Without a Doubt

Me Recuerdo

My first witnesses were not flashy, but they were rock-solid.

Pablo Fenjves and Nicole’s other neighbors were all emphatic in their testimony: they’d heard a dog start to bark at 10:15 to 10:20 P.M. By that time the killer was most likely on the premises. The murders were most likely in progress. In fact, Ron and Nicole were probably dead.

During the months after the trial a bleating throng of pundits would try to suggest that I declined to put on certain witnesses because they didn’t fit into my “time line.” That is absolute rubbish. At no time did I or any other member of the prosecution team lock ourselves in to 10:15 as the time of the murder. From the very start of this case, the window of opportunity we were looking at was 10:15 to 10:40. Even the later time would have given O. J. Simpson twelve to fourteen minutes to dash back to Rockingham in time to be seen by Allan Park.

Johnnie couldn’t put a ding in the dog-bark witnesses. Nor did he score any points on the employees of Mezzaluna. In fact, the defense seemed to be holding back. I knew they were saving their salvos for the cops.

Although we couldn’t make out any coherent strategy coming from the Simpson camp, we knew they would hammer away at two related themes: The cops messed up the scene. And Mark Fuhrman moved evidence. Our first LAPD witness, Officer Robert Riske, went a long way toward debunking both claims.

Riske, a muscular man with close-cropped sandy hair, had been the first officer to arrive at the scene. He described how he and all the cops after him had taken particular care to avoid tracking through the pools of blood. Most important, when Riske arrived at Bundy, there had been only one glove at the scene. That was a full two hours before Mark Fuhrman arrived.

Let’s think through this again: the defense lives and dies on the premise that Mark Fuhrman pocketed one of the murder gloves and carried it to Rockingham. But it couldn’t have happened. There wasn’t a second glove to steal.

I thought Riske made a superb witness. He didn’t embellish; he didn’t minimize. Johnnie, however, tried to make Riske out to be an inexperienced klutz.

The officer had found Nicole’s bathtub full of water. Had he tested the temperature?

No.

The officer and his partner had found a cup of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sitting on a banister inside the house. Did they have it photographed?

No.

Sounds bad, huh?

Well, it isn’t. In fact, it wasn’t within the scope of their responsibilities to do any of those things. Riske and his partner were responsible for calling their superiors and securing the crime scene. Period. I made sure to establish this on redirect.

Johnnie then called Officer Riske’s attention to two photos. The first showed the knit hat, the envelope, and the glove in one position; the second showed them at slightly different angles to each other. Johnnie contended that this showed that evidence had been moved while Mark Fuhrman was in the “same general area.”

I leaped in with an objection.

“This is the same thing Mr. Cochran has been doing throughout this trial,” I complained to Ito. “This is another distortion; this is another deception.”

Here’s what I was talking about: between the time the first and second photos were taken, the bodies had been removed from the scene. In one photo, in fact, you could see the toe of Ron Goldman’s boot; in the second, you could not. The simple act of moving the bodies caused the area around them to be disturbed. That’s why we take “before and after” photos.

Johnnie was also angling to play a laser disc with isolated segments of a crime-scene video.

Chris tried to block that kick. “We have never been provided a copy of this video,” he told the court. And, indeed, we hadn’t. The tape showed the back of an unidentified cop traipsing straight through a pool of blood on the Bundy walk. An image that, of course, shot to hell our contention that the cops had taken precautions to keep the crime scene intact.

Chris and I argued that there was no way of telling when this video had been taken. It hadn’t been shot by police, so there was no time stamped anywhere on it. You could tell from the sun line that it had to be sometime in the afternoon. And that was all. But, once again, Lance waffled. He disallowed the video, but permitted the defense to show Riske the photo of the unidentified cop to see if he could ID him. Of course, he couldn’t. Riske left the crime scene at 7:15 A.M., and the photo had been taken well after that.

That photo business really galled me. In the lower left-hand corner there was a gray square where something had been blocked out. A TV show’s logo? I beckoned one of our law clerks.

“Get this photo to Suzanne, ASAP,” I whispered. “I need to know who took it and whether it was before or after the crime scene was released. Go now!”

The clerk shot out of the courtroom. By the break, Suzanne had located the source: Darryl Smith, a freelance photographer on assignment for Inside Edition. Smith was a very cool guy, about six and a half feet tall. Suzanne arranged for him to come to my office and look at the video.

“Yep,” he said, “that’s mine.”

We watched the original footage, which preceded the shot offered by the defense. It showed the officers taking down the yellow tape and rolling it up. The Bundy crime scene had been broken down! After that, the cops could walk anywhere they pleased. I put Darryl himself on the stand to confirm that the officers were in the clear. Man, was that satisfying.

How, I wondered, did Johnnie think he could get away with a trick like that? Giving your client a vigorous defense is one thing. Deliberate deception is another. But then-did this jury realize that the defense was selling them snake oil, deceiving them with these “before and after” photos? They should have taken that as an insult to their intelligence. Did they realize how cynically the defense was trying to manipulate them? Did they care?

It seemed to me that the boys over at the defense table had whipped each other up into such a macho frenzy that they had totally jettisoned the ethics of our profession. Each was trying to outdo the others with feats of chicanery, which some collective hallucination had allowed them to believe constituted intrepid lawyering. Even refined former law school dean Gerald Uelmen had been sucked into slapping high fives with the guys.

We could not let our guard down. Not for one minute.

My alarm went off at five A.M. It was Sunday, February 12. It was still dark. I was still on duty.

This was the day we were scheduled to take the jury out to see Bundy and Rockingham. Oh, shit. As I stumbled to the shower, I wondered if there was any way to call this thing off.

Believe it or not, the “walk-through” was originally my idea. Taking the jury to the crime scene usually works to a prosecutor’s advantage. Taking murder out of the courtroom and onto the killing grounds makes it less of an abstraction. It gives us an opportunity to turn the jury’s attention back to the victims.

What had started out as a potential blessing for our side went sour once we got down to thrashing out the terms for this field trip. Once again, Lance Ito let us down.

The logical time for our viewing was at night, when, of course, the murders occurred. But Ito made us do it in broad daylight, when Bundy would seem like Main Street USA. Thus the jurors would get no sense of the danger Nicole was in as she descended that small flight of steps into darkness.

The only way Ito would allow us the Bundy visit was if we allowed the defense their “fair share”-which meant taking the jurors to Rockingham. I emphatically did not want the jury to visit O. J. Simpson’s estate. What was the point? The only areas of possible significance at Rockingham were Kato’s room and the south pathway where the glove had been found. I allowed that it might also be marginally useful for the jury to see the layout of the exterior from Allan Park’s point of view. But there was absolutely no reason for them go inside the house. The jury-especially this jury-would be so dazzled by Simpson’s wealth that it was certain to erect yet another barrier to their ever imagining him a killer.

But the defense argued that an on-scene viewing of the master bedroom was necessary because the bloody socks had been found at the foot of Simpson’s bed. And so, Ito decreed that the itinerary would include Rockingham as well.

Lance Ito’s magical mystery tour began that morning under the Criminal Courts Building, in the lot where the sheriffs bring in the prisoners. It’s a dreary, cavernous place that has always reminded me of Hieronymus Bosch’s vision of hell. A fitting starting point for this junket. Chris, Hank, Scott, Cheri, and our investigators were waiting for me. We all took one van. The defense followed in another. The defendant himself was loaded into one of the sheriff’s cars. The jurors brought up the rear in a bus.

