might actually welcome the opportunity to offer his testimony in a neutral and forthright manner.

My hopes quickly faded once we got to the courtroom. As Grier hulked to the witness stand, I could see that he was going to be a real handful. He carried a Bible, which he clutched as tightly as a fumbled football recovered from the twenty-yard line. He made no bones about which side he favored. He glared at Bill angrily and gave evasive, curt answers. He described his visits to Simpson as “Bible-reading sessions.” Bill had to bob and weave through Johnnie Cochran’s objections, as the Dream Team continued to insist that nothing from the so-called Bible-reading sessions could be admissible-that even a discussion of the Rams’ chances against the 49ers was covered by privilege.

Simpson beamed as Ito let them have that one. Bill tried another tack. Under oath, the deputies had described Simpson as “upset… very loud, in a raised voice… yelling.” Bill suggested that because Simpson was shouting so loudly, he’d waived confidentiality. Did Simpson indeed raise his voice over normal speaking levels? Bill asked Grier.

“No, sir,” he snapped, icily.

Bill was really rattled. When he returned to the counsel table I leaned over and whispered, “That was a tough one. You did good, partner.”

As usual, this wrangling came to no satisfactory conclusion. Ito issued another incomprehensible ruling. He agreed that Simpson had indeed shouted loudly enough for bystanders to hear him and thus had technically waived his privilege. But he-Ito-was the one who had instructed the Sheriff’s Department to set up a private receiving room for Simpson’s visitors. Now, he reasoned, these special accommodations (which, incidentally, did not include soundproofing and required the presence of a guard) had lulled Simpson into mistakenly believing that his conversations could not be overheard. In accordance with this Alice-in-Wonderland logic, he gave the decision to the defense.

Once again, Bill and I just looked at each other and shook our heads in angry amazement. We’d just been denied a possible admission of guilt.

And the episode turned out to be a disaster for Bill. Right after Grier’s appearance, a local newspaper columnist, Bill Boyarsky, scolded Bill in print for referring to the witness as “Mr.” rather than “Reverend.” This was idiotic. First of all, as one etiquette specialist later pointed out, referring to a man of the cloth as “Mr.” is perfectly respectful. But even that is beside the point. One of the very issues we were there to determine was whether Grier really was a minister! Even so, Boyarsky’s was the kind of criticism that should roll right off your back. But Bill took it to heart. The morning after the Grier episode, he called in sick again. Hank Goldberg and I had to scramble to put on the rest of the witnesses.

It is difficult for an outsider to imagine the pressures upon Bill Hodgman. All of us felt them. Beyond the usual rub of egos between attorneys and judge, we had those goddamned media commentators weighing in on a daily basis with win-loss tallies. That kind of scrutiny created a petty, puerile competition for media attention among the lawyers. I had long since resolved not to read or watch the press accounts of the trial-it was just too painful to see everything we did twisted, mangled, and misunderstood over and over again.

Nonetheless, I felt their impact in court. Every motion became an opportunity to grab headlines or sound bites that would run on the six o’clock news. Every time the defense gained a tiny, often insignificant, advantage, Bob and Johnnie would race each other to the lectern to give an interminable, meaningless oration. I would lean over to Chris and ask, “What the hell is he talking about?” And Chris would reply, “Man, don’t you watch TV?”

That was the great thing about Chris. He could put a setback into perspective with a quip. I found myself turning to him more and more for advice and support.

Since October, when I’d appointed him case manager, his cubicle had become the center of a beehive of activity. The cheap metal partitions had been rearranged to convert it to what Bill Hodgman liked to call the War Room. (Prosecutors love military talk. I, like many of my fellow deputies in Special Trials, had a big old metal cart that I’d load with briefs and haul down to court. Everyone called it the War Wagon.)

Chris’s cubicle was a little bigger than the others and it was the only one of the bunch with its own access to the hallway: the cubicle dweller’s equivalent of a corner office. In one corner stood a three-foot-high Bart Simpson doll someone had given Chris as a joke. There was also a photograph of him hugging it. We all started calling his cubicle the Roy Pod, a reference to the habit Chris and his two investigators had of referring to each another as “Roy.” Some weird inside joke. He loved the nickname so much that he ordered up special team hats with “ROY” stitched on them. He tried to give me one that read “ROY TOY.”

“In your dreams, buster,” I told him.

Chris hired five very talented law clerks. He had also brought on several Grade 1-entry-level-D.A.s. These “babycakes,” as he called them, were outstanding-eager, bright, dedicated, and willing to do anything asked of them, no matter how menial.

I was used to trying my cases alone: researching, writing, interviewing, and investigating. Everyone in Special Trials did that. So it was awkward for me at first, adjusting to the idea of clerks doing my drudge work. But during the pretrial months it became clear to me I couldn’t afford my usual approach. I was overseeing virtually every aspect of the case; when anyone had a question about anything they came to me. My bosom buddy and fellow D.A., Cheri Lewis, once threw her body across the door to block access to all comers until I had signed a document she had thrust under my nose. And of course, the defense was still bombarding us with spurious and time-consuming motions. The hours I would normally have had free for holing up in my office to work were being spent in court arguing. For the first time in my life, I had to delegate responsibility.

Chris had no trouble delegating. It used to crack me up. I’d pass the Roy Pod and find him reclining far back in his chair gazing at the ceiling. He’d be surrounded by babycakes who were either taking dictation, listening to him ruminate upon strategy, or just paying homage. I took to calling him “King Chris.” As time went on, Chris came to believe that the Pod was not a suitably impressive headquarters for a case manager. So he demanded and got an office next to mine.

