Without a Doubt

Soul Survivor

CAR TAPE. It’s Monday, September 18. We started working on closing argument in earnest this weekend and Chris and I had a huge fight. I think it’s primarily because he wants to take a big role in the closing argument, but he’s also afraid to because he doesn’t know the case that well…

Originally, I’d intended to do the closing all by myself. I knew this case better than anyone else. On the other hand, I knew the task ahead was awesome. I had to distill the more than 40,000 pages of testimony into a swift, eloquent, compelling argument that would show that the evidence in the case pointed to Orenthal James Simpson, and to him alone. Which, of course, it did. But would this hostile jury ever see that?

The elements of that argument were threefold: opportunity; identity; motive. Opportunity presented no problem. Here was O. J. Simpson, a man whose face was recognized everywhere he went, who had no one to document his whereabouts for what we now computed as seventy-seven minutes, the exact period during which Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were murdered. Identity was also a lock. We had identified O. J. Simpson six ways from Sunday as the man whose blood was at the murder scene-and in the Bronco and on the bloody Rockingham glove, where it was mixed with the blood of his victims.

As I’ve said, the prosecution never needs to prove that the defendant had motive, only intent. It is usually useful, however, to suggest to a jury why the defendant might have gone so far as to slit another human being’s throat. The motive for this particular murder was sexual rage. And I felt that now, in our final moments, we were compelled to pull this jury’s nose flat up against the truth. O. J. Simpson was a sadist who’d terrorized his wife for years-until she’d finally stood up to him and paid for it with her life.

Chris wanted to put on the DV. That was understandable-it was his baby. The problem was, he also wanted to argue premeditation. I didn’t want him to. Arguing premeditation required a command of both law and the particulars of the coroner’s findings. The manner in which someone is killed is one of the primary ways to show premeditation. The more elaborate the attack, the more successfully you can argue it was a premeditated murder. I didn’t feel Chris had paid close enough attention to the coroner’s testimony to explain how it proved premeditation. I didn’t know if he could get up to speed on the law. So he and I went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

That’s how it was between Chris and me. Always. We were like siblings: close, loyal to the end, but inclined to squabble. Toward the end of the trial we both said and did things we didn’t mean, only because we were so strung out on stress. I must say that during these, some of my darkest hours, I felt a gentle hand at my elbow. It was Bill Hodgman come once again to my rescue. Bill knew I hadn’t the reserves to waste on infighting. Patiently, tactfully, he drew Chris aside to try and bring him up to speed.

The reports I got back from Bill weren’t good. Chris wasn’t getting it. There just wasn’t enough time. Finally he realized that and gave up the fight.

I was relieved. Chris would argue the domestic violence, but I would take premeditation. Once the program was set, nobody blinked, no one looked back. We charged ahead full-throttle toward closing arguments.

One screwball rumor making its rounds after the trial was that I had thrown my argument together at the last moment. “Crammed like a college kid,” I believe, was the expression. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the broadest sense, I had been preparing for my closing for nearly fourteen months. I’ve had a system that has served me well lo these fourteen years as a prosecutor. From the moment I catch a case, I start an accordion file labeled “Closing Argument Ideas.” I stash away clippings in it; also magazine photos and newspaper columns. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, scribble a note, and next day, stick it into the file. When the juror questionnaires come in, I’ll look through them to see if there are any expressions, buzzwords, or sentiments they seem fond of. Anything like that goes into the file.

The Simpson case was no exception. My county-issue accordion file had overflowed to a second, then a third.

Everyone was working hard. For several weeks before closing arguments were set to begin, the entire staff had been holding brainstorming sessions in the conference room next to Gil’s office. Hank would unroll a scroll of butcher paper on the long granite table and print on it our topics: “Contamination,” “Planting,” “DNA,” and so on. Over the course of a workday, deputies would drift in, add their two cents, then drift out again. By the end, we had over 150 entries pointing to guilt. It was too much for a summation, so we boiled it down to eight key pieces of evidence-each of which had an irrefutable connection to O. J. Simpson:

The knit cap.

Ron Goldman’s shirt.

The shoe prints up the Bundy walk.

The droplets of blood leading from Bundy.

The blood in the Bronco.

The Rockingham blood trail.

The Rockingham glove.

The socks found at the foot of Simpson’s bed.

We’d originally included the Bundy glove as well, but it had less significant blood, hair, and fibers. Ultimately, we left it out. It didn’t add to proof of guilt.

(One episode of the civil trial that gave me a chuckle was when the defense tried to suggest that the Bundy glove had been switched for a ringer. This, like so many other “stunning developments,” led to nothing, of course. But I thought to myself, “If you were going to switch a piece of evidence, why not pick one that was incriminating?”)