Lance appeared to be having the time of his life. He was ordering deputies around and conferring imperiously with the troops. He’d taken great pains to arrange the security precautions for this outing. But I had no idea what lengths he’d gone to until our little caravan neared the freeway. I’d curled up across a couple of empty seats, trying to catch a few more winks, when I heard Scott Gordon murmur, “Geez!”

I raised my head to an amazing scene. The Ten West was totally empty! In fact, it appeared to have been cleared for miles ahead. Once again, O. J. Simpson had managed to sweep the traffic from the Los Angeles freeways. I swore under my breath. Ito’s sense of pomp and overweening self-importance had turned this into a Spielberg production.

We cruised past Mezzaluna. I was disappointed we didn’t have a chance to stop there. The deputies hadn’t thought to pack us anything to drink, and I’d hoped for a little break to duck into the nearby Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Now I saw that was out of the question anyway. The sidewalks were packed ten deep with spectators straining to get a glimpse of us.

Finally, we arrived at Bundy, where the jurors were issued their instructions. They were to view the site in perfect silence-no questions. Fine. But Ito hadn’t allowed us to make the walk-through clear enough to eliminate the need for questions. We’d asked the court for permission to attach photos of the bodies and evidence on the spots where they had been found; Ito had refused. So we just had to hope that those images were searing enough that even these jurors couldn’t fail to remember them now.

What, I wondered, would they see when they looked at this narrow lot, its cement walkway long since scrubbed clean of carnage? For one thing, they had to be struck by how small the place was. Everyone seeing Bundy for the first time remarks upon that. The enclosure where the bodies were found was incredibly tiny. It was difficult to imagine one killer and two victims scuffling in that space. Forget the possibility of two killers. It couldn’t happen.

As usual, the jurors’ faces were devoid of expression. Certainly no signs of mental lightbulbs popping. Only one juror, a white man named Tracy Kennedy, was madly scribbling notes. One young black man, Michael Knox, wore a cap and a jacket that read “San Francisco 49ers.” Simpson, of course, hails from that city and once played for the Niners.

Tell us, Mr. Knox. Could you telegraph your sympathies any more clearly?

The jurors were taken in groups of four and five through Nicole’s condo. One lawyer was allowed to tag along with each group. I hadn’t been there since the week of July 4. Now, as I walked in the door, I was shocked. The place was totally bare.

The Brown family, in their haste to put the past behind them, had stripped it to the walls. There was nothing to remind these jurors that a warm, vital woman had once lived here. This played into the defense’s hands very nicely. It’s so much easier to acquit someone of murder when you have no feeling for the victim as a real person. Nicole Brown had been erased from her own home.

It got worse. I’d wanted the jurors to see what a short drive it was between Bundy and Rockingham, to reinforce our contention that Simpson could have made the trip home within five minutes.

No dice. For “security” reasons, we had to take a circuitous detour. I could scarcely contain my fury. The point of this kind of field trip is to allow the jury to see the pertinent scenes under conditions as close as possible to those at the time of the murders. But here, nothing was the same. Not the condo, not the route, not the time of day-and certainly not Rockingham.

The defense, of course, was looking forward to showing off that mansion, hoping the jurors would ask themselves, Why would a guy throw all this away over a woman? Over our objections the defense had also arranged to have the jury go through Simpson’s trophy room. Ito’s justification? That Ron Shipp had testified to “the magnetism of this particular room.” So now the jurors would have a chance to be equally awed by the symbols of the defendant’s victories on the gridiron.

My only consolation was the thought that the jury would be filing past that wall of photos: Simpson with white fat-cat CEOs, Simpson with white celebrities, Simpson with his white golfing buddies, and, above all, a picture of Nicole on the ski slopes with their children. Those images, at least, would serve as a reminder of how completely the defendant had checked out on the black community.

At Nicole’s condo, O. J. Simpson had managed to keep a surprisingly low profile. By law, a defendant can’t be excluded from a jury view. The Browns had objected so strenuously to the idea of his walking through Nicole’s condo, however, that he’d agreed to stay in the cruiser, out of sight of the jury.

When we reached Rockingham, however, Simpson played the lord come home to the manor. He was supposed to be shackled at the wrists or ankles. This is standard procedure. In fact, a smart defense attorney will often advise his client not to go out on the walk-through for this very reason. You don’t want him paraded before the jury dragging his chains like Marley’s ghost. But in this case, someone had apparently prevailed upon the Sheriff’s Department to leave the cuffs off. As Simpson strolled the grounds with Robert Kardashian, the deputies walked a few respectful paces behind him.

Simpson was so full of swagger that he ventured inside the garage and lifted the tarp that covered his red Ferrari. He turned to a deputy and smirked, “Do you know what TestaRossa means?”

There was sniggering all around. And I thought to myself, Right. Anything O. J. Simpson wants to do is fine, as long as the guys think it’s funny.

Lance let the lawyers do the first walk-through. I’d gotten no farther than the foyer when I realized something was very wrong here. On my previous visits, the house had struck me as neglected and lifeless. Now it looked like a squadron of fairies had scrubbed it with Q-Tips. It was gleaming. In the living room, a fire was blazing. Fresh-cut flowers had been artfully arranged in a vase on the side table. But the most dramatic transformation was that collection of photographs.

The Wall of the Fat Cats had been cleansed of Caucasians. Gone were the golfing buddies and shots of Nicole in Aspen. Every single shot contained a black face. Simpson’s mother, his sister, their husbands, their kids. Upstairs, there was even a Norman Rockwell reproduction: the little black girl going to school accompanied by federal marshals. In the bathroom, there was a poster made by Simpson’s children; that had not been there on June 13. But the pièce de résistance was the master bedroom. On the mantel above the fireplace sat books on philosophy and religion. On the nightstand, next to a Holy Bible, stood a photo of the defendant’s mother, Eunice.

But these distortions were merely cosmetic compared to the more material misrepresentation I discovered when my little tour party took its turn down the path behind Kato’s room.

Seven months earlier, during the preliminary hearings, Robert Shapiro had tried to argue that if Simpson had been on the south pathway, he wouldn’t have had to walk around to the front door to get back into the house. This was because two other doors along the south pathway led inside. I’d made a note to myself to check that out.

What I’d discovered in examining the photos and talking to Kato was that neither of those doors was operable. One of them, which led into the garage, had been blocked from the inside by a large dresser that supported a television set. The other, which led into the laundry room, was kept bolted from the inside and blocked by a stepladder and a laundry basket.

Today, however, the laundry-room door, free of obstacles, was standing wide open.

They’d altered the conditions. The defense team had deliberately changed things, both to pander to the jury’s racial prejudices and to obscure the facts in the case. I turned to Chris. “We have got to have them put this place back to the way it was, or else cancel the whole damned viewing,” I said.

Chris predicted that this would not sit well with the Little Prince, his pet name for Ito. I knew he was right, but we had to try.

When I demanded that Lance call a hearing right then and there to consider my motion, he was visibly irritated. He’d orchestrated this sound-and-light show down to the last detail and he didn’t want to change the program. He also knew that if he canceled the viewing, the defense would go nuts. Never mind that the Bundy condo had been rendered a lifeless husk. Forget that Rockingham had been transformed into a soundstage for Leave It to Beaver. Lance still seemed to be worried about pissing Johnnie off.