Chris could be that way: jealous of his prerogatives and sullen when he didn’t get what he wanted. He was competitive. He didn’t seem to like Rockne Harmon and George “Woody” Clarke, two deputies we’d brought in from outside the county to handle DNA. Chris considered them interlopers and potential rivals. No question, Chris could be a pain in the ass-but he was a creative, battle-hardened trial lawyer. And he brought a lot of life and humor to the place. I needed him.

On Tuesday and Thursday nights, we’d go out after work. The group usually included me; Cheri Lewis; Chris; my clerk, Dana Escobar; Chris’s clerk, David Wooden; and Lisa Kahn’s clerk, Diana Martinez, who was so tough we referred to her as “the President of All the Women.” We’d truck on over to the Saratoga, a tiny bar and grill about a mile from the courthouse. It was owned by a Yugoslavian family who just loved us. They’d open the kitchen and cook us dinner. Their specialties were steak and fish, which were a little heavy for me at that hour. Although they didn’t normally serve salads, they’d indulge me with a plate of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes.

We’d always sit in the Booth, a table for eight at the back of the restaurant. One of the two TVs mounted at either end of the bar was easily visible from this spot, and on a good night they’d let us control the remote. The cops and firemen who hung off the bar stools were always buying us rounds. I don’t think I ever paid for a drink at the Saratoga. I felt safe there.

These times were especially sweet when we had some small victory to celebrate. Like when each new blood-evidence result came in, pointing the finger of guilt at no one but the defendant. “Man,” someone would say, “we got the motherfucker cold. Even the jury has to see it.” And we’d laugh. Chris and I knew what this brave talk was: whistling past the graveyard. You had to rattle sabers to ward off despair. The veterans at the table realized that. The clerks didn’t: they took the victory talk at face value. I worried about them. They had so little life experience to fall back on. How, I wondered, would they handle a bitter defeat?

On January 11, the twelve jurors and twelve alternates were formally sequestered at the Inter-Continental Hotel. Now that they were theoretically safe from the polluting effects of the media, Lance Ito finally gave us the go-ahead to argue our domestic violence motion, the conduit for getting the battering incidents into evidence.

On the defense side, Gerry Uelmen, former dean at Santa Clara University School of Law, had been assigned to damage control. His first request was to ask that the victims’ families be excluded from the courtroom. I’m frankly surprised that he had the nerve to try this. The Dream Team must have dreaded the idea of tears and outbursts-sure to underscore the fact that their client was not such a nice guy. But taking on the victims’ families was a risky public relations move.

“I’m offended by it,” Chris Darden objected. “And I’m sure the victims’ families are offended by the request.”

Ito let the families stay.

Uelmen then pointed a finger at the prosecution, accusing us of slapping the “label” of domestic violence upon this case to prejudice the public against the defendant. Statistically speaking, he explained, fewer than one percent of all cases of domestic violence end in murder.

“When we look at what was obviously a bumpy marriage,” he assured the court, “I think it is quite remarkable that it was resolved in as amicable a way as it was.”

What the defense had done was turn logic on its head. It fell to Scott Gordon to correct the misimpression. If you looked at studies of women killed by a husband or boyfriend, he explained, fully 90 percent of the victims had reported at least one prior act of abuse. Furthermore, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson fit the profile of a domestic violence murder: the killer usually bludgeons, strangles, or stabs his victim, or slashes her throat.

Lydia Bodin then went methodically through the time line of terror. She cited over sixty incidents beginning in 1977, when Connie Good saw Nicole Brown in the elevator with two black eyes, bringing the court up through the IRS letter and the events on the afternoon of June 12. And all the while, O. J. Simpson rolled his eyes, looked disgusted, laughed, and joked with his attorneys. His behavior would have been scandalous even if he were innocent of these crimes. What did he feel he could gain, I wondered, by appearing so callous?

Within the week, Lance Ito handed down his ruling. The jury could hear about the 1989 New Year’s Eve beating. They could hear about the incident in 1985 where Simpson broke the windshield of his car with a baseball bat. They could hear about the 1993 call to 911 when Simpson broke Nicole’s door. They could hear evidence from Keith Zlomsowitch and others about how the defendant had stalked Nicole. And finally we got in that IRS letter.

That decision was hailed as a victory for our side. But I could manage only a feeble hurrah. For one thing, there was a lot of important stuff that didn’t make it in: Nicole’s journals (though privately I’d known all along this was a long shot). And there was the testimony of the witness named Nancy Ney, who’d answered Nicole’s call for help on the Sojourn hotline. These items were ruled hearsay and therefore inadmissible. But they weren’t the omissions that concerned me most.

Back in December the defense had complained that we’d given them the domestic violence stuff so late that they could not respond to it. In fact, Chris and his team pulled it together as quickly as they possibly could. It was just an enormously time-consuming effort-complicated by the fact that Faye Resnick, the one person who could help us with real leads, did not cooperate with us until October, after her book was published. To sanction us for this supposed tardiness, Ito split the testimony in half, forcing us to hold off revealing the older episodes of abuse-including Connie Good’s 1977 testimony, until later in the trial. Unfortunately, the power of these episodes was cumulative. You had to start from the beginning in order to see the pattern of pathological sadism. Lance had, once again, made a misguided attempt at compromise, and in doing so, he’d crippled our domestic violence case from its infancy.

