On January 11, the twelve jurors and twelve alternates were formally sequestered at the Inter-Continental Hotel. Now that they were theoretically safe from the polluting effects of the media, Lance Ito finally gave us the go-ahead to argue our domestic violence motion, the conduit for getting the battering incidents into evidence.
On the defense side, Gerry Uelmen, former dean at Santa Clara University School of Law, had been assigned to damage control. His first request was to ask that the victims’ families be excluded from the courtroom. I’m frankly surprised that he had the nerve to try this. The Dream Team must have dreaded the idea of tears and outbursts-sure to underscore the fact that their client was not such a nice guy. But taking on the victims’ families was a risky public relations move.
“I’m offended by it,” Chris Darden objected. “And I’m sure the victims’ families are offended by the request.”
Ito let the families stay.
Uelmen then pointed a finger at the prosecution, accusing us of slapping the “label” of domestic violence upon this case to prejudice the public against the defendant. Statistically speaking, he explained, fewer than one percent of all cases of domestic violence end in murder.
“When we look at what was obviously a bumpy marriage,” he assured the court, “I think it is quite remarkable that it was resolved in as amicable a way as it was.”
What the defense had done was turn logic on its head. It fell to Scott Gordon to correct the misimpression. If you looked at studies of women killed by a husband or boyfriend, he explained, fully 90 percent of the victims had reported at least one prior act of abuse. Furthermore, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson fit the profile of a domestic violence murder: the killer usually bludgeons, strangles, or stabs his victim, or slashes her throat.
Lydia Bodin then went methodically through the time line of terror. She cited over sixty incidents beginning in 1977, when Connie Good saw Nicole Brown in the elevator with two black eyes, bringing the court up through the IRS letter and the events on the afternoon of June 12. And all the while, O. J. Simpson rolled his eyes, looked disgusted, laughed, and joked with his attorneys. His behavior would have been scandalous even if he were innocent of these crimes. What did he feel he could gain, I wondered, by appearing so callous?
Within the week, Lance Ito handed down his ruling. The jury could hear about the 1989 New Year’s Eve beating. They could hear about the incident in 1985 where Simpson broke the windshield of his car with a baseball bat. They could hear about the 1993 call to 911 when Simpson broke Nicole’s door. They could hear evidence from Keith Zlomsowitch and others about how the defendant had stalked Nicole. And finally we got in that IRS letter.
That decision was hailed as a victory for our side. But I could manage only a feeble hurrah. For one thing, there was a lot of important stuff that didn’t make it in: Nicole’s journals (though privately I’d known all along this was a long shot). And there was the testimony of the witness named Nancy Ney, who’d answered Nicole’s call for help on the Sojourn hotline. These items were ruled hearsay and therefore inadmissible. But they weren’t the omissions that concerned me most.
Back in December the defense had complained that we’d given them the domestic violence stuff so late that they could not respond to it. In fact, Chris and his team pulled it together as quickly as they possibly could. It was just an enormously time-consuming effort-complicated by the fact that Faye Resnick, the one person who could help us with real leads, did not cooperate with us until October, after her book was published. To sanction us for this supposed tardiness, Ito split the testimony in half, forcing us to hold off revealing the older episodes of abuse-including Connie Good’s 1977 testimony, until later in the trial. Unfortunately, the power of these episodes was cumulative. You had to start from the beginning in order to see the pattern of pathological sadism. Lance had, once again, made a misguided attempt at compromise, and in doing so, he’d crippled our domestic violence case from its infancy.
On the evening the ruling came down, I joined my colleagues at the Saratoga to celebrate. Yet, as I slid into the Booth, shoulder to shoulder with my ebullient trench buddies, I felt miles apart from them. Chris, Scott, Lydia, and their adherents were right, of course. This was a case of domestic violence that ended in murder. But I knew from experience, both personal and professional, that the very mention of the words “domestic violence” aroused volatile emotions in people. There was no telling what kind of response they might elicit from our jury. The fact that most of our jurors were women was no comfort to me: female jurors often view victims of domestic violence with uncomprehending disdain. On top of this, we had the complications of race and celebrity. This did not mean that our female jurors couldn’t be brought around, but we would have to proceed cautiously.
If it appeared that the domestic violence evidence was alienating our jury, someone would have to make the strategic call to stand down. It would not be a popular move, certainly not within our office. But somewhere down the line a tough decision might have to be made. And even as I lifted a glass to victory, I realized the person to make it would have to be me.
It was barely ten days before opening arguments were set to begin. For several weeks now, I’d been channeling work away from Bill onto Chris’s desk. I knew that Bill was not feeling well, and I didn’t want to overtax him. Chris was worried that Bill would feel we were pushing him out.
“No,” I told him. “We just have to take some of the weight off of him for a while.”
Late one night in mid-January, Chris and I met in his office for an informal strategy session.
“Hey, G,” he greeted me, “pull up a chair.” Chris had started calling me G, for “gangster,” an expression of friendship and respect in his old neighborhood.
We were the only ones around. Out of his desk drawer he pulled two bottles: tequila for himself, Glenlivet for me. He poured us each a drink.
I ran down a list of witnesses in the order I envisioned presenting them. Chris would open with the domestic violence witnesses. Then I would be up with the next twenty or so witnesses, including Kato and Allan Park, whose testimony was going to be extremely complex. By now they’d both given so many statements, the task of collating them was daunting. Plus, I had to coordinate all the diagrams, charts, and photographs. It was like completing a giant Rubik’s Cube, where all the squares on each side had to match. Everyone else could compartmentalize, but I had to keep my eye on our overall strategy.
I’d given Bill the coroner, Dr. Irwin Golden, whose testimony promised to be a real can of worms. Hank Goldberg had agreed to take the criminalists, Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola, which was equally unenviable duty. Woody Clarke and Rock Harmon would do DNA. Chris wanted to pick up some of the physical evidence-which really was the heart of the case. But he had no special expertise in DNA, blood, or hair and trace; it would have taken too long to get him up to speed. That left him with nothing but domestic violence witnesses. These would go quickly. If he didn’t pick up some additional turf now, he would be effectively out of the case after the first week of trial. Chris didn’t want that; I didn’t either.