CAR TAPE. Our genius Judge Ito… has preplanned a trip up north for Friday and Monday the twenty-ninth and October second. And he will not cancel for anything or anyone. Instead, he prefers to be going to night sessions after dinner, arguing 7 to 9… That’s ridiculous-we argue to a jury that’s half asleep? God, you know, Ito would rather inconvenience the whole fucking world than himself for one day.

I stumbled awake on September 26, the morning of closing arguments. After splashing water in my face, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked skeletal; the circles under my eyes were the color of eggplants. What’s more, I had a flaming pain in my lower right jaw. I’ve had dental problems all my life and this particular discomfort left no doubt as to its cause: an abscessed tooth. A trip to the dentist was out of the question. You do not call in sick when you are scheduled to give the closing argument in the Trial of the Century.

I almost never rehearse my arguments. Sometimes I’ll read them aloud to a friend. But I don’t memorize them. I don’t want them to sound rehearsed, or insincere. Instead, I’ll commit the main points to memory and speak from the heart. And that is what I did the morning of my summation in the trial of People v. Orenthal James Simpson.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” I greeted them.

“Good morning,” they replied in unison. They were looking more cheerful than usual. I’m sure it was because they knew their ordeal was nearing an end.

Straight out of the gate I wanted to make good on my obligation to tell the jury what I thought of Mark Fuhrman. It was part of the pact I’d made with myself the day before I’d interviewed him back in March. If I didn’t believe his testimony, I would tell the jury that. And so I did.

“It would be completely understandable,” I told them, “if you were to feel angry and disgusted with Mark Fuhrman. As we all are… Did he lie when he testified here in this courtroom saying that he did not use racial epithets in the last ten years? Yes. Is he a racist? Yes. Is he the worst [the] LAPD has to offer? Yes…

“But the fact that Mark Fuhrman is a racist and lied about it on the witness stand does not mean that we haven’t proven the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Then I fulfilled the second part of the pact. I told the jury what Mark Fuhrman had done right. I showed them how impossible it would have been for him to plant evidence-which was, after all, the only thing about Mark Fuhrman that mattered to the case.

Then, for the last time, I walked that jury right through what had happened the night of June 12, 1994.

“The defendant came back from Bundy in a hurry. Ron Goldman upset his plans and things took a little longer than anticipated. He ran back behind the house, that dark, narrow south pathway-you all saw it. You were there in daytime. But imagine how dark it is at night-that dark, narrow south pathway, thinking he could get rid of the glove, the knife, in that dirt area in the back…

“But he was in a hurry. He was moving quickly down a dark narrow pathway overhung with trees, strewn with leaves, and in his haste he ran right into that air conditioner… And [that] caused him to fall against the wall, making the wall of Kato’s room shake… And it was just as simple as that. Simple common sense tells you that the thumping, the glove and the defendant’s appearance on the driveway almost immediately thereafter are all part of one set of events, all connected in time and space. You don’t need science to tell you that; you just need reason and logic.”

I produced the time line showing the clear connection between the thumps and Simpson’s appearance. Johnnie objected, claiming that there had been no testimony to establish that Park had seen Simpson just two minutes after the thumps, but he was promptly and properly overruled. The evidence had shown just that.

“Now, let me ask you this,” I continued. “Why didn’t the defendant let Allan Park drive into the driveway? Why leave him sitting out there at the gate? Why make him wait outside? Because the defendant was frazzled, ladies and gentlemen, he was hurried, and he needed to buy some time. Time to wash himself up, wash off the blood, change the clothes, and to compose himself to appear normal, to appear business as usual… But there are certain things… that tell you that it most certainly was not business as usual on the night of June twelfth after he murdered Ron and Nicole…”

There was Simpson’s forgetting to set the house alarm after Kato told him about the thumping. Simpson’s lying to Allan Park about having overslept. Simpson’s leaving blood in the bathroom and in the foyer, leaving his socks on the floor. (We had heard testimony that Simpson was a compulsively tidy man.)

It was definitely not business as usual, I told the jury, when Simpson had complained of being hot and sweaty on a cool night. Unlike the other passengers on the red-eye, he didn’t sleep, even though he’d been up at six A.M. for an early golf game. One passenger noticed he wore no socks.

I spent quite a bit of time talking about the cuts on the defendant’s left hand. Here, I told the jury, we have the defendant cutting his left hand on the very night of his wife’s stabbing. A cut on the left hand-which happened to be the hand that the killer cut. “That,” I pointed out, was “an alarming coincidence.”

If it was true that O. J. Simpson cut his hand on a broken glass in Chicago, why was there no blood on the glass? Why was there no blood in the sink?

“It shows an effort to conceal a wound that he knows will be highly incriminating. This act shows consciousness of guilt…”

I ridiculed the defense’s theory that evidence had been contaminated. Remember the compelling testimony of Dr. Robin Cotton, I urged. “When DNA degrades… it doesn’t turn into someone else’s type. You get no result.” You don’t get a set of results that all point to one suspect. Only one person in 57 billion could have left that blood at Bundy. That’s about as absolute as you can get.