On the evening the ruling came down, I joined my colleagues at the Saratoga to celebrate. Yet, as I slid into the Booth, shoulder to shoulder with my ebullient trench buddies, I felt miles apart from them. Chris, Scott, Lydia, and their adherents were right, of course. This was a case of domestic violence that ended in murder. But I knew from experience, both personal and professional, that the very mention of the words “domestic violence” aroused volatile emotions in people. There was no telling what kind of response they might elicit from our jury. The fact that most of our jurors were women was no comfort to me: female jurors often view victims of domestic violence with uncomprehending disdain. On top of this, we had the complications of race and celebrity. This did not mean that our female jurors couldn’t be brought around, but we would have to proceed cautiously.

If it appeared that the domestic violence evidence was alienating our jury, someone would have to make the strategic call to stand down. It would not be a popular move, certainly not within our office. But somewhere down the line a tough decision might have to be made. And even as I lifted a glass to victory, I realized the person to make it would have to be me.

It was barely ten days before opening arguments were set to begin. For several weeks now, I’d been channeling work away from Bill onto Chris’s desk. I knew that Bill was not feeling well, and I didn’t want to overtax him. Chris was worried that Bill would feel we were pushing him out.

“No,” I told him. “We just have to take some of the weight off of him for a while.”

Late one night in mid-January, Chris and I met in his office for an informal strategy session.

“Hey, G,” he greeted me, “pull up a chair.” Chris had started calling me G, for “gangster,” an expression of friendship and respect in his old neighborhood.

We were the only ones around. Out of his desk drawer he pulled two bottles: tequila for himself, Glenlivet for me. He poured us each a drink.

I ran down a list of witnesses in the order I envisioned presenting them. Chris would open with the domestic violence witnesses. Then I would be up with the next twenty or so witnesses, including Kato and Allan Park, whose testimony was going to be extremely complex. By now they’d both given so many statements, the task of collating them was daunting. Plus, I had to coordinate all the diagrams, charts, and photographs. It was like completing a giant Rubik’s Cube, where all the squares on each side had to match. Everyone else could compartmentalize, but I had to keep my eye on our overall strategy.

I’d given Bill the coroner, Dr. Irwin Golden, whose testimony promised to be a real can of worms. Hank Goldberg had agreed to take the criminalists, Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola, which was equally unenviable duty. Woody Clarke and Rock Harmon would do DNA. Chris wanted to pick up some of the physical evidence-which really was the heart of the case. But he had no special expertise in DNA, blood, or hair and trace; it would have taken too long to get him up to speed. That left him with nothing but domestic violence witnesses. These would go quickly. If he didn’t pick up some additional turf now, he would be effectively out of the case after the first week of trial. Chris didn’t want that; I didn’t either.

That left Fuhrman.

By now Fuhrman’s file was even fatter than when I’d first reviewed it, and infinitely more depressing. In addition to the psychiatrists’ evaluations of 1981 and 1982, there was now the witness statement from a realtor named Kathleen Bell, who had told defense investigators that five years earlier she had met Fuhrman at a marine recruiting station in Redondo Beach. He’d supposedly told her that if he saw a black man driving in a car with a white woman, he would pull them over. If he didn’t have a good reason, he said, he’d “find one.” Fuhrman, according to Bell’s account, went on to say that if he had his way he’d see all “niggers” gathered together and burned or bombed.

When I read that, I felt I might be sick.

In the months since the trial, some Monday-morning quarterbacks have claimed that I was arrogant for using Mark Fuhrman, knowing his downside. Exactly what was I to do? Close my eyes, click my heels three times, and will him to disappear? From the day of the murders, the defense had access to the police reports identifying Mark as the officer who found the bloody glove. If we hadn’t called him, they certainly would have. And in doing so they would certainly have explored his dark side. We would have been left looking like we were trying to hide him. As I saw it, we had no choice but to brass it out.

Chris and I had talked all the way through this one. Fuhrman’s racial views were not pertinent here. How he’d performed as a detective on the Simpson investigation was all that counted. The idea that he had planted the glove was utterly fantastic. Cops who arrived on the crime scene before Fuhrman had seen only one glove-not two-lying between the victims. What were the Dream Teamers planning to suggest-that Mark had slipped out to Bloomingdale’s to buy a mate?

Still, taking on Fuhrman stood to be extremely stressful.

“It can’t be Bill who takes him,” I told Chris. “It’s gotta be you or me. If you don’t want to touch him, I understand. This one is going to be a bitch.”

Chris was quiet for a moment, his shaved head buried in his hands. Then he looked me in the eye. No matter where we went with this, there was danger ahead. He knew I wouldn’t ask him to do anything that I wouldn’t do. He also knew I was carrying the entire weight of this case on my shoulders.

“I’ll take him,” he told me quietly. “But I’m telling you, that motherfucker better tell me everything, and I mean everything. I don’t want any surprises.”

I was praying for a miracle: namely, that Chris and Mark would hit it off. No such luck. They hated each other on sight. I wasn’t there for their first meeting, which was held in Chris’s office during the first or second week of January. But afterward, Chris came to me complaining that Fuhrman was arrogant. Mark, in turn, complained to Cheri that Chris was hostile and insensitive to his situation. I gotta hand it to Chris, though: he did not bail on me. He hung right in to argue a very unpleasant motion.

We knew that Johnnie and the Dream Team were angling to introduce Fuhrman’s disability file, and the Bell statement, which would allow them to argue that Mark’s “racial animus” drove him to frame Simpson by planting the glove at Rockingham.