Under protest, however, Ito convened a hearing on the front lawn. Both sets of attorneys stood in a semicircle around the court reporter while I argued, ticking off the items, that the scene had been materially altered.

“This is a sympathy play on their part. That’s all it is,” I concluded. “There’s no evidentiary value to it.”

Ito allowed that he was a little worried about the photographs. He asked Johnnie about them. Cochran’s response was interesting in light of what was later documented in Larry Schiller’s American Tragedy. Schiller, appointed scribe of O. J. Simpson, writes that the defense team had supervised every step of this extraordinary effort to tamper with the jury view. Cochran himself is quoted as demanding that the white faces be replaced with black ones-in fact, the Norman Rockwell print came from his office!

Now, put on the spot, Johnnie equivocated.

“As to the photographs, Mr. Douglas is in charge of that,” Johnnie said. “I don’t want to respond to the argument… This is preposterous.” Then he turned the question over to Carl Douglas, whose response was equally evasive: “I was not here on June the thirteenth, so I am unable to adequately respond specifically to what pictures were up and where they where. I don’t know for a fact.”

“Your Honor,” I put in, “I was here on the thirteenth, and I know-”

Johnnie cut me off. “I would not ask Miss Clark to tell you anything,” he said to the judge. “Gigi the housekeeper, she would be the one to tell you.”

Rising to the bait, Lance turned to the housekeeper and asked if anything had been changed.

“Just add his mother picture there,” she said in broken English.

“She’s not a detective,” I protested, “she’s a housekeeper!”

Of course, Ito refused to cancel the viewing. In the end, the only thing he was willing to do was to order the defense to take down the photo of Mama Simpson and to put out the fires.

“Nice try, guys,” he told them.

“Nice try?” That’s a reprimand? You’ve got to grab these guys by the collar and demand respect, Lance. They’re only lawyers.

The result of all my objections? Lance climbed onto the jurors’ bus and told them to “ignore anything you see in the photographs that are inside the residence.”

Great. Like “Ignore the pink elephant in the living room.”

Ito ordered the deputies to escort the jurors as they went through the trophy room, so that they wouldn’t linger over the mementos of the defendant’s glory days. Of course no warning issuing from the lips of Lance Ito could keep them from gawking. And they did. Openly. Michael Knox, the guy in the 49ers gear, all but pressed his nose against the photographs.

It was the only sign of animation I saw in our jury all day.

CAR TAPE. February 15. I haven’t had a day off, not even one day off, in about a month. I’m so exhausted right now I can’t even think… Bailey took on this cop yesterday, a really mild-mannered guy that was only there to make sure the crime-scene tape was up properly. And he starts thumping him about all this stuff that’s got nothing to do with him. About when to notify the coroner. And instead of sustaining my objections, the judge lets him go running wild with it…

His sexism, their sexism, has gotten so irritating. It’s funny, you know. I never, never used to cry sexism. But this case is rampant with it. The judge makes these cute little corrections to me about “personpower” instead of “manpower.” That’s just a change of a word, Judge. How about your fucking attitude? And Cochran is so condescending and patronizing. We got to sidebar and I’m arguing against him and he starts calling me “hysterical.” I mean, Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s absolutely frightening. I mean… I don’t think we have come a very long way, baby.

Ito continued to let the defense bash away at the first cops on the scene: Riske, Rossi, and Phillips. And then they kept Tom Lange on the stand for four painful days of cross-examination.

I had entertained the possibility of not even calling Tom. We really didn’t need him for anything except to identify the crime-scene photos and key pieces of evidence, and that could be done by others. Still, it’s customary to call your lead investigator; my colleagues pointed out that it would look kind of odd if we didn’t.

Tom’s upside, to my way of thinking, was that he didn’t have much of a downside. Since the Fuhrman business surfaced, we’d had to ask each and every cop, “Do you have a package at Internal Affairs?” “Do you have a package at SID?” We’d had to run background checks on our officers-a process formerly reserved for shady witnesses and known ex-felons.

Tom came out squeaky clean. His only possible error in judgment at the crime scene was the blanket he’d use to cover Nicole on the scene. Nicole had lain uncovered in full public view for more than three hours. In a gesture of decency, Tom had found a blanket in a closet to spread over her. Now, of course, the defense was going to argue that the incriminating trace evidence found on Ron’s body and the knit cap-hair and fibers that matched Simpson’s-had somehow come from that blanket. Unfortunately, the LAPD had disposed of the blanket after the coroner arrived. Still, I felt we could defuse this by pointing out that neither Ron nor the knit cap had ever come in contact with the blanket.

Tom and I got through direct in about one day. I used the opportunity to put on some real evidence, like the glove and the knit cap. It was the first time the jury had really gotten a good look at this stuff.

Johnnie’s cross was scattershot. He accused Lange and his colleagues of the routine imperfections of any investigation: for instance, why was it, he asked, that a key drop of blood evidence-found on the Bundy rear gate-wasn’t discovered until July 3? That was a reasonable question. Others were totally bogus. Like demanding to know why Lange hadn’t insisted that a rape test be performed on Nicole.

“Sex was the last thing on the mind of this attacker,” said Lange. “It was an overkill… there’s no evidence of rape.”

Come on, Johnnie, how many rapists put their victim’s panties back on?

Then Johnnie lit into him for the blanket. He took Lange to task for not picking up a piece of bloody paper that lay between the victims. Tom had felt it had no evidentiary value. Which it didn’t-it was obviously just a scrap of trash that happened to be lying there.

And then Johnnie flipped a race card into the mix. At one point, he rolled Lange back to the moment he first got called to the murder scene, at three A.M. on June 13.

“And then you drove from your home in Simi Valley down to the location, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And how long did it take you to get from Simi Valley to the location in Brentwood?”

Simi Valley, of course, is Whitetown, the suburb where the Rodney King jurors acquitted the cops caught beating a black man on videotape. It’s code for “racist frame-up.”

But Johnnie couldn’t leave it at that. He opened a line of questions concerning a pair of Reeboks Tom took from Simpson’s closet and stowed in his trunk overnight. It was inappropriate for Tom to do this, and would have led to trouble if the shoes had turned out to be importance evidence. But those shoes led to nothing; they were a total red herring. To Johnnie, it was another opportunity for a jab at the detective’s race.

“You took those shoes home to Simi Valley with you?”

Underhanded son of a bitch!

But Johnnie had still another item on his agenda. He was itching for the jury to hear about Faye Resnick’s drug habit, and what the defense would imply was her hypnotic influence over Nicole. Johnnie wanted to plant the notion that the real killer lay somewhere in Faye’s circle of associates-a drug dealer to whom she owed money, perhaps. He surmised correctly, however-that Chris and I were not going to call Faye to testify. Johnnie could have called her himself, but she was a double-edged blade. If the defense got her up on the stand, she would doubtless end up telling the jury about O.J.‘s brutality to Nicole.

So he decided to use Lange to introduce the totally unsupported idea that this was a drug killing. Johnnie asked Tom if he’d ever heard of something called a “Colombian necklace.”

“I believe so,” Tom replied.

“And it’s true, is it not, that a Colombian necklace is a situation where drug dealers will slice the neck of a victim, including the carotid artery, in order to… instill fear and send a message to others who have not paid for their drugs or been informing to the police…”

Tom said he’d heard that.