“The wealth of evidence in this case is simply overwhelming,” I said, winding to a close. “If we only had the Bundy blood trail that matched the defendant, it would be enough proof to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If we only had Nicole Brown’s blood on his socks, that would be enough to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If we only had Ron Goldman’s blood in his Bronco, that would be enough to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt… But we have all that and much more.”

I had spoken for six hours. I returned unsteadily to my seat. I was dizzy. My jaw ached.

Chris wrote a note and pushed it over to me. “That was brilliant.”

I looked back at him and smiled. It was the most warmth we had shared in weeks.

Ito had decreed that during summations we would go into evening sessions, so it was nearly seven o’clock before Chris rose to speak. If he’d been drained by the strain of waiting, he didn’t show it. Very calmly, dramatically, he pointed a finger at the defendant.

“The killing was personal,” he told the jury. “You look at the domestic violence, the manner of the killing, the physical evidence, the history of abuse and their relationship, the intimidation, the stalking. You look at it and it all points to him. It all points to him.”

Once again, he traced the violence between the Simpsons from 1985 through 1989, and likened it to a burning fuse. “We submit to you that the hand that left [an] imprint [on Nicole’s] neck five years ago is the same hand that cut that same throat… on June twelfth, 1994. It was the defendant. It was the defendant then. It’s the defendant now.”

Chris had done good work during hours of closed-door sessions with Scott Gordon and Gavin de Becker. His message and delivery were powerfully sincere. Now, as I watched him, I was reminded of why I’d brought him on board in the first place. Chris Darden was smart; he was tough; and, above all, he was principled. I remembered why I’d been proud to call him my partner.

Over the past nine months, I’d been annoyed repeatedly by the transparent-and, in my opinion, amoral-ploys on the part of the defense to manipulate the jury. Johnnie Cochran had come in for a fair share of my anger. And yet my harsh feelings toward him were always tempered by the realization that for most of his career Johnnie had actually stood for something. He’d seen young black men shaken down and roughed up by cops and he’d felt a righteous outrage. He’d dedicated his career to waking the system up and making it play fair. Crying “racism” in virtually every case where he had a black defendant was his stock-in-trade. It was often disingenuous. But you could argue that it was done in the service of principle.

When on September 27 Johnnie rose to give a summation that would last for parts of two days, he cast principle to the wind.

After complimenting the twelve for being a “truly marvelous jury,” he bestowed upon them the blessing in absentia of Abraham Lincoln who’d proclaimed that “service is the highest act of citizenship.” He then invoked Frederick Douglass, exalting the ideal of “no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights, and a common destiny.”

Having intoned those lofty sentiments, Johnnie launched into a harangue of hatred against the “messengers” of the state. He flew at Fuhrman’s throat, labeling him a “genocidal racist”-one who had lain in wait nine years for an opportunity to frame O. J. Simpson. Then, through the alchemy of rhetoric, Johnnie fused Fuhrman and Vannatter. They became, progressively, the “Twins of Deception,” the “Twin Demons of Evil,” and finally the “Twin Devils of Deception.

“There was another man, not too long ago, who had those same views, who wanted to burn people,” Johnnie said. “This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the history of the world. Adolf Hitler.”

Hitler? I was nearly breathless with outrage. When Johnnie took the floor that morning, could he really have intended to say these things?

(I later learned this was no heat-of-the-moment excess. This atrocity had been scripted for Johnnie by a fellow defense attorney who was informally assisting the Dream Team. The ghostwriter, I was appalled to discover, was Jewish.)

To have been driven to this excess, Johnnie had to feel desperate. He and his whole crew, in fact, had to be scared to death that the jury might, just for one moment, come to their senses and listen to the evidence. If they did, of course, they would have no choice but to convict. Instead, Johnnie showed them a face-saving detour around the truth. A shortcut that would leave them with the illusion that they were upholding justice.

“Your verdict,” he told that mostly African-American jury, “will go far beyond the walls of [this courtroom]. Your verdict talks about justice in America and it talks about the police and whether they should be above the law… Maybe that’s why you were selected. There’s [someone] in your background… that helps you understand that this is wrong… Maybe you’re the right people, at the right time, at the right place to say, ‘No more-we’re not going to have this.’ “

Johnnie was asking for the jury to deliver a big “Screw you.” It’s called “jury nullification.” It’s not legal. It’s not allowed. But it’s not necessarily evil. Jury nullification can sometimes serve a greater good. The example most often given is that of Northern juries who, during the days before the Civil War, refused to sentence fugitive slaves to death. Jurors on these cases often acted with courage, flying in the face of bad law by voting to acquit.