I favored a preemptive strike. I wanted to get Ito to make a decisive call right up front that would foreclose this race strategy before opening statements-when I knew Johnnie would be trying to play that card for all it was worth.

It should have been an easy call. Other cops who’d arrived at Bundy before Fuhrman saw only one glove. There was never a second glove that Fuhrman could have picked up and transported to Simpson’s house! There was no evidence to show that Fuhrman had ever planted any evidence or done anything improper in the case at all. Unless the defense could come up with an offer of proof to show how he could have planted that glove, Fuhrman’s racial views, whatever they were, were completely irrelevant.

With Lance, our oral arguments never seemed to carry much weight. I knew our best shot was to get down on paper a motion that was persuasive and compelling enough that he’d convince himself of its wisdom before he got to court. So Cheri and I wrote and rewrote that motion.

I knew that it was good. The law was clearly on our side. The drafters of the state evidence code knew that jurors might not be able to resist a strong and irrational emotional reaction to something as inflammatory as a racial slur, even if it had no relevance. It was the very reason the code excluded evidence that was more prejudicial than useful in determining the truth.

There was no question that the lawyer who could most effectively argue the inflammatory effects of racial epithets-particularly the N-word-was Chris Darden.

Chris attacked this mission with righteous conviction. But the night before he was to argue it, he got a case of nerves. He came to my office, his eyes wide and apologetic, and asked for my help. I gave him what I myself would have used: a straight, rather formal, legal argument about how allowing in racial epithets would simply prejudice the jury and obscure the truth.

Then he totally threw out what I had written for him. And when he rose to the lectern on the morning of January 13, he spoke from the heart.

“There is no legal purpose,” he said, his voice rich with conviction, “there is no valid or legitimate purpose. But Mr. Cochran and the defense, they have a purpose in going to that area and the purpose is to inflame the passions of the jury and to ask them to pick sides, not on the basis of the evidence in this case… The evidence in this case against this defendant is overwhelming. But when you mention that word to this jury or to any African American, it blinds people. It will blind this jury. It will blind them to the truth. It will cause extreme prejudice to the prosecution’s case.”

I sucked in my breath. Chris was taking on the race-baiters full in the teeth.

“I remember the first time I was ever called that word,” he continued. “I’m sure Mr. Cochran remembers the first time. And whenever I reflect back on that experience, I find it extremely upsetting and I probably appear to be getting a little upset right now. It is probably the most negative experience I have ever had in my life.”

I glanced over at Johnnie Cochran. Gone was the easy posture. He was tensed up, like a testy weasel. The chemistry between Chris and Johnnie, I thought, was becoming one of the uglier dynamics in this courtroom. Chris had respected Johnnie so much. But Johnnie didn’t respect him back. He couldn’t handle another smart and vital black male in the courtroom. Johnnie had played this bullshit race card at scores of other trials where nobody, certainly no white guys, had the huevos to call him on it. Now Chris was hitting him where he lived.

Johnnie rose to reply.

“I have a funeral to attend today,” he told the court. “But I would be remiss if I were not at this time to take this opportunity to respond to my good friend, Mr. Chris Darden.”

His “politesse” was tinged with sarcasm.

“His remarks this morning are perhaps the most incredible remarks I’ve heard in a court of law in the thirty-two years I’ve been practicing law. His remarks are demeaning to African Americans as a group. And so I want to apologize to African Americans all over the country.”

Apologize for Chris! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What are you saying, Johnnie, that people can hear themselves slandered and feel nothing? If I heard that a witness had referred to women as bitches or cunts, do you think that wouldn’t affect me? Now was the time for Judge Lance Ito to shut this travesty down. Any judge with the most rudimentary control of his courtroom would have said, “Don’t waste the time of this court, Mr. Cochran. Come up with a proffer to show how it was even possible for Detective Fuhrman to plant that glove. Until you do, we’re not talking about race in this case. O. J. Simpson didn’t kill her because she was white, and he did not get arrested because he’s black.”

But Ito let Johnnie flame on. The groundwork had been set for the defense to present for the jury a fantasy that had no place in a court of law.

Chris Darden appeared stricken. And what made things worse was the painful, public nature of his humiliation. The nakedness of it. With the whole nation-indeed, much of the world-watching, Johnnie Cochran accused a brother of selling out his race. What a despicable piece of shit!

I reached for the notepad and scribbled a note to Chris. “You were beautiful,” I wrote him. “You were great.”

To my deep astonishment, Ito did the right thing. In a ruling that was legally and logically sound, he stated that the defense would not be able to introduce evidence of racial animus unless they made an offer of proof showing how Fuhrman could have planted the glove. He even gave them a deadline: three days. If they could not come up with a proffer by nine A.M., Monday, January 23, there would be no N-words uttered in that courtroom.

I could practically hear the cheers from the eighteenth floor. Now, I thought, we really have a fighting chance.

On Monday morning-put-up-or-shut-up day-Lee Bailey stood and, without so much as a by-your-leave, reopened debate on the subject of racial animus. That he was allowed to do so was completely improper. The ruling had been made! Yet Ito allowed Bailey to rave on, unchecked, about how the N-word went to Fuhrman’s credibility.

“I cannot imagine a clearer case,” Bailey blustered, “of the defense having an absolute and inalienable, indelible, irrevocable right to smash into any person so low-life as to make those utterances and then to proceed to the witness stand and attempt to incriminate for murder through these defalcations and sporulation a member of the African American race… We’re not trying to prove that he planted anything because we don’t have to.”

