The evening before opening statements, Chris and I went down to the courtroom for a practice run in front of Bill and a handful of others. I’d rarely seen the place empty like this: just a sterile cube of plywood paneling. It appeared to have been designed by a clerk, not an architect. Someone who had in mind a system for the shuffling of papers, but no grander vision of justice.
Within ten hours, the room would be the center of the world’s attention. Those empty counsel tables would be piled high with the notes and briefs of at least twenty noisy, combative attorneys. Each side would be scrambling to seize the advantage. Who would impose upon this unruly contest the ideals of morality and fairness? I looked to the bench and saw an empty chair. And I thought sadly how it always looked empty. Even when Lance was sitting in it.
My technical assistant, Jonathan Fairtlough, had set up the laser disc that projected both stills and moving images onto a large screen. I usually get up there with my charts, diagrams, and photos mounted on poster board. But Jonathan, bless his heart, led me by the hand into the modern age.
I wanted the jurors to feel physically drawn into the crime scene. I wanted them to travel up the walkway at Bundy. To see how the killer approached his victims from the bushes. I wanted them to see Nicole lying on her left side, feet wedged up under the gate. I wanted them to see her slashed throat. I wanted them to understand the physical reality of the space in which Ron Goldman had been trapped. He had been backed into a cage.
Then I’d let them see the detective’s-eye view at Rockingham. Entering the property; visiting the guest houses; discovering the brown leather glove. We would go straight up to the foot of O. J. Simpson’s bed, ending with a photo of the rumpled socks.
Originally, we wanted to have video footage interspliced with still shots, so that you’d be coming up the walkway at Bundy; then you’d see stills of her body, and then his body, and then the blood drops. It didn’t work; it was too jarring to come out from the video into the stills. When we strung together all the stills it was very powerful. But it had to be perfectly choreographed. Jonathan not only had to show each image at the appropriate moment, but had to segue from my voice into the picture. It was an elaborate little dance.
I had worked and reworked the presentation of the hair and fiber evidence. It was the sort of stuff that could be deadly dull or powerfully compelling. Finally, I got some rhythm going. I’d start with a straight presentation of the evidence, then I’d pause and highlight it with a challenge to reason. For example, “Nylon carpet fiber like that found in the defendant’s Bronco. Stop and think for a minute,” I’d say to the jury. “How could that fiber from the defendant’s Bronco get on the cap?” Then I’d hit it again with “The head hairs like those of the defendant were found at the Bundy crime scene. Stop. Think-how could head hairs like the defendant’s get on that cap?” Then I’d mention Ron Goldman, and note that the shirt he was wearing also had head hair on it like the defendant’s. “Think,” I’d implore them. “How did the defendant’s hair get on Ronald Goldman’s shirt?”
“It cannot be denied,” I would tell the jury, “that there will be a temptation to treat this evidence differently because of the image the media [have] created of Mr. Simpson-but we all know that what we see on TV is not evidence. Winning is not what this is about; this is not a game; this is about justice and seeing that justice is done. Two people have been brutally murdered-and the evidence points to the guilt of only one person as their murderer, Orenthal James Simpson.”
It was strong. I knew it was strong. Bill, Chris, and Jonathan-the whole team-were really jazzed.
January 23, 1995… opening day.
I can’t believe I really said that. Opening day! After a while I just got sucked into sports-speak like everyone else. I can’t remember what I wore, so don’t even ask. Before an opening statement, I trip into hyperfocus. The details of the goings-on around me don’t even register. What I do recall is that the team was extra thoughtful of me. Even the reporters in the hallway gave me ceremonious berth.
The courtroom was jammed, the atmosphere incredibly tense. It was the first time we had all been together: judge, prosecutors, defense counsel, media, spectators, and jury. Not to mention the millions out there watching the live feed. I tried to make eye contact with the jury. But my God, what a scary bunch. The Great Stone Faces, I came to call them.
Chris was eager, ready to go. But then we got bogged down in motions that dragged on through the morning and into the afternoon. A major bummer. His opening was held over until the next day. I prayed it wouldn’t throw him off stride.
The next day when he rose to speak, I knew he was nervous. Was he picking up negative vibes from the jury box? Was he making eye contact? Make eye contact, Chris. Until now, I hadn’t heard Chris’s opening in its entirety. It struck me now as eloquent, almost musical, as he described the love that was really a sickness:
“It is not the actor who is on trial here today, ladies and gentlemen, it is not that public face. It is his other face. Like many men in public [life], they have a… private side… A private face. And that is the face we will expose to you in this trial. The other side of O. J. Simpson… We will expose… the face he wore behind the locks and the gates and the walls at Rockingham; that other face, the one that Nicole Brown encountered almost every day of her adult life…
“The evidence will show that the face you see… is the face or a batterer, a wife beater, an abuser, a controller,” he told the jury. “He didn’t hate Nicole. He didn’t kill her because he didn’t love her any more. He killed for a reason almost as old as mankind itself. He killed her out of jealousy. He killed her to control her. He killed Ron Goldman because he got in the way.”
If I had any criticism of Chris’s opening, it would be his insistence upon including Keith Zlomsowitch and several other domestic violence witnesses whom I wasn’t certain we would ever bring to the stand. “Always promise less than you deliver,” I’d told Chris. But he was headstrong. He didn’t always listen.
When it came my turn at the lectern, I paused. For a moment I just stared into those faces. Eight blacks. Two Hispanics, one man who professed to be half Native American, and a single white. Will this thing really come down to race? I wondered. Are the impassive faces of the six black women on this panel hiding their resentment of me? Can I find some common ground here? Call a truce? Coming on like gangbusters didn’t seem the ticket. In our strategy sessions up on the eighteenth floor, we’d all agreed that a calm, measured, rational approach was what was called for. Any hint of stridency would feed the perception of these jurors that we were out to lynch the defendant.
“You have now heard the why. Why would Orenthal Simpson, a man who seemingly had it all, commit such heinous crimes?” I began quietly. “The one simple truth about the evidence described by Mr. Darden is that it shows that Mr. Simpson is a man-not a stereotype-but flesh and blood who can do both good and evil. Being wealthy, being famous cannot change one simple truth: he is a person, and people have good sides and bad sides. Whether you see both sides or not, both sides are always there.”
Jonathan and I led the jurors through Bundy and Rockingham. The trip was flawless.
“It is going to be up to you, ladies and gentlemen. You are going to have to be ever vigilant in acting as the judges in this case. Each one of you is a judge. Each one of you is a trier of fact. You have to examine all the evidence very carefully and ask… ‘Is this reasonable?’ ‘Is this logical?’ ‘Does this make sense?’…