That left Fuhrman.
By now Fuhrman’s file was even fatter than when I’d first reviewed it, and infinitely more depressing. In addition to the psychiatrists’ evaluations of 1981 and 1982, there was now the witness statement from a realtor named Kathleen Bell, who had told defense investigators that five years earlier she had met Fuhrman at a marine recruiting station in Redondo Beach. He’d supposedly told her that if he saw a black man driving in a car with a white woman, he would pull them over. If he didn’t have a good reason, he said, he’d “find one.” Fuhrman, according to Bell’s account, went on to say that if he had his way he’d see all “niggers” gathered together and burned or bombed.
When I read that, I felt I might be sick.
In the months since the trial, some Monday-morning quarterbacks have claimed that I was arrogant for using Mark Fuhrman, knowing his downside. Exactly what was I to do? Close my eyes, click my heels three times, and will him to disappear? From the day of the murders, the defense had access to the police reports identifying Mark as the officer who found the bloody glove. If we hadn’t called him, they certainly would have. And in doing so they would certainly have explored his dark side. We would have been left looking like we were trying to hide him. As I saw it, we had no choice but to brass it out.
Chris and I had talked all the way through this one. Fuhrman’s racial views were not pertinent here. How he’d performed as a detective on the Simpson investigation was all that counted. The idea that he had planted the glove was utterly fantastic. Cops who arrived on the crime scene before Fuhrman had seen only one glove-not two-lying between the victims. What were the Dream Teamers planning to suggest-that Mark had slipped out to Bloomingdale’s to buy a mate?
Still, taking on Fuhrman stood to be extremely stressful.
“It can’t be Bill who takes him,” I told Chris. “It’s gotta be you or me. If you don’t want to touch him, I understand. This one is going to be a bitch.”
Chris was quiet for a moment, his shaved head buried in his hands. Then he looked me in the eye. No matter where we went with this, there was danger ahead. He knew I wouldn’t ask him to do anything that I wouldn’t do. He also knew I was carrying the entire weight of this case on my shoulders.
“I’ll take him,” he told me quietly. “But I’m telling you, that motherfucker better tell me everything, and I mean everything. I don’t want any surprises.”
I was praying for a miracle: namely, that Chris and Mark would hit it off. No such luck. They hated each other on sight. I wasn’t there for their first meeting, which was held in Chris’s office during the first or second week of January. But afterward, Chris came to me complaining that Fuhrman was arrogant. Mark, in turn, complained to Cheri that Chris was hostile and insensitive to his situation. I gotta hand it to Chris, though: he did not bail on me. He hung right in to argue a very unpleasant motion.
We knew that Johnnie and the Dream Team were angling to introduce Fuhrman’s disability file, and the Bell statement, which would allow them to argue that Mark’s “racial animus” drove him to frame Simpson by planting the glove at Rockingham.
I favored a preemptive strike. I wanted to get Ito to make a decisive call right up front that would foreclose this race strategy before opening statements-when I knew Johnnie would be trying to play that card for all it was worth.
It should have been an easy call. Other cops who’d arrived at Bundy before Fuhrman saw only one glove. There was never a second glove that Fuhrman could have picked up and transported to Simpson’s house! There was no evidence to show that Fuhrman had ever planted any evidence or done anything improper in the case at all. Unless the defense could come up with an offer of proof to show how he could have planted that glove, Fuhrman’s racial views, whatever they were, were completely irrelevant.
With Lance, our oral arguments never seemed to carry much weight. I knew our best shot was to get down on paper a motion that was persuasive and compelling enough that he’d convince himself of its wisdom before he got to court. So Cheri and I wrote and rewrote that motion.
I knew that it was good. The law was clearly on our side. The drafters of the state evidence code knew that jurors might not be able to resist a strong and irrational emotional reaction to something as inflammatory as a racial slur, even if it had no relevance. It was the very reason the code excluded evidence that was more prejudicial than useful in determining the truth.
There was no question that the lawyer who could most effectively argue the inflammatory effects of racial epithets-particularly the N-word-was Chris Darden.
Chris attacked this mission with righteous conviction. But the night before he was to argue it, he got a case of nerves. He came to my office, his eyes wide and apologetic, and asked for my help. I gave him what I myself would have used: a straight, rather formal, legal argument about how allowing in racial epithets would simply prejudice the jury and obscure the truth.
Then he totally threw out what I had written for him. And when he rose to the lectern on the morning of January 13, he spoke from the heart.
“There is no legal purpose,” he said, his voice rich with conviction, “there is no valid or legitimate purpose. But Mr. Cochran and the defense, they have a purpose in going to that area and the purpose is to inflame the passions of the jury and to ask them to pick sides, not on the basis of the evidence in this case… The evidence in this case against this defendant is overwhelming. But when you mention that word to this jury or to any African American, it blinds people. It will blind this jury. It will blind them to the truth. It will cause extreme prejudice to the prosecution’s case.”
I sucked in my breath. Chris was taking on the race-baiters full in the teeth.
“I remember the first time I was ever called that word,” he continued. “I’m sure Mr. Cochran remembers the first time. And whenever I reflect back on that experience, I find it extremely upsetting and I probably appear to be getting a little upset right now. It is probably the most negative experience I have ever had in my life.”
I glanced over at Johnnie Cochran. Gone was the easy posture. He was tensed up, like a testy weasel. The chemistry between Chris and Johnnie, I thought, was becoming one of the uglier dynamics in this courtroom. Chris had respected Johnnie so much. But Johnnie didn’t respect him back. He couldn’t handle another smart and vital black male in the courtroom. Johnnie had played this bullshit race card at scores of other trials where nobody, certainly no white guys, had the huevos to call him on it. Now Chris was hitting him where he lived.
Johnnie rose to reply.
“I have a funeral to attend today,” he told the court. “But I would be remiss if I were not at this time to take this opportunity to respond to my good friend, Mr. Chris Darden.”
His “politesse” was tinged with sarcasm.
“His remarks this morning are perhaps the most incredible remarks I’ve heard in a court of law in the thirty-two years I’ve been practicing law. His remarks are demeaning to African Americans as a group. And so I want to apologize to African Americans all over the country.”
Apologize for Chris! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What are you saying, Johnnie, that people can hear themselves slandered and feel nothing? If I heard that a witness had referred to women as bitches or cunts, do you think that wouldn’t affect me? Now was the time for Judge Lance Ito to shut this travesty down. Any judge with the most rudimentary control of his courtroom would have said, “Don’t waste the time of this court, Mr. Cochran. Come up with a proffer to show how it was even possible for Detective Fuhrman to plant that glove. Until you do, we’re not talking about race in this case. O. J. Simpson didn’t kill her because she was white, and he did not get arrested because he’s black.”