But there was no such exalted legal or social issue at stake here. Johnnie Cochran was exhorting this jury to turn its back on perfectly good laws in order to free his client. And who was his client? Not some fugitive from oppression. His client was a homicidal narcissist, a man who, for the entire span of his overrated career, stood for nothing but his own self-aggrandizement. His client was a man who lived by no creed except to pursue his own infantile impulses. His client was a black man who had done nothing to further the welfare of his black brothers and black sisters and had, in fact, turned his back on them.

This put me in a bind. If I objected, it would look to the jury-at least this jury-like the prosecution was trying to stifle a plea for justice. And that impression would only be reinforced if my objection was sustained. (Later, out of the presence of the jury, I did protest the call for nullification.) The fact of the matter, however, is that it’s the job of the judge in a situation like this to step in and object on his own motion. His is the only action powerful enough to scotch such a plea. But Ito stood passively by while Johnnie turned that jury into a mob.

And I thought, Shouldn’t your ideals, Johnnie, have brought you to a better place than this?

I also thought, My jaw is killing me, and I’m about to pass out.

Johnnie spoke for two days, followed by Barry Scheck. Upstairs in our office, a platoon of D.A.s and law clerks remained stationed at television sets, taking notes. I’d given orders that I wanted a complete inventory of every distortion, misrepresentation, half-truth, and outright lie that came out of the defense’s performance.

I had intended to oversee the business of parceling out the list for rebuttal after we broke for the day. But by the time I got off the elevator on the eighteenth floor, I was beyond coherent thought. The pain radiating through my skull was blinding.

Hank Goldberg pulled me aside.

“Marcia,” he said, “maybe we should ask Ito for a continuance. I think the fact that our lead prosecutor needs dental surgery is plenty good cause.”

Hank, I knew, was worried about me. I’m also sure he was concerned about what kind of performance I’d put in during rebuttal the next day. But I knew we couldn’t hold off. I didn’t want the jury back there cogitating on the swill they’d just heard from Cochran and Scheck.

I had to get rid of this problem fast. The mirror in the women’s restroom showed an angry, inflamed lump on my lower gum. For a moment I even considered trying to lance it myself with a needle. Cheri was appalled.

“Who do you think you are?” she screeched. “Gordon-fucking-Liddy?”

Cheri quickly found a dentist who’d see me right away. Then she and Scott bundled me into her car and drove me to West Hollywood. The dentist and an anesthesiologist were waiting for us. The dentist, a very sweet young guy in his thirties, looked at me and deadpanned, “Don’t you know you can’t perform surgery without a license, Ms. Clark?”

“I can’t be knocked out,” I told him. “I’ve got to go back to work.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured me. “You’ll just feel good.”

Last thing I remember as I slipped under the anesthetic was the ridiculous image of Johnnie pulling O. J. Simpson’s knit cap down over his ears. I heard myself chuckle. But the laughter got fainter and fainter as I tumbled down a tunnel of darkness.

I was under for less than an hour. When I awoke, the pain was gone. Draining the abscess, the dentist explained, had relieved the pressure on the nerves. All I felt was a little tenderness. He gave me a painkiller. But I didn’t even need it.

It was close to ten P.M. when we got back to the CCB. Given what I’d just gone through, I felt amazingly clearheaded. Forty-five minutes under anesthesia, as it turned out, had given me a much-needed rest. Dr. Magic was right. I did feel good. I had shut myself in my office, hoping to work quietly for a few hours, when Chris blew in.

“They’re getting nothing done in there,” he said, motioning to the conference room. “They need Mama.”

I found the troops in disarray. Marching to the front of the room, I began to hand out assignments to deputies, to law clerks, to everyone. My minions scurried off to the transcripts, looking for ammo to return fire.

Until then, I’d intended to do the rebuttal by myself. But Johnnie had changed that. “If you can’t trust the messengers, watch out for their message,” he’d said. He’d insinuated that Chris and I were both, at best, overzealous; at worst, dishonest. We were both part of a nefarious conspiracy that now seemed to involve all county employees right down to the steno pool. Chris and I both had to put in an appearance to defend our honor.

This caught Chris unawares. Not only did he have to compile the legal materials, but he had to prepare himself psychologically. He had done a first-rate job on his summation, but asking him to go another round on a moment’s notice was expecting an awful lot. I called him into my office.

“If you don’t think you can do this,” I told him, “I’ll understand. I’ll never hold it against you.”

He smiled, as he did so rarely.

“I’m in.”

Chris pulled together an ad hoc team consisting of his law clerk, Melissa Decker; Scott; Cheri; David Wooden; and Gavin de Becker. The five of them holed up in a hotel room to work on his rebuttal.

Hank, Woody, Rock, and I convened in my office. My vigilant team kept refilling my coffee mug to keep me awake until we had a draft we could live with. Hank left at two A.M. Woody left at 2:30. Rock left at three. I left at 3:30.