(Bailey’s testimony sent me reaching for my Webster’s, which defines “defalcation” as “embezzlement” and “sporulation” as “the division of spores.” He may have been aiming for “spoliation,” which I see is defined as “the act of plundering.”)

In the face of this thunderous barrage of verbiage, Ito caved-and reversed himself. The defense could present witnesses who claimed to have heard Mark Fuhrman use the N-word within the past ten years.

I have never seen a man with so little spine.

If I had to point to the single most serious error that Ito made during this misbegotten spectacle, I would have to say that it was this inexcusable Fuhrman ruling. Race had no place in this trial. Once Ito had permitted the injection of racial venom, a conviction was remote, if not impossible. There would be at least one juror whose raw feelings would cloud his or her reason. From this point on, I sincerely believe, the best we could ever have hoped for was a hung jury.

I was both furious and demoralized. What we should do, I told myself angrily, was appeal the ruling to a higher court. It’s called taking a writ. But this was likely to be an exercise in futility. The Court of Appeals never likes to get involved in evidentiary decisions during the trial. In fact, I’d never heard of the prosecution’s winning one of those puppies. Besides, the real danger, of course, was that if I tried to get Ito reversed, he’d be so infuriated that he’d take it out on us for the rest of the case. Just what we needed-to alienate him hopelessly before we even reached opening arguments.

Looking back on this in the clear light of hindsight, though, I can see my reluctance for what it really was-a failure of nerve. I thought that if we could appease Ito and stay in his good graces, he would treat us fairly in front of the jury. If I’d known then what I know now-how he’d swat us around like stepchildren all throughout the trial-I would have taken that writ in the blink of an eye.

I didn’t realize that I had nothing to lose. I should have given it my best shot and taken the only opportunity I had to keep the defense from playing the race card.

I didn’t. And to this day it remains my most painful regret.

I was exhausted, feeling overwhelmed. Every night, I’d work till midnight, just shut the door and work. One afternoon I took a couple of hours off to get my hair done and I felt like a truant. Of course, I lugged along my law books to make the downtime count.

The next morning, I found myself mired in traffic. The rain was pouring down. I was totally frazzled. At home, my bedroom was leaking, my bed was soaked, and I kept getting sick. At court, they were about to hear a motion, but I was bumper-to-bumper in metal on the freeway. Ito was going to scream at me for being late, I knew it.

Everywhere I turned, I seemed to bang into a wall. There was Ito, increasingly cryptic and vain. He was starting to remind me of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. There was Mark Fuhrman, either a bigot or a liar. There was the Brown family, avoiding us, but ladling out facts to a quickie biographer, and I’m thinking that the whole damned publishing world knows more about my case than I do. It was the most ridiculous situation I’d ever seen, and there I was stuck on the fucking Five, and every single thing I was seeing about human nature in this case was making me sick. I just wanted to cut out to an island somewhere, where I didn’t have to deal with anyone else.

For a while, I had been telling myself that once the opening statements were over, I could have some semblance of my family life back. But who was I kidding? Once the trial was under way, things would only get worse. Networks were going to devote their whole day’s programming to it. It was a goddamned industry. Without my having any say in the matter, I’d been turned into a symbol of Working Mother, Successful Professional, Voice of the People, Stand-in for Justice Itself. I took these things to heart and didn’t want to let anyone down. But, God, I was so tired.

On Saturday night, a little more than a week before trial, we were all bunkered into our offices, working. Bill came in to talk. He was unhappy. He confided that he felt he should retire as much as possible from the case; he felt very uncomfortable, he couldn’t relate to anyone or anything. “I don’t fit in,” he said, and I knew what he meant.

It was true. In one sense it was a woman’s case, it was a woman’s issue. In another sense, the defense had made it a race issue. Bill felt the jury would see him as a representative of the white male establishment, with no connection to the strong emotional issues of the case.

Chris felt he was in an ethical bind. He called me late one evening at home to fret about the Hodgman dilemma. We called each other more and more of an evening. I’d often talk to him while burning off tension on my exercise bike.

“We’ve got to give Hodgman some witnesses in the beginning of the case,” he’d insist.

Then I’d say, “No, don’t bother Bill. He doesn’t need it.” We just kept going round and round on this.

Right up to the last moment, the press and public assumed that Bill would make an opening statement. But it seemed awkward as well as cumbersome to divide the opening among three prosecutors. The way I envisioned it, Chris would lead off with the why of the crime, the motive: domestic violence. And I would follow with the how. A clean one-two punch.

There was work for Bill to do-and it wasn’t fun. It would be his job to question the coroner, Dr. Golden, whose reports were so flawed we didn’t want to flaunt them in the opening. The autopsies were also complex and difficult to summarize. In the meantime, we assigned to Bill the task of riding herd on Johnnie. Bill, sitting with us at counsel’s table, could register the objections whenever His Smoothness strayed out of line. That way, the jury wouldn’t become annoyed at Chris or me. Bill accepted this assignment with his usual grace.

The evening before opening statements, Chris and I went down to the courtroom for a practice run in front of Bill and a handful of others. I’d rarely seen the place empty like this: just a sterile cube of plywood paneling. It appeared to have been designed by a clerk, not an architect. Someone who had in mind a system for the shuffling of papers, but no grander vision of justice.

Within ten hours, the room would be the center of the world’s attention. Those empty counsel tables would be piled high with the notes and briefs of at least twenty noisy, combative attorneys. Each side would be scrambling to seize the advantage. Who would impose upon this unruly contest the ideals of morality and fairness? I looked to the bench and saw an empty chair. And I thought sadly how it always looked empty. Even when Lance was sitting in it.