Tom was driving me up a wall. He just wouldn’t stand up for himself. Every time Johnnie threw out some preposterous theory, he’d answer with, “Yes, that’s possible.” He was hoping to come across as cool and unbiased, but he ended up conceding things that could not possibly have been true: that the murders could have been a drug hit or a Mafia contract killing. What he should have been saying was, “No, Counsel. I disagree with you. This didn’t look anything like a drug hit to me. And here’s why. Drug dealers, Mafia hit men, will off their victims with a bullet to the brain. They don’t leave behind physical evidence smeared from pole to pole. This was a rage killing.”

During the break I pulled him aside and said, “Tom, what are you doing, man?”

“Well”-he shrugged-“you can clean up on redirect.”

“Baby,” I told him, “by the time I get back to you on redirect, that jury’s gonna be off thinking about Colombian cartels. You gotta take your shot now!”

Redirect is never as impressive as cross. On cross, jurors are listening carefully to see whether the witness is backing down from the assertions made on direct. By the time we do redirect, the jury tunes out because they expect the witness to clean up his testimony under friendly questioning. You’ve got to hold your own on cross! But Tom didn’t seem to get that.

During the break, however, someone slipped Tom the word that Johnnie had bungled his drug-lord argot. The “necklace” was actually a “necktie.” So when Tom got back on the stand, he triumphantly gave the actual definition of “necklace”-a South African political killing, in which assassins place a burning tire around the victim’s neck, a modus operandi that had absolutely nothing to do with our case. I was glad to see Tom finally showing some spunk. But I’ll tell you, it was a rare moment.

I have since seen him stick up for himself admirably. During the civil trial, when Simpson’s attorney, Robert Baker, showed him the photo of some smudge he claimed was an unidentified footprint, Baker tried to trap him by asking, “There had to have been a second assailant… isn’t that true?”

“No,” Tom shot back. “I don’t know that that is a shoe print… If there were a shoe print, you’d expect to find others around it, and there weren’t.”

During the criminal trial, however, Cochran danced Lange all over the lot. He held Tom to account for all the deficiencies of the coroner: why there weren’t plastic bags over the victims’ hands, why the contents of the stomachs were discarded, and so on. Question after question went beyond the scope of the witness’s expertise. I objected until I was hoarse. The witness is not a medical examiner! But Ito allowed all of it.

Even now, when I read the transcript of Tom Lange’s testimony my stomach twists into knots. That cross-examination should have been handled in the space of an afternoon. It took four days.

Ito’s timidity played havoc with our trial strategy. Normally you can prepare your direct testimony with an eye to limiting what can be brought out in cross-examination. (The rules of evidence state that cross is limited to the subjects raised on direct.) But since Ito let the defense go anywhere during cross, that tack was useless. Instead, we had to fix things afterward, which meant we were having to spend hours and hours of preparation on lengthy redirect.

After the verdict, when pundits started using Chris and me as their personal punching bags, they would point to the expeditious pace of O. J. Simpson’s civil trial and ask, “Why is it that in the civil trial, these people can go straight from A to B? Why did you guys wander all over the map?” The answer is very simple. Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki routinely cut off Simpson’s attorneys with the message, “If you want to grill these witnesses, you’ll have to call them on your own, and not waste our time in cross.”

Lance Ito didn’t have the strength to do that.

I’ve thought a lot, since, about how I would have handled that courtroom if it had been me sitting on the bench. I know for sure I would have limited the scope of cross-examination. If direct went “1, 2, 3,” I wouldn’t let cross go “1, 2, 3… 3½.” I would have allowed no speaking objections. You know, the kind where the attorneys try to elaborate their objections with rhetoric. “Objection, Your Honor. Ms. Clark is trying to mislead the court…” It’s “Objection”-period. I would have ruled from the bench and taken no sidebars on the matter. “You stay there, Mr. Bailey. I’ve ruled!” If a lawyer repeatedly asks improper questions, I’d object on my own: “Don’t do it again, Mr. Cochran. If you do, we’re gonna talk contempt here.” Flout my orders and you get reamed in front of the jury. I’m going to make it hurt, and hurt bad. Pretty soon lawyers get it through their head that it’s not worth their while to pull a fast one. I’d be one of those judges everyone might hate, but I’d treat everyone the same.

At any rate, the Lange cross was incredibly frustrating for me. And even more so for Chris. The frustration, in fact, led him to do something really stupid.

One day after court, Chris dropped by my office and said, almost offhandedly, “I just thought I should let you know that I was talking to Geraldo.”

You what?

“I just told him I’d like the officers to be more aggressive.”

I couldn’t believe it. The whole team had a pact that we wouldn’t speak to the press. It went without saying that a prosecutor shouldn’t be calling a talk-show host to vent.

“Chris,” I said quietly. “Please tell me you didn’t. That’s all we need, for the cops to hear you complaining about them on national TV.”

Chris normally showed much better judgment. This slip had me a little worried. I thought maybe the strain of taking on Johnnie was getting to him. Cochran never missed an opportunity to jerk his chain, and Chris just couldn’t let it slide. He’d managed to keep his temper in check until, during Johnnie’s cross of Tom Lange, Cochran insisted on slipping in innuendos about Faye Resnick.

“Did you learn,” he asked Tom, “whether or not Faye Resnick moved in with Nicole Brown Simpson on Friday, June 3, 1994?”

I objected: this was hearsay. Ito agreed.

But Johnnie kept pushing. “Did you ever ascertain whether or not Miss Nicole Brown Simpson had anyone who lived with her in the month before June 12 other than the children?”

“Yes.”

I objected again. Ito sustained the objection once more, but Johnnie rode right over him.

“Did you find out at some point… that Faye Resnick moved in with Nicole Brown Simpson on or about June 3, 1994-”

“Same objection,” I interjected. “Hearsay.”

This time, for reasons known only to Lance, I was overruled.

“This is what I had heard, yes,” Tom replied.

Johnnie was about to pursue this when Lance took the initiative and called us to a sidebar.

“Is this a disputed fact?” Ito asked me.

I was so furious I could hardly speak. But I managed. “It doesn’t matter whether it is a disputed fact or not,” I said. “We have all kind of slop in the record now that has been thrown in front of this jury through counsel’s method of cross-examination by saying, ‘Have you heard this?’ ‘Do you know about that?’…”

Johnnie certainly knew he was on shaky legal ground. So he tried a diversionary tactic: attacking us personally.

“They obviously haven’t tried any cases in a long time,” he said, referring to Chris and me, “and obviously don’t know how, but this is cross-examination.”

Chris blew up.

“Who is he talking about, doesn’t know how to try [a] case?” His voice was soft but the undercurrent of fury was palpable.

“Wait, Mr. Darden,” Lance warned. He’d made a rule that only one lawyer per side could speak to an issue.

Chris didn’t pay any attention to him.

“Is he the only lawyer who knows how to try [a] case?”

Lance had heard enough. “I’m going to hold you in contempt,” he said.

“I should be held in contempt,” Chris threw back at him. “I have sat here and listened to-”

“Mr. Darden, I’m warning you right now.”

“This cross-examination is out of order,” Chris continued.

Ito excused the jury. Then he turned to Chris again.

“Mr. Darden, let me give you a piece of advice. Take about three deep breaths, as I am going to do, and then contemplate what you are going to say next. Do you want to take a recess now for a moment?”