As I went to shut down my computer for the night, something flashed on the main menu. My law clerks had posted a message on the screen. It read, “We Love You, Boss.”

You save your good stuff for last. And on the morning of Friday, September 29, Christopher Darden gave them the best he had. Chris and I had decided that we might actually use Johnnie’s plea for nullification to our advantage; spin it around to remind the jury what this trial was not about. So he hit the issue head-on.

“You can’t send a message to Fuhrman,” he told the jury. “You can’t send a message to the LAPD. You can’t eradicate racism within the LAPD or the L.A. community or within the nation as a whole by delivering a verdict of ‘not guilty.’ In a case like this, the evidence is there. You just have to find your way through the smoke.”

His message was so eloquent, he should have reached them.

But my heart sank when I saw what was happening-or not happening-in that jury box. The jurors were shifting in their seats, turning their heads, tapping their feet. And this was really scary: Juror Number 98, a fifty-three-year-old postal clerk, one of the three black women who later went on to write a book about the case, was giving Chris a hateful stare. She was sighing and tapping her feet-as if to say, “Shut up and siddown.”

And then it was my turn. I would like to say that my mind was clear and my attention sharp. But the truth, tens of millions of Americans might have noticed, was otherwise. I was struggling to maintain my focus. One commentator later described my demeanor as “subdued.” I would have described it as simply worn out.

But as I rose to address the twelve, I drew on the last of my depleted reserves to bring this thing to an honorable finish. I had to make each word count. I had a feeling, even then, that this would be the last argument I would ever make in a court of law.

I spoke from my heart.

“I’ve been doing this a lot of years,” I told the jurors quietly. “I started on that side of counsel table,” I said, gesturing to the defense. “I know what the ethical obligations are of a prosecutor… I took a cut in pay to join this office because I believe in this job. I believe in doing it fairly and doing it right. And I like the luxury of being a prosecutor because I have the luxury on any case of going to the judge and saying… ‘Your Honor, dismiss it’… I will never ask for a conviction unless… the law says I must, unless [the defendant] is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on credible evidence that you can trust… I can never do it otherwise. That is my obligation.”

“Improper!” Barry Scheck barked.

Now, a prosecutor is not normally allowed to tell a jury about the ethical obligations of his office and how superior he is to those scoundrels on the defense side. That’s called “personal vouching,” and it’s strictly disallowed. The exception is when the defense has called a prosecutor’s integrity into question. Then all bets are off.

Lance knew this. I believe that by this time he was fed up to the gills with the Dream Team. And so he did what he should have done months before. He took control of the courtroom.

“Overruled.” He cut Scheck down with a word. For the next two hours that I would speak, the defense would object over fifty times, trying to break my stride. But Lance Ito ran interference for me, overruling them again and again and again.

Before me I had a green binder, three inches thick with misstatements or inconsistencies in the defense’s closing arguments. Most of them had to do with claims of evidence having been “contaminated” or “planted.” One of the most amazing things to me was that after all the hours spent ragging Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola for their sloppiness in the field, Barry Scheck backed off this line during closing argument. He and the defense had now retreated to the position that the so-called contamination had occurred at the hands of Collin Yamauchi in the Evidence Processing Room of the LAPD.

Once again I reminded this jury what a bogus issue this whole business of contamination really was. As Gary Sims had observed, “DNA cannot fly.” Nothing in this case could account for the wholly consistent blood results except Simpson’s guilt.

It has really bugged me since the trial to hear the pundits say that I didn’t spend enough of my closing on debunking the notion of a police conspiracy. This is absolutely untrue. I brought it up over and over and over again. I brought it up, in fact, every time I attacked the premise of “planted” evidence. In fact I brought it up over fifty-three times.

I wanted this jury to see the lengths to which the defense would go to sell their package of contorted and contradictory “planting” theories. There was no more telling example of this, in my estimation, than their attempts to account for the presence of Ronald Goldman’s blood on the console of Simpson’s Bronco. Of all the blood evidence against O. J. Simpson, this was probably the most damning. There was simply no explanation for it, other than the obvious: when Simpson got into the Bronco after the murders, he dropped his right glove on the console beside him.

As I’ve said, Dennis Fung had failed to collect all of those samples when he did his first sweep of the vehicle on July 14; we didn’t get the rest until September 1. This now left Scheck an opening to contend that they had been planted on the later date. Problem was, photos taken on both dates showed blood spots in absolutely identical configuration. You would have needed a skilled counterfeiter to pull that one off.

So, I pointed out to the jury, the defense had neatly jettisoned that theory and tried another. In this version of reality, O. J. Simpson had reached over the console and bled on it with his left hand-and then, on the same spot, Mark Fuhrman wiped the glove bearing the blood of the two victims. That’s why all the blood was mixed.