My technical assistant, Jonathan Fairtlough, had set up the laser disc that projected both stills and moving images onto a large screen. I usually get up there with my charts, diagrams, and photos mounted on poster board. But Jonathan, bless his heart, led me by the hand into the modern age.

I wanted the jurors to feel physically drawn into the crime scene. I wanted them to travel up the walkway at Bundy. To see how the killer approached his victims from the bushes. I wanted them to see Nicole lying on her left side, feet wedged up under the gate. I wanted them to see her slashed throat. I wanted them to understand the physical reality of the space in which Ron Goldman had been trapped. He had been backed into a cage.

Then I’d let them see the detective’s-eye view at Rockingham. Entering the property; visiting the guest houses; discovering the brown leather glove. We would go straight up to the foot of O. J. Simpson’s bed, ending with a photo of the rumpled socks.

Originally, we wanted to have video footage interspliced with still shots, so that you’d be coming up the walkway at Bundy; then you’d see stills of her body, and then his body, and then the blood drops. It didn’t work; it was too jarring to come out from the video into the stills. When we strung together all the stills it was very powerful. But it had to be perfectly choreographed. Jonathan not only had to show each image at the appropriate moment, but had to segue from my voice into the picture. It was an elaborate little dance.

I had worked and reworked the presentation of the hair and fiber evidence. It was the sort of stuff that could be deadly dull or powerfully compelling. Finally, I got some rhythm going. I’d start with a straight presentation of the evidence, then I’d pause and highlight it with a challenge to reason. For example, “Nylon carpet fiber like that found in the defendant’s Bronco. Stop and think for a minute,” I’d say to the jury. “How could that fiber from the defendant’s Bronco get on the cap?” Then I’d hit it again with “The head hairs like those of the defendant were found at the Bundy crime scene. Stop. Think-how could head hairs like the defendant’s get on that cap?” Then I’d mention Ron Goldman, and note that the shirt he was wearing also had head hair on it like the defendant’s. “Think,” I’d implore them. “How did the defendant’s hair get on Ronald Goldman’s shirt?”

“It cannot be denied,” I would tell the jury, “that there will be a temptation to treat this evidence differently because of the image the media [have] created of Mr. Simpson-but we all know that what we see on TV is not evidence. Winning is not what this is about; this is not a game; this is about justice and seeing that justice is done. Two people have been brutally murdered-and the evidence points to the guilt of only one person as their murderer, Orenthal James Simpson.”

It was strong. I knew it was strong. Bill, Chris, and Jonathan-the whole team-were really jazzed.

January 23, 1995… opening day.

I can’t believe I really said that. Opening day! After a while I just got sucked into sports-speak like everyone else. I can’t remember what I wore, so don’t even ask. Before an opening statement, I trip into hyperfocus. The details of the goings-on around me don’t even register. What I do recall is that the team was extra thoughtful of me. Even the reporters in the hallway gave me ceremonious berth.

The courtroom was jammed, the atmosphere incredibly tense. It was the first time we had all been together: judge, prosecutors, defense counsel, media, spectators, and jury. Not to mention the millions out there watching the live feed. I tried to make eye contact with the jury. But my God, what a scary bunch. The Great Stone Faces, I came to call them.

Chris was eager, ready to go. But then we got bogged down in motions that dragged on through the morning and into the afternoon. A major bummer. His opening was held over until the next day. I prayed it wouldn’t throw him off stride.

The next day when he rose to speak, I knew he was nervous. Was he picking up negative vibes from the jury box? Was he making eye contact? Make eye contact, Chris. Until now, I hadn’t heard Chris’s opening in its entirety. It struck me now as eloquent, almost musical, as he described the love that was really a sickness:

“It is not the actor who is on trial here today, ladies and gentlemen, it is not that public face. It is his other face. Like many men in public [life], they have a… private side… A private face. And that is the face we will expose to you in this trial. The other side of O. J. Simpson… We will expose… the face he wore behind the locks and the gates and the walls at Rockingham; that other face, the one that Nicole Brown encountered almost every day of her adult life…

“The evidence will show that the face you see… is the face or a batterer, a wife beater, an abuser, a controller,” he told the jury. “He didn’t hate Nicole. He didn’t kill her because he didn’t love her any more. He killed for a reason almost as old as mankind itself. He killed her out of jealousy. He killed her to control her. He killed Ron Goldman because he got in the way.”

If I had any criticism of Chris’s opening, it would be his insistence upon including Keith Zlomsowitch and several other domestic violence witnesses whom I wasn’t certain we would ever bring to the stand. “Always promise less than you deliver,” I’d told Chris. But he was headstrong. He didn’t always listen.

When it came my turn at the lectern, I paused. For a moment I just stared into those faces. Eight blacks. Two Hispanics, one man who professed to be half Native American, and a single white. Will this thing really come down to race? I wondered. Are the impassive faces of the six black women on this panel hiding their resentment of me? Can I find some common ground here? Call a truce? Coming on like gangbusters didn’t seem the ticket. In our strategy sessions up on the eighteenth floor, we’d all agreed that a calm, measured, rational approach was what was called for. Any hint of stridency would feed the perception of these jurors that we were out to lynch the defendant.

“You have now heard the why. Why would Orenthal Simpson, a man who seemingly had it all, commit such heinous crimes?” I began quietly. “The one simple truth about the evidence described by Mr. Darden is that it shows that Mr. Simpson is a man-not a stereotype-but flesh and blood who can do both good and evil. Being wealthy, being famous cannot change one simple truth: he is a person, and people have good sides and bad sides. Whether you see both sides or not, both sides are always there.”