“I don’t require a recess,” Chris replied.

“… I have cited you. Do you have any response?”

“I would like counsel, Your Honor.” Meaning: I need a lawyer.

Ito told him he could have it. I figured I’d better step in here.

“I would like to be heard in Mr. Darden’s behalf,” I said. Lance asked if that meant I was representing him, and I said it did.

“What we are all concerned about here, Your Honor,” I explained, “is that there is a method of cross-examination that is being conducted by Mr. Cochran that has-”

But Lance cut me off. “That’s not what I’m interested in, Mrs. Clark.” Ito was fixated on one thing: bringing Chris to heel with an apology. “When I invite counsel to take three deep breaths and think carefully about what they are going to say to the court next,” he said, “that’s an opportunity to say ‘Gee, I’m sorry. I lost my head there. I apologize to the court. I apologize to counsel.’ When you get that response, then we move on. Do you want to fight with the court some more? You are welcome to do so.”

He declared a ten-minute recess and told us to think things over.

Back at counsel table, Chris and I huddled. One look at him and I knew that taking deep breaths and apologizing was the furthest thing from his mind. Chris needed real representation now. I told him I could have the office call county counsel. “In the meantime,” I said, “shall I act as your attorney?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Just don’t get me arrested,” he said.

When Ito reconvened the court, I asked for a continuance, so Chris could get a county lawyer and a fair hearing.

Denied.

“This is civil contempt, Counsel. It has to be adjudicated immediately, unless you want to make it a criminal contempt and have a jury trial…” he informed me.

“Can we use the same jury, Your Honor?” I quipped lamely.

Lance was not amused. “I’ve offered you now three times an opportunity to end this right now.”

I had to think fast. If I let Ito believe I had advised Chris to apologize and he had refused, Chris would be in the hot seat alone. I could not do that to my partner. The only other way I saw was to take the heat myself.

You want to play, Lance? Let’s play.

Very calmly-at least I was hoping it looked calm-I began removing my jewelry. First a gold bangle bracelet, which I slid down my wrist and laid unobtrusively on the table. Then my Citizen watch. I flashed momentarily on that night so many years ago when I was collared by the narc in the Ban-Lon shirt. Well, here it was: my belated bust. On national television.

I was just as scared now as I had been then. Would we be spending the night in a holding cell? I wondered. The deputies would certainly find accommodations away from the general population. Wouldn’t they? I’d need to make arrangements at home. But I couldn’t say where I was. “Mommy’s in jail”? I felt that sickening anxiety brought on by a fall from grace.

Lance knew very well what I was doing, and I’m sure he was panicking as he realized this was no bluff. Still, we were acting like a bunch of cranky children. How far would this go?

From somewhere out in the audience someone called out, “Jesus Christ!”

It was Gerry Spence, the Wyoming defense attorney whose frontier-philosopher routine had made him a regular on the talk-show circuit.

“Now there’s a candidate for contempt,” I muttered under my breath.

Lance found himself in a game of chicken, and I think he knew he’d blink before I would. He began to ease his foot off the accelerator. “Miss Clark,” he said, “all levity aside, I’ve offered you now three times an opportunity to end this right now. This is very simple. And perhaps if Mr. Darden had the opportunity to review the transcript that I have before me, he would see the wisdom of that.”

Seeing the transcript would not only help us assess our chances if we challenged the contempt order, but, much more important, it might give us a half-respectable way out of this mess.

“Why don’t we review the transcript, Your Honor?” I agreed.

We went to sidebar. Bailey joined us there. “Apologize, Chris,” he advised him sincerely. “It’s not worth your bar ticket.”

I had to agree. I was looking over the transcript and I didn’t like our chances. We had taken this far enough.

“It ain’t worth it, G,” I told him.

I think by this time Chris’s anger had cooled. He seemed grateful for a way out.

“It appears that the court is correct, that perhaps my comments may have been or are somewhat inappropriate,” he told Ito. “I apologize to the court. I meant no disrespect…”

When Ito returned the apology, I was relieved, but also a little disgusted. After all, it was Johnnie who’d behaved outrageously. But it was Chris who’d had to fall on his sword.

On my way home that night, I paged Chris from my car phone. A few minutes later he called me back.

“Clark, what do you want?” he yelled. I could hear the noise of the freeway behind him. He was on his car phone, too.

“Hey, is that any way to talk to your attorney?” I joked.

“Well, my attorney sold me down the river, remember? Have I told you you’re fired?”

“Well, you can’t fire me-I quit! Besides, you haven’t paid me. That’s the last time I take on a criminal defendant without a retainer.”

“Pay you? Pay you? I’ll pay you, Clark. You’ll find a bag of ‘Snack Ems’ on your chair in the morning. Consider yourself overpaid.”

By now we were both convulsed with laughter. Then Chris sobered up and in a sweet, almost childlike way asked, “Did you really mean that?”

“Mean what?”

“Taking off your jewelry and all that?”

“Of course I did,” I told him. “You know I got your back, G.”

Johnnie was still hammering away at Tom Lange when the defense team dropped another bombshell on us. Rosa Lopez, the mystery alibi witness to whom Johnnie had alluded several times in his opening statement, was about to flee the country. He had to get her into court. Now!

The first we’d heard of this shadowy figure was a two-page statement the defense had given us only minutes before Johnnie’s opening. Lopez’s statement was, to be sure, short on details. She was a Salvadoran maid who worked for Simpson’s neighbors. Rosa claimed to have been out walking her employers’ dog at around ten, and reported seeing Simpson’s Bronco parked by the curb at 10:15. Since that was about the time the dog started barking at Bundy, her story, if true, would blow a big hole in our case.

But was her story true? We strongly suspected that it was not. First tip-off: Lopez had not offered this information to police, who canvassed the neighborhood immediately after the murders. Then we did a little digging into Lopez and discovered that she had been friendly with Simpson’s Israeli housekeeper, Michelle.

Michelle was, by all accounts, fanatically loyal to the defendant. And she’d had a rocky history with Nicole. When the cops were called to the Simpson house the night of the New Year’s Eve argument, it was Michelle who’d tried at first to persuade them to go away. Then she’d actually come out to the police cruiser, where Nicole had taken refuge, and tried to pull her back into the house.

Later on, Michelle had locked horns with Nicole in an incident involving the kids. Sydney and Justin had tracked dirt into the house. Michelle scolded them, and that provoked an argument with Nicole-who slapped her. So there was no question as to where Michelle’s loyalties lay.

According to the story the defense was handing out, Rosa had told Michelle about seeing the Bronco at the curb, and Michelle insisted that she get in touch with Simpson’s attorneys. Think about this for a moment. Lopez’s statement comes in suspiciously late. It includes exactly one firm detail-which just happens to be a key exoneration point for the defendant. The witness is friendly with the defendant’s devoted maid. This had all the earmarks of a defense plant.

Lopez’s testimony wasn’t scheduled to come up until the defense put on its case; we thought we’d have several months to do some more checking on her. Now, her supposed threat to leave the country spiked that plan: Johnnie wanted to call her in to preserve her testimony.