In order to wrap your mind around this theory, you’d have to believe that Fuhrman had filched a glove from Bundy, hidden it in his pocket until he got to Rockingham, slim-jimmed the door of the Bronco, slipped into it unnoticed, and rubbed the bloody glove on the console.

“If you wanted to sell this story in Hollywood,” I told that jury, “they wouldn’t buy it because it’s so incredible.”

I continued ticking off absurdities until I got to the bottom line: You could forget the DNA. Even if you put it aside, the People had amassed such an archive of circumstantial evidence that a reasonable juror could vote to convict even if he or she had slept right through the scientific testimony.

“I have one more exhibit I would like to show you,” I told the jury. “This is entitled ‘Unrefuted Evidence.’ And I think that this will bring home to you the power of the evidence in this case.”

The Unrefuted Evidence idea was the brainchild of Bill Hodgman. And it was brilliant. Show the jury, in the aggregate, all the strange occurrences, the bizarre coincidences, for which the defense had no explanation whatsoever. The evidence had been arranged in the shape of a pyramid and mounted on a magnetic board. It was so heavy two men had to carry it to the easel.

“This is evidence,” I continued, “which has not been contested by any contradictory evidence.”

•First of all, opportunity… between 9:36 [1] and 10:53, the defendant’s whereabouts are unaccounted for. No dispute about that. Nobody’s contradicting that.

•Kato Kaelin saw the defendant wearing a dark sweat suit at 9:36. No contradictory testimony about that.

•The defendant tried to call Paula Barbieri on his cell phone from the Bronco at… 10:03. There’s no contradictory testimony as to that fact.

•Allan Park buzzed the intercom at Rockingham at 10:40, at 10:43, and at 10:49. There was no answer. No testimony contradicts that.

•Kato Kaelin heard the three thumps on his wall at 10:51 or 10:52. That testimony isn’t contradicted.

•Allan Park saw the person in dark clothes, six feet, 200 pounds, walk across the driveway at 10:54, walking into the house, testimony that is uncontradicted. Two minutes after the thumps heard by Kato, uncontradicted testimony.

•And at 10:55, when Allan Park got out of his limo to go and buzz the defendant, the defendant finally answered. That testimony, ladies and gentlemen, is uncontradicted.

“What this testimony proves,” I argued, “is not only that the defendant was not home, but it proves he was not sleeping. And it proves that he lied about it… to create an alibi for himself. You don’t need to do that unless you’ve been doing something… that you need to hide.”

The coincidences were too blatant to ignore. Defendant wears same shoe size as killer. Defendant wears same brand of glove as killer. Killer drops blood to the left of his shoe prints. Defendant has a fresh cut on his left hand immediately after the murders.

Evidence that all remained uncontradicted.

Fibers consistent with the Bronco carpet found on the knit cap and the Rockingham glove. Blue-black cotton fiber (presumably from a sweatsuit worn by Simpson) found on Ron Goldman’s shirt, Simpson’s socks, and the Rockingham glove. Hair consistent with the defendant’s found on the knit cap and Ron Goldman’s shirt.

All uncontradicted!

Even now, as I think back on that pyramid-that mountain-of evidence, it blows my mind. How could anyone fail to see?

The objections from the defense were flying fast and furious. Ito was slapping them down at every turn. I got to the point where I wouldn’t even stop and wait for a ruling. I just talked over them. The jurors seemed absolutely riveted. They didn’t budge. They never blinked, sighed, or moved a muscle. For once, I felt that they were actually listening.

By now, I was running on fumes. But the end was in sight. And now, at last, I was about to speak to what this case was really about: the two dead human beings for whom we sought justice. I let them guide me through the rest of my rebuttal.

“Usually,” I told the jury, “I feel like I’m the only one left to speak for the victims. But in this case, Ron and Nicole are speaking to you. They’re speaking to you and they’re telling you who murdered them.

“Nicole started to speak before she even died. Remember, back in 1989, she cried to Detective Edwards, ‘He’s going to kill me…’ The children were there.

“In 1990, she made a safe deposit box, put photographs of her beaten face and her haunted look in a safe deposit box along with a will. She was only thirty years old! How many thirty-year-olds [do] you know who do that? A will? A safe deposit box? It’s like writing ‘In the event of my death.’ She knew…

“Nineteen ninety-three, the 911 tape; the children were there. He was screaming… she was frightened.

“I think the thing that perhaps was so chilling about her voice is that sound of resignation… inevitability. She knew she was going to die.

“And Ron-he speaks to you. [By] struggling so valiantly, he forced his murderer to leave the evidence behind that you might not ordinarily have found. And they both are telling you who did it-with their hair, their clothes, their bodies, their blood. They tell you he did it. He did it. Mr. Simpson. Orenthal Simpson. He did it.

“They told you the only way they can. Will you hear them or will you ignore their plea for justice? Or, as Nicole said to Detective Edwards, ‘You never do anything about him.’ “

I looked at the faces of my jury.