Jonathan and I led the jurors through Bundy and Rockingham. The trip was flawless.

“It is going to be up to you, ladies and gentlemen. You are going to have to be ever vigilant in acting as the judges in this case. Each one of you is a judge. Each one of you is a trier of fact. You have to examine all the evidence very carefully and ask… ‘Is this reasonable?’ ‘Is this logical?’ ‘Does this make sense?’…

“Your Honor,” Johnnie interrupted. “She is starting to argue now.”

“Sounds like argument to me,” Lance agreed.

The objection annoyed me, but I pressed on.

“My job is to seek justice,” I continued. “… You will have to remember what this case is about: justice for all. Ladies and gentlemen, if those words are to mean anything, we must all be equal in the eyes of the law and we cannot use a sliding scale to judge guilt or innocence based on a defendant or a victim’s popularity. We live in very, very strange times…”

Once again Johnnie broke in, “Your Honor, she is arguing.”

“Counsel,” Ito addressed me impatiently. “This has all been argument for the last five minutes.”

Now this may not sound like any big deal to you. But, believe me, it was a very big deal. In opening statements all that we lawyers are allowed to do is to lay out the facts, not attempt to persuade. The distinction, however, is often blurred. As a practical matter a judge will allow both sides considerable latitude in their openings. I felt my remarks were well within bounds. Johnnie was just prodding to see how easily he could shut me down-and, more important, if Lance would let him.

Lance did. He sustained the objection in such a cutesy, condescending way as to make it clear that he and Johnnie were on exactly the same page.

I tried to continue.

“We cannot succumb to the temptation to thwart justice and throw truth out the window.”

“I’m going to have to stop you right here,” Lance announced. And he dragged me over to sidebar-in full view of the jury-and scolded me for ignoring his admonishments.

Now, I’ll tell you what’s bad about that. It sends a message to the jury that the judge has no great respect for the prosecutor. And that’s a real unfair message to send-especially on the very first day, when the jurors have their antennae up, looking for clues as to whom to believe. Lance’s attitude toward me had a lot to do with his own ego. As an ex-prosecutor, he felt compelled to show us, “I used to do what you do and I did it better.” Whenever Johnnie rose to speak, however, Lance’s whole demeanor changed. He was beneficent. He was indulgent. It seemed to me Lance Ito just loved the idea of being Johnnie’s friend.

Lance still had me at sidebar. And now he was ordering me to “say ‘thank you, ladies and gentlemen,’ and wrap it up.”

I was seething. Nevertheless, I returned to the podium, smile pasted on my face, and delivered my parting line as gracefully as I could.

“Ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you very much for your kind attention in this matter… We all know it is difficult and we appreciate all of your dedication to duty and service in this case. Thank you very much.”

After I sat down, there was a minor hullaballoo. Court TV’s cameraman had inadvertently photographed an alternate juror. Ito went ballistic and threatened to pull the cameras from the courtroom. So much time was pissed away resolving this fracas that Johnnie did not get to begin his own opening that afternoon. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the defense side about how unfair it was to the poor defendant to let the jurors go back to their rooms and dwell on the prosecution’s allegations overnight.

The fussing was just a smoke screen. In fact, we were about to be ambushed-but good.

Ito had ordered both sides to produce any exhibits they intended to use within forty-eight hours of opening statements. Our graphics people had worked into the wee hours of the morning to make that deadline. The defense guy in charge of discovery, Carl Douglas, had led me to believe his side was similarly squeezed. It wasn’t until the evening before Johnnie was to give his opening that Carl handed me some eight-and-a-half-by-eleven reproductions of the display they intended to use. Most were too smudged to be legible.

“You call this discovery, Carl?” I asked him, incredulous. After I showed him one particularly muddy page, he agreed to go over the particulars with me. “Just because I like you, my sister.”

Before we broke for the night, Carl mentioned that there might be “a few more… nothing major.” I was sympathetic to the problem of having to produce everything so quickly, so I asked him to let me see what he had first thing in the morning. He agreed.

Next morning, when I walked into court, I saw fifteen boards stacked against Deirdre Robertson’s desk. What the hell was this? There were about twice as many exhibits as Carl had shown me the night before. As I got close enough to read them, I was horrified. One entire display was devoted to the results of serologist Greg Matheson’s analysis of the evidence. This included the socks found at the foot of Simpson’s bed. Under a column labeled “Testing,” there was an entry that read “Blood search. [None obvious.]”

The quote was taken from Greg’s own notes. He made them in June 1994 after examining the dark socks for blood under natural light. He’d found “none obvious.” But then he scheduled the socks for a blood search. Several weeks later, after blood was found, conventional serology testing confirmed the blood markers belonged to Nicole. The defense display board juxtaposed the June finding of “none obvious” with the later results showing Nicole’s blood on the socks.

Now, why was this such a big deal? Because it played right into the defense’s conspiracy theory. If they could get the jurors to believe that there was no blood on the socks as of June, then the blood tested later had to have been planted. At my angry insistence, Ito made them change the labels on the board to reflect the truth. But he gave us only fifteen minutes to study the remaining exhibits. There was simply no way we could uncover and correct all the deceptions.