We saw the timing as one more low trick. The defense suspected that Rosa was a serious flake and they were afraid of how she would play as a witness. Rather than take a chance with her during their casein-chief-and giving us the opportunity to investigate her and prepare our cross-they wanted to do a dress rehearsal in what is called a conditional exam, which is done outside the presence of the jury. If Lopez didn’t come across well here, she’d be buried in the middle of our case. If she was persuasive, however, they could bring her back later. And if she fled in the meantime, they could enter her earlier testimony into the record. For the defense it was a no-lose proposition.

For us, it was lose all around. Interjecting Rosa into the middle of the People’s case would not only break our momentum, but get the jury thinking about alibis. We had to stop it.

Lance ruled that we would examine Lopez out of the jury’s presence, so he could decide whether she truly posed a flight risk. That Friday, she took the stand. She was a sunken, peculiar little woman, wearing what appeared to be a purple velour jogging suit. She didn’t look particularly happy to be there. She’d come with an attorney. Where, I thought, does a down-at-the-heels character like this one get the bucks to hire a lawyer?

Under Johnnie’s questioning, Lopez contended that because of her involvement in the case, she had lost her job and had to move out-and was about to return to her homeland. “The reporters wouldn’t leave me alone,” Lopez told the court in Spanish, through an interpreter. “I’m tired of looking at them. They have been harassing me.”

Harassing? Even allowing for the translation, this smacked of coaching.

She began to weep. Someone gave her a Kleenex.

“Do you have any present plans to return to El Salvador?” Johnnie asked her.

“I would like to go tomorrow.”

Since I was on witness fifteen and counting, Chris had agreed to question Rosa. “You made [a reservation] today?” he asked her. “… Prior to coming to court this morning?”

“Sí,” she assured him.

He asked her whether anyone had told her to do so. No, she said, she had decided to do it. She would stay away for a long time.

I passed a note to Chris:

“Ask her what airline and under what name.”

He did. She replied that her reservation was booked under her own name. And then he asked her the airline.

“Taca. Taca International. T-A-C-A.”

Cheri ran out to check. What a surprise: Rosa had no reservation.

Chris bored into her: “Miss Lopez, we just called the airline. They don’t have a reservation for you. Can you explain to the court why it is that you just told us you have a reservation?”

“Because I am going to reserve it, sir. As soon as I reserve it, I will buy my ticket and I will leave. If you want to, the cameras can follow me.”

Rosa was not as dull-witted as she seemed.

But Chris had nailed her. Wasn’t it true that she told us she had actually made the reservation? he wanted to know. She avoided the question, but finally had to answer.

“No,” she said.

Not only was she lying, but now she was lying about lying.

To me, the issue seemed clear-cut. Lopez had no reservation; there was no immediate threat that she’d flee. Ergo, no need for a conditional exam. Johnnie, however, argued that this woman was a salt-o’-the-earth heroine who was risking her personal safety by even showing up. It would be an insult to every citizen who comes forward in a trial, he explained, if we were going to doubt this fine woman’s word that she was about to leave.

Chris was astounded. “Are we talking about the same Rosa Lopez?”

But Ito was simply not willing to take the chance that she would skip the country-in that case, he reasoned, Simpson would be denied an important witness. The only question that remained was whether the hearing would be held in the presence of the jury or recorded on videotape. We were pushing for the latter. From what I’d seen of Rosa, there was an excellent chance that she would self-destruct so spectacularly that the defense wouldn’t dare introduce the tape.

It was our understanding that Ito wouldn’t make his final determination until Monday and I’d told everyone-including the judge-that I had to leave early that day. Late that Friday, Chris, Frank, and I were in a conference upstairs-I was about to leave, in fact-when a law clerk delivered the news. Ito was calling in the jury! He intended to start the hearing immediately. He would keep court in session until midnight if he had to.

The news nearly sent me into a panic. I’d given Lance notice at least twice that I couldn’t stay any later than four o’clock. He assured me in chambers that it wouldn’t be a problem; we should be done by noon. Now, it was already getting near six.

I raced downstairs and asked to be heard.

“I have informed the court I cannot be present tonight because I do have to take care of my children…” I said. “And I do not want proceedings to go before a jury when I can’t be here.”

I reminded Lance that we had talked about this earlier. As I spoke I began feeling self-conscious and very alone. I looked Lance in the eye. “I can’t be here, Your Honor.”

My voice was quavering. Oh, God. I was like a six-year-old whose daddy had backed down on a promise to take her to the park. “But you promised me, Daddy!”

Get a grip!

“Miss Clark,” Lance replied, “I’m sorry. I apologize to you. I had forgotten that problem.” He explained to the court that he had made “adjustments” for my children problems. “I just plain forgot,” he apologized.

Johnnie saw an opportunity here and he grabbed it. Let’s do it without Marcia!

“This is Mr. Darden’s witness,” he said. “As the court has seen, Mr. Darden is absolutely capable of conducting this examination… It seems to me we should be able to proceed ahead.”

Johnnie, I knew, would be delighted to do Lopez without me. He could push Chris’s buttons in a way he couldn’t push mine.

Ito cut him off, reminding him that I was the lead prosecutor, and that if it were Johnnie who’d requested an early departure, he’d call a recess for him as well. He would call the jury back in and tell them we were through for the weekend.

Over the next four court days, Chris annihilated Rosa Lopez. The D.A. investigators had turned up Sylvia Guerra, a maid who worked for neighbors of Rosa’s employers. Sylvia told how Rosa had approached her and offered her $5,000 to corroborate the Bronco story. She’d also tried to sell her tale to the National Enquirer, but even that purveyor of grotesqueries wouldn’t go for it.

We also discovered that there was a tape recording that a defense investigator named Bill Pavelic had done with Rosa. The defense-team investigator told Chris that he’d “forgotten” all about it. Ito ordered him to bring the tape and notes to court. “I shall do my best to get those items,” Pavelic answered.

For once, Ito was firm. “No, don’t do your best,” Lance boomed. “Have them here tomorrow!”

The next morning, Chris, Johnnie, Carl, and I met in Lance’s chambers to listen to the tape. No wonder the defense had tried to conceal it from us-it was an absolute joke. When Rosa said she heard someone walking outside her window at nine, Pavelic quickly corrected her, adjusting the time to “nine-thirty or nine-forty-five.” When it came to the critical time when she spotted the Bronco, there was a long pause accompanied by a rustling of papers. Then Rosa comes back with a firm “Ten-twenty. Ten-fifteen, I’m takin’ my dog for a walk.”

It was clear to me that she’d been coached to within an inch of her life.

Afterward, during Chris’s cross, Rosa withdrew further and further from her original claims, repeatedly chanting “No me recuerdo.” I don’t remember. Johnnie wouldn’t leave it alone. He tried to float an explanation that in El Salvador “I don’t remember” is a colloquial expression for “I don’t know.” It was ridiculous. He was making a fool of himself over a witness who had taken a steep skid from defense linchpin to laughingstock.

In the end, even Lance Ito could not ignore the defense’s serious misconduct in deliberately hiding discovery for this witness and others. Ruling that Johnny had made “untrue representations” to the court in “reckless disregard of the truth,” Lance fined Johnnie and Carl Douglas a mere $950 each. (If Ito had made the fine $1,000, the sanction, by law, would have been reported to the state bar, and Lance Ito did not want to be the one to put a blot on Johnnie Cochran’s record.) The judge also promised to tell the jury that this was a violation of law and that they could consider the delay in disclosure when assessing the credibility of the witness. Of course, this was academic, since the defense prudently dropped Lopez from their witness list.