“Will you?”

I gestured to Jonathan.

For several weeks now, the team had been pulling together a montage, a sort of visual history of this crime. Over the images, we’d decided that we would play the 911 tapes. Although I’d seen bits and pieces of this opus as it was coming together, I didn’t feel the full power of it until this morning, when Jonathan hit the “play” button.

You heard “Emergency 911,” then the static confusion on the caller’s end. The thumps of blows landing on flesh. Then, the more frantic pleas of the 1993 call. “He’s O. J. Simpson. I think you know his record. He’s fucking going nuts.” All the while, on the large screen, we showed the photo of Nicole taken after the beating of 1989. She was lifting her hair to reveal the full extent of the damage to her face. Her eyes were downcast, as if in shame. Then, the photo of her smeared with mud. Cut to the Bundy trail, the knit cap, a close-up of Ron’s shirt. Behind those images, O. J. Simpson’s voice rose to a peak of rage. Suddenly, the audio stopped, and all that was left was a picture of Nicole’s body curled in a pool of blood. We held on that image for thirty seconds in complete silence.

There was sobbing throughout the courtroom. But all I could think was, It’s over.

Up in the War Room, there were tears of relief. We’d ended strong and we knew it.

I was numb. After 372 grueling days and nearly 48,000 pages of trial transcript entered into the ages, the thought foremost in my mind was Please, God. No retrial.

That afternoon the jury picked a forewoman, Number 230, Armanda Cooley. I was encouraged. I wouldn’t say that I’d enjoyed rapport with Cooley, but every so often I had gotten a smile from her. She was the best-educated of the jurors, with two years of college to her credit. I harbored private hopes that she was both intelligent enough and neutral enough to keep an open mind to the evidence. That she’d been picked leader of the pack was good news.

The Goldmans took Chris and me, in fact, the whole team, out to the L.A. Athletic Club. Everybody was feeling upbeat. Our reviews were already coming in, and the pundits were saying terrific things about us. The montage was being hailed as a stroke of brilliance. Kim and I held each other and cried over Ron. The D.A. investigators followed me home that night to make sure I wasn’t followed by reporters.

That weekend we went to Santa Barbara to take refuge with Lynn Reed. I felt like a convict savoring her first delirious moments of freedom. I took naps. I did a crossword puzzle for the first time in a year.

At that moment, I thought there was some fighting chance that my life had returned to normal. I realize now that I was in denial. I guess in my heart of hearts I realized that the worst still lay ahead.

On Sunday night we got back to L.A., and on Monday I went out shopping with my friend Kathy. Earlier in the morning I had gotten word that the jury had asked for a read-back of Allan Park’s testimony. Everyone at the D.A.‘s office was interpreting that as good news for us. If, in fact, Park’s testimony was all the jury wanted to hear, they were focusing on key prosecution evidence. If you believed Park’s account of that night, you had to believe Simpson was lying. They had been presented with a hundred file drawers of damning evidence against O. J. Simpson. If Allen Park’s words were all they needed to hear, how could they fail to convict?

But I wasn’t sure what to think. One thing I know is that when juries ask for a read-back, it is seldom for the reason you think it is. So I refused to give in to euphoria. As I was sitting in the parking lot with Kathy, my car phone rang. It was Chris. He sounded both anxious and excited.

“The jury has a decision,” he said.

“How can that be?” I asked, incredulous. I’d been looking forward to a week off while they deliberated. We’d presented evidence for the better part of a year. What jury could come to an agreement on a case this complicated in two fucking hours?

“Stay put,” he told me. “Ito won’t accept a verdict from them until tomorrow morning at ten.”

I didn’t have to be told why. No one had anticipated this quick turnaround. Not the LAPD. Not the Sheriff’s Department. They had to ramp up security in case the verdict lit a torch to the city.

That evening Chris, Cheri, and I went out to shoot some pool at a little out-of-the-way hall in Glendale. No frills. I loved the place. The first couple of times we’d gone I’d been mobbed. After that the management put me up in their VIP room, where no one would bug me. Chris was in buoyant spirits. Ito had made some comment to him at sidebar. Something to the effect, “Allan Park? You’re a lawyer. You read tea leaves.”

I said nothing. I can read tea leaves as well as the next guy, and to me the short deliberation meant trouble. All it said to me was that the jury had made up its mind weeks, probably months, before.

The next morning, October 3, I walked out the door intending to take Matt to school and ran smack into a guy with a TV cam on his shoulder. He was filming us! I was already way tweaked about the media, because I’d spoken to Gil the evening before and he’d told me that he’d allowed the placement of cameras all over the eighteenth floor.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I told him. “What if we get a ‘not guilty’?”

No one else seemed to be seriously considering that prospect. The pundits were almost unanimously predicting conviction. But I felt uneasy.