The imbroglio over the displays, it turned out, was just the warm-up number. When it came time for his opening, Johnnie launched into a flame that was one part sermon, three parts argument. It, like the exhibits, was shot through with misrepresentations. He called the jury’s attention to a report that showed that blood found under Nicole’s fingernails was type B. That was not her type; nor was it Ron Goldman’s or O. J. Simpson’s. Logical inference? The blood under Nicole’s nails must belong to the “real killer.” What Johnnie failed to share with the jury was the very next line in the report: “Nicole cannot be excluded as a source of blood if… type B observed on the items were degraded from BA [Nicole’s blood type] to… type B.”

Further DNA testing revealed that it was, indeed, her blood.

Johnnie rambled on and on, tossing out the names of witnesses who had never been introduced in discovery. This was strictly illegal. During the pretrial hearings, Judge Ito had sanctioned the prosecution for two-week delays between taking witness statements and turning them over to the defense. But the defense had been sitting on some of these statements for over seven months, seven months!! And they were introducing these witnesses only now-during Johnnie’s opening.

One of these lamers was Mary Anne Gerchas, who, Johnnie promised the jury, would testify that she saw four men-two Hispanic and two white-running from Nicole’s condo the night of the murders. Johnnie also promised that a mystery witness-a maid of one of Simpson’s neighbors-would tell how she saw Simpson’s Bronco parked on Rockingham right around the time of the murders. And then, of course, there was Dr. Lenore Walker, the so-called mother of the battered women’s syndrome, who would supposedly testify that O. J. Simpson’s abuse of Nicole was not the sort of violence that normally precedes a homicide. From the moment I heard that, I vowed to take the cross of Dr. Walker on myself. Of course, she evaporated, like so many of the phantoms Johnnie invoked during his opening.

Lance just let Johnnie run on. Chris and I were sitting at counsel table hissing to Bill. “Object! Object! Bill, are you going to object?”

At first Bill was reluctant to take off the white gloves. To Bill’s way of thinking, he and Johnnie were old buddies, going back to their days together in the D.A.‘s office. He thought civility would prevail. I knew better. Johnnie had nothing but contempt for Bill. He loved to see Bill walk into court. He made no bones about it. He’d grin at me and go, “Oh, good, you’re gonna let Hodgman do it? Good! Good to see you, Bill! Good to see you!” And Bill thought it was because Johnnie liked him. I’m saying to myself, No, Bill, it’s because he thinks you’re easy pickins. It was a painful thing for me to watch.

As Johnnie’s claims became more and more outrageous, even Bill finally began to burn. “I can’t believe this,” he would mutter over and over. “This is unbelievable!” Then, at last, he leaped to his feet and shouted “Objection!” with such conviction that we were all electrified. He really got up and fought for a change; it was wonderful to see. Bill kept objecting. Before Johnnie finished his outrageous tirade, Bill Hodgman had objected a total of twenty times.

Lance, the dunderhead, knew what was going on. If we had tried to pull even a tenth of what the defense pulled here, he’d have had us locked up. But he would not overrule Cochran. He just sat up there on the bench rolling his eyes at me like, “Can you believe it?” As if it were some big joke when the People get screwed. I wanted to scream at him, “You’re not some idle bystander here, buddy. You can actually stop this circus!” But how can you expect a clown to stop a circus?

Bill was seething when he left the courtroom. I stayed close to him all the way to the eighteenth floor. He had me very worried. He looked like he’d been through a shredder. His speech was incoherent-he was having trouble putting sentences together, and his breathing was very shallow. He couldn’t seem to sit still. He was ultrahyper, and Bill Hodgman has never been hyper. Gil had called an emergency meeting in the conference room. But no sooner had Bill walked in the door than he rasped, “I gotta go. I’ve got to take a walk,” and left.

Okay, he just needs a breather, I told myself. He’ll be fine. Moments later I heard someone in the hall shout, “Down here, in Cheri’s office.”

Bill was lying on the rug. Cheri had made him lie down, he was so short of breath. Patti Jo was on the phone to the hospital.

I just stood there watching him and feeling guilty. Oh, God, I thought. We shouldn’t have pushed him. Oh, God. I should’ve seen it coming. Oh, God, you know, this case is gonna kill him. This sweet, lovely man. I can’t stand this stupid fucking case!

Fortunately, one of those in our company was Dr. Mark Goulston, a physician friend of Gil’s who’d been hanging out with us since the case began. He was kind of the camp mascot. We called him Dr. Mark. I knew he had also been talking to Bill about the pressures on him. I pulled him aside to get a reading on Bill’s condition. Goulston told me that he had been giving Bill a very mild sedative to help him sleep. Today’s episode had been brought on by stress. Whether there would be lasting damage to his health, no one knew. Later, we would find out that Bill had a mild heart condition that, had it not been flushed out by this incident, might have killed him.

God, I thought. This job chews up strong men and spits out their bones.

Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to throw in the towel myself. To go in to Gil and say, “I can’t do this anymore. Give it to… God, I don’t know who, just give it to someone else.” But I caught myself. How would I ever explain to my children why I walked out on the biggest case of my life? How could I ever look them in the eye and explain the necessity of seeing a job through to the end? What would I be teaching them? “Cut your losses, boys. Pick only those battles you can win.” That was not what I wanted to leave them. I wanted them to realize that sometimes honor demands fighting even to an almost certain defeat.

And how would I explain it to the Browns, to the Goldmans, who were expecting justice?

“Forgive me for doing this, Dr. Mark,” I said, turning once again to Goulston. “But I’m watching Bill, and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to go there.’ Could you give me a prescription for Xanax?”

I’d do anything I had to do; zonk myself into a coma if necessary. But I intended to stay in the goddamned ring.