Days of court time wasted, the jury detained for no good reason, the People’s case disrupted-all because the defense wanted to float a trial balloon for a phony witness. In the end Rosa Lopez didn’t amount to a hill of beans. But I’ll always remember her for those humiliating moments when I was forced to tell the judge, on national television, that I had to leave to go home.

It turned out, that was only the beginning of my nightmare. To my utter dismay, my personal life was about to become a national issue.

Back in court Monday morning, I was arguing the motion to keep Rosa Lopez’s testimony from the jury, and Johnnie got ticked off at me. So he launched into a surprise attack. He accused me of using child care as a “ploy” to buy time. It was an outrageous allegation. I wasn’t going to let it pass.

“I’m offended as a woman, as a single parent, and as a prosecutor and an officer of the court to hear an argument posed by counsel like that of Mr. Cochran today,” I said. “Some of us have child-care issues, and they are serious and they are paramount. Obviously, Mr. Cochran cannot understand that, but he should not come before this court and impugn the integrity of someone who does have those considerations.”

At the moment when I loosed this little salvo, I was still under the impression that this child-care thing was a limited skirmish being waged between Johnnie and me, albeit in front of a national audience. The following day, however, when I was on my way back to my office during recess, Suzanne drew me aside in the foyer of the War Room. The expression on her face was pained, so I knew she was going to tell me something horrible. Well, what else was new?

“I can’t let you go back down to court without warning you,” she told me.

“Go ahead,” I told her. “I won’t shoot.”

“Gordon has filed for primary custody. His declaration is being carried all over the newses.”

I’d been bracing for another Simpson setback. This blow hit me like a two-by-four. My knees got wobbly. My throat grabbed up.

“Oh, my God, no. Oh no.” It was all I could say. I sank into a chair and put my face in my hands.

Suzanne broke into my misery. “They’re running excerpts from his declaration on all of the channels.”

“What is he saying?” I asked weakly.

She beckoned me to her office. There, all nine of her television screens were on. The talking heads on every single one were all covering the same thing: Gordon’s request for custody.

“How does this happen?” I asked Suzanne, incredulous. “How does the media get hold of a motion before I know it even exists?”

I had been a street fighter all my life, but this kind of warfare was all new to me. My divorce from Gaby had been uncontested. I hadn’t asked for anything except my freedom. And back then there was nothing to get from me. Now I was faced with the loss of my children. And because I was locked into this trial, I didn’t even have the freedom to devote the 110 percent I needed so badly to put into the fight.

I needed time to think what to do. I needed time to talk to a lawyer, I needed time to absorb the shock, but the demands of this case afforded me none. Clearly, especially after Johnnie’s attack, no one would understand if I asked Ito for a few days off to handle this personal crisis. Instead I’d probably be crucified both in court and in the press, and the stories would all have the same punch line: “See what happens when you let a girl do a man’s job?”

Would a judge really take my children away? Here I was with my life in overdrive. Never enough sleep. Constantly under the gun to do in one week what a prosecutor normally required six months to do. I’d been proud of the fact that I’d been able to meet all my commitments. That had meant putting in a full workday, rushing home, then, at the end of the evening, putting in another five hours of work before collapsing in an exhausted heap among my pillows.

I’d promised myself almost daily that once I got through with this damned trial, I’d never think about touching a high-profile case again. To paraphrase Jim Morrison, my ballroom days were over, baby. I wanted to try nothing but nice anonymous little cases where no camera would care to go. A year ago, when I’d come back to Special Trials, I’d planned to try one or two more big cases. Of course, when I thought “big,” I hadn’t foreseen the Simpson case. Nothing in my experience, or anyone else’s, could have prepared me for that.

Two months into the Simpson case, these ambitions had already lost their appeal. The total immersion I’d not only enjoyed but needed in years past was no longer attractive to me. When I’d been doing run-of-the-mill cases, work and home were not in constant conflict. But Simpson had rewritten the rulebook.

I couldn’t stop staring at the TV screens. My divorce was being treated like the news of a military coup or the latest election results. I felt that weird, disembodied sensation I’d suffered so many times throughout this case when I’d seen myself on television or in newspapers and magazines. Who was that woman? She looked like me, all right, but I had no sense of connection to her.

Suzanne’s phones were ringing off their hooks. The media wanted my response to the allegations. “We want to give you a chance to tell your side,” they said.

“No,” I told Suzanne. “Ms. Clark does not care to make a response.”

I didn’t need anyone to advise me on this one. You don’t wash your laundry, dirty or otherwise, in public.

That night, after everyone was asleep, I went into my own bedroom. From the top shelf of the closet I pulled out a photo album and I opened the embossed maroon cover. The very first photo was of Matt the day he was born. Why do all newborns look like Yoda? I was in my hospital gown, preparing to nurse him for the first time. I looked exhausted but happy. Very happy.

I’d always wanted to have children. But I didn’t want to do it until I’d set my life up well enough to give them a good home and a sense of permanence. That meant waiting until I was a Grade 4. During the seventies and eighties, it was an unspoken fact at the D.A.‘s office that if a woman took maternity leave, it could derail her efforts to advance. People just took you a lot less seriously when they saw you going off to make babies. The office is much better about that now, but back when I was a young deputy, it was a reality.

When I made Grade 4, I was thirty-five and pushing the edge of the maternity envelope. Hanging over me was my childhood premonition that I would die young. I really never expected to live beyond the age of forty-five. I suppose that some subrational part of my brain believed that if I had children I might get an extension on the deadline. A continuance, so to speak. It made sense to me that nature has an interest in keeping a mother alive, at least until her children are grown. And if I had children, I would want to live. I would fight to live. You don’t think about having kids unless you’re hungry for life.

I remember thinking that getting pregnant would be as easy as quitting birth control. But it wasn’t. After a year of no birth control and no baby, I’d consulted my gynecologist. He gave me a few shots, then a few pills. Then a more powerful fertility pill. Two months later, I was expecting. I was thrilled beyond words. But I was afraid to tell anyone at work. I wasn’t a teenager. Miscarriages at my age were not uncommon. And what if the amniocentesis showed my baby wasn’t okay? I couldn’t even bear to think about that. I decided to keep the news to myself.

I bought a few drop-waisted jumpers to camouflage my growing belly and silently endured the ribbing I took about my change in style from tailored suits to Laura Ashley. For court appearances I found I could get away with leaving my skirt unbuttoned and keeping my jacket closed-at least for the first five months or so.

Secretly, I was elated. Every day I’d look in the mirror and lightly move my hand over my belly. Had it grown? Unlikely, since I’d checked it just hours ago. It was a thrill unlike any other I’d known to see the baby in the sonogram. My little boy was real! I could see his heartbeat. After amnio showed the baby was healthy, I was so happy I felt drunk.

During that time, I caught the Bardo case. I was still hiding my pregnancy, and I knew there was a very good chance I’d be in trial by the time I went into labor. (As it turned out, that case took so long to get to court that I’d long since given birth to Matthew.) But I still kept mum about the pregnancy well into my sixth month. I didn’t want to be treated as an invalid. (In hindsight I suppose my camouflage efforts fooled no one. But they let me act out the charade.) I felt great, at least most of the time. I’d ridden out the morning-sickness phase by sneaking animal crackers in court. They were the only thing that seemed to settle my queasy stomach. But morning sickness passed, and things were good for me.