“I think one short, dignified press conference where we stand up and talk to everyone jointly is plenty,” I reiterated.

But Gil was jazzed. Finally I said, “You guys want to do it, that’s fine. But I’m not gonna take part in it.”

And now there’s a TV camera blocking my driveway.

“How dare you invade my privacy this way?” I yelled at the cameraman. “Can’t you see I just want to take my child to school? Here, film this.” I flipped him off.

By the time I got into the office, the halls were bristling with cameras. I ran the gauntlet to Gil’s office. He’d gathered everyone in the conference room. The main topic of discussion seemed to be what to say about the fact that O. J. Simpson had been convicted. If that isn’t just asking God to smack you silly, I don’t know what is.

I was frankly worried about security. I didn’t know what might happen in court today, but I didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire. Four D.A. investigators were assigned to take me down the back way to the ninth floor. We arrived only minutes before Johnnie, accompanied by his four bodyguards from the Nation of Islam, filed in. It felt like springtime in Beirut.

The deputies brought Simpson in from lockup. He was wearing a gray suit and a bold yellow tie. His eyes appeared more sunken than usual. No doubt he had spent a long night.

“Counsel,” Ito asked us, “is there anything else we need to take up before we invite the jurors to join us?”

No one said a thing.

From the corner of my eye, I watched the jurors file in. I thought I saw a couple of them smile at the defendant.

Lance asked Deirdre to hand the envelope with the verdict forms to a deputy. He walked it over to Armanda Cooley.

“Madam Foreperson,” Ito said. His voice sounded strangely small. “Would you please open the envelope and check the condition of the verdict forms?”

Cooley did as instructed. She assured the court that they were signed and in order.

Deirdre faltered a little as she read the defendant’s name. Then she regained her composure.

“We the jury… find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder… upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being…”

I’d prepared myself for the worst, but now that the moment had come, I felt pain spreading through my body like I’d been pierced by a thousand tiny needles.

We’d lost.

Deirdre’s sweet, sorrowful voice droned on, reading the verdict of “not guilty” in the death of Ronald Goldman.

“My God,” I whispered.

Behind us Kim Goldman let out an unearthly howl. I couldn’t turn to face the families.

“The defendant,” said Judge Lance Ito, “having been acquitted of both charges… is ordered… released forthwith.”

As the jurors filed out of the courtroom, Lon Cryer turned toward the defense table and raised his fist in a power salute.

You sonofabitch.

I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. I know that Bob Shapiro walked over to me, looking stunned and disappointed.

“It’s not the verdict I would’ve thought,” he admitted. I’m sure he shook my hand. But I have no recollection of the touch. Once again, I seemed surrounded by a vacuum that no one could penetrate.

How can I explain it? The sense of violation, the confusion, the dislocation. I could remember myself having once waded dreamlike into the surf. This time, as I made my way through a sea of photographers, I found myself walking into waves of grief. The War Room was jammed with warriors in defeat. I remember seeing the young law clerks crying. I wanted to tell them, This doesn’t mean anything about the real world and the way justice is dispensed. Or the way it should be dispensed. It won’t always be this way. It may never be this way again.

Ahead lay that excruciating press conference. There, before all the media he’d gathered in anticipation of victory, Gil had to admit that he was “profoundly disappointed” in the verdict. But he implored the nation not to lose faith in its system of criminal justice.

I hadn’t wanted to speak. I didn’t know if I could get the words our of my throat. I managed to say something about my sorrow for the families: “Their strength and dignity have been a source of inspiration.” It was a poor expression of my feelings. I hadn’t prepared more.

Chris was at the mike now. I heard him say, “I’m not bitter…I’m not angry. I am honored to have-”

Then he choked and slumped forward. Several of us reached for him to keep him from falling. I put my hand on Chris’s back and followed him through the thrashing strobes into the anteroom next to Gil’s office.

“Anything I can do?” I asked him.

“I want to go to my office” was all he said.

As I watched him disappear down the hall, I stood for what seemed like an hour. I’m sure it was only minutes. And gradually, it dawned on me. “I’m still here.”

Like someone walking out of the wreckage of a 747, I looked around and saw that I’d fallen 30,000 feet and my legs weren’t broken. I wanted everyone to witness the fact of my survival. I wanted the law clerks, the brass, the TV crews, the black gals out in that Chicago women’s shelter who’d cheered Simpson’s acquittal, the jurors who were planning to attend O. J. Simpson’s victory party in a few hours… I wanted them all to see me now. Bloody, dazed, and reeling. But upright. I wanted them to see that I’d stood for something. I wanted them to see that I’d put myself through hell for the right thing.

I had to believe that suffering was part of something bigger. Justice, like the will of God, doesn’t always manifest itself on the spur of the moment. It doesn’t always come when you think it should. You just gotta wait it out.

And when it comes, I’ll still be standing. Without a doubt.