Come month six, however, I had to tell my supervisor, an impersonal, imperious man, about my condition.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m pregnant.” It came tumbling out. “I’m not going to take any time off before the birth. And I won’t take a lot of maternity leave after I have the baby.” I braced myself for his reaction.

“No problem,” he said, barely looking up. “Ride that horse till it drops.”

During the preliminary hearings for Bardo, I was almost nine months pregnant. The press had been allowed to park a camera in the jury box, which meant they got a side view that made me look like Shamu. I joked with the cameraman that if he ever aired that shot, I’d move to have the press excluded. But the fact of the matter is, I loved it. I was really a mommy. My swollen silhouette proved it. What my friends couldn’t believe was how I always talked about this baby. And what I’d do for the next one.

“How can you even think about another baby?” they’d ask. “You haven’t even had this one yet.”

But, you see, I never considered having only one child. It would be two or none. I remembered all too well the six years of loneliness I’d felt until my brother was born. I wanted to make sure that my children were born as close together as my health and strength would allow. Then they would always have each other for company.

And so, I found myself pregnant again. This time, trying a double homicide. I was worried about being able to finish the case before I went into labor. But the judge ran a tight ship, and I figured things would move quickly.

Right in the middle of jury selection, however, the Rodney King verdict had come in. The riots shut us down for a few days. During that time, I fretted. Would our jury, which was shaping up to be largely African-American, take out their anger on me? It wasn’t a great time to be trying a case. Fortunately, the defendants thought so too. They moved for a mistrial, and the judge granted it.

That left me at loose ends, and still very pregnant. I got lucky. One of my friends in the Special Trials Unit, John Zajec, was getting ready to go to trial on another double homicide. For the past few months, whenever we met in the strip of hallway between our offices, John and I had been batting around the various legal and strategic issues on his case. When my case got bumped to the back burner, I’d go down to his office and hustle up some conversation. I was such a junkie, if I couldn’t have a case of my own, I’d glom onto someone else’s.

Over lunch, I’d come up with an idea. Maybe I could be his second chair.

“If you don’t like the idea, just tell me so,” I told him slyly. “But maybe having a pregnant chick next to you will get some jury sympathy. And I’ll put on all the boring stuff.”

“Sounds great,” he told me.

And that’s how I wound up arguing for the imposition of the death penalty exactly one week before giving birth to Tyler. My spirits were high, but my body wasn’t exactly cooperating. Although I was in good shape physically, my pelvic bones had loosened up, a natural occurrence that prepares women for birthing. I found that if I stood up too fast after I’d been sitting for a while, my legs felt like they’d come out of their sockets and I’d have to kind of shake them back into place.

I could hide most of that business sitting at counsel table. The awkward part came when I’d been standing at the lectern examining a witness. I’d just asked him if he’d like to refresh his memory by looking at the text of his statement. Yes, he told me, he would. I took a step, or rather tried to, when I realized that my leg wouldn’t go back where it belonged. I was struggling to coax it back into place when the judge, puzzled by the pause, asked, “Ms. Clark, would you like to approach the witness?”

“Yes… we ll… I’d like to, Your Honor.”

I was having to smother laughter. This was like a Buster Keaton routine. Finally, I shook the sucker back into joint and glided to the witness stand. Later when I told John what had happened, he just shook his head and said, “You women! I don’t know how you do it.”

The jurors returned a verdict of guilty. They later confided in me that they’d been taking bets as to whether I’d make it to the end.

I could never have imagined that motherhood would be so all-consuming. You spend the first thirty-six years of your life as a free agent-and pow. You’re responsible for the survival of a totally helpless humanoid. Colic! Life for the first four months is like one long wail. You’re frantic to ease the pain. Must be something you’re eating, right? So you add vegetables. Then you eliminate vegetables, cut out spices, reduce dairy intake.

Only time takes care of the problem.

My friends all warned me about what to expect when I went back to work. You think you’ll be glad to get out of the house, they said. But when the time comes, you’ll yearn to get back. You’ll actually find yourself calling home during the day just to hear the baby cry. They were right. Those same friends would later reassure me that it’s possible to love a second baby as much as the first. It’s true. I don’t know how that works, I guess the heart just expands.

Mothering, of course, complicated life exponentially. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store became a major logistical ordeal. If I took a baby, or two of them, I’d have to bring a stroller or backpack carrier, a diaper bag, a bottle, and at least one toy. I’d reach in my purse for a pen and come up with a toy airplane or a G.I. Joe. Or I’d be sitting in court trying a case, and my beeper would go off with a call from home.

My colleagues were sympathetic. Even during the Simpson case, when we were all in the throes of monstrous stress, my teammates were all so sweet and considerate. It wasn’t unusual for our meetings to be interrupted by a phone call from the domestic front and Hank and Scott would riff on my transformation from Darth Vader to Mother Goose. Not until this Monday morning in February, when Johnnie hit me with his accusations that I had used my children-used them-had I come face-to-face with reality: not all the world loves a working mother.

I turned to the last page of the photo album and was mortified to realize that I hadn’t inserted any of the pictures taken over the last eight months. They were still up on the shelf in their plastic covers. When the trial was over, I’d get the album up-to-date, I promised myself.

I wanted to lock myself into the bathroom and scream, to pound on the walls. I wanted to mount an offensive that would lay waste to three countries. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t afford self-indulgence. I had to call a lawyer immediately to get the ball rolling.

Next morning, I slunk into work like a dog expecting to be hit. When I opened the door to my office I was overwhelmed by the sight and scent of flowers. There were red roses, yellow roses, white roses. There were stalks of gladiolus and eucalyptus, birds-of-paradise, pink and lavender freesias, knots of ‘sweet William and violets. My dank bureaucratic lair had been transformed into a hothouse in full riot. I read the cards on the first three or four bouquets to see who my well-wishers were. No one I knew-just strangers, from Texas, Connecticut, Washington, D.C. All over. They were sending me sympathy and wishing me luck.

Well, I’ll be dipped.

For months before this, supporters had been sending the team jewelry, cosmetics, clothing, and other trinkets. When the bottlers of Evian water saw that Chris and I kept Crystal Geyser on the counsel table, they air-freighted us cases of their own stuff. Someone even sent Chris an expensive leather flight jacket. Chris thought it was hilarious. He started calling this bounty “free shit,” FS for short.

But the FS we’d gotten to date was nothing compared to the avalanche that poured in during those days after Gordon’s custody filing. Scott dubbed the new influx “more free shit.” MFS! Before, I’d gotten flowers only from women; now I got them from men as well. And everybody wanted to know how they could help me out.

Amid this outpouring of goodwill there was a touching solicitude for me personally. A Holocaust survivor sent me a book on coping. My haggard appearance caused others to send cough medicine and vitamins. I got a lot of books on stress. I received angels of every kind. Ceramic, wood, papier-mâché. I kept them all.

I think what touched me most was a letter sent by a convent of Dominican nuns. This wonderful missive urged courage and fortitude; it was sort of the Dominican version of “Go, girlfriend.” I taped it to the wall next to my desk and turned to it several times a day for comfort.

Sisters, if you’re reading this, please accept my gratitude. The next few weeks would be the most trying of my life. Through it all, your prayers preserved my sanity.

And FS restored my faith in my fellow man.