At first Bill was reluctant to take off the white gloves. To Bill’s way of thinking, he and Johnnie were old buddies, going back to their days together in the D.A.‘s office. He thought civility would prevail. I knew better. Johnnie had nothing but contempt for Bill. He loved to see Bill walk into court. He made no bones about it. He’d grin at me and go, “Oh, good, you’re gonna let Hodgman do it? Good! Good to see you, Bill! Good to see you!” And Bill thought it was because Johnnie liked him. I’m saying to myself, No, Bill, it’s because he thinks you’re easy pickins. It was a painful thing for me to watch.
As Johnnie’s claims became more and more outrageous, even Bill finally began to burn. “I can’t believe this,” he would mutter over and over. “This is unbelievable!” Then, at last, he leaped to his feet and shouted “Objection!” with such conviction that we were all electrified. He really got up and fought for a change; it was wonderful to see. Bill kept objecting. Before Johnnie finished his outrageous tirade, Bill Hodgman had objected a total of twenty times.
Lance, the dunderhead, knew what was going on. If we had tried to pull even a tenth of what the defense pulled here, he’d have had us locked up. But he would not overrule Cochran. He just sat up there on the bench rolling his eyes at me like, “Can you believe it?” As if it were some big joke when the People get screwed. I wanted to scream at him, “You’re not some idle bystander here, buddy. You can actually stop this circus!” But how can you expect a clown to stop a circus?
Bill was seething when he left the courtroom. I stayed close to him all the way to the eighteenth floor. He had me very worried. He looked like he’d been through a shredder. His speech was incoherent-he was having trouble putting sentences together, and his breathing was very shallow. He couldn’t seem to sit still. He was ultrahyper, and Bill Hodgman has never been hyper. Gil had called an emergency meeting in the conference room. But no sooner had Bill walked in the door than he rasped, “I gotta go. I’ve got to take a walk,” and left.
Okay, he just needs a breather, I told myself. He’ll be fine. Moments later I heard someone in the hall shout, “Down here, in Cheri’s office.”
Bill was lying on the rug. Cheri had made him lie down, he was so short of breath. Patti Jo was on the phone to the hospital.
I just stood there watching him and feeling guilty. Oh, God, I thought. We shouldn’t have pushed him. Oh, God. I should’ve seen it coming. Oh, God, you know, this case is gonna kill him. This sweet, lovely man. I can’t stand this stupid fucking case!
Fortunately, one of those in our company was Dr. Mark Goulston, a physician friend of Gil’s who’d been hanging out with us since the case began. He was kind of the camp mascot. We called him Dr. Mark. I knew he had also been talking to Bill about the pressures on him. I pulled him aside to get a reading on Bill’s condition. Goulston told me that he had been giving Bill a very mild sedative to help him sleep. Today’s episode had been brought on by stress. Whether there would be lasting damage to his health, no one knew. Later, we would find out that Bill had a mild heart condition that, had it not been flushed out by this incident, might have killed him.
God, I thought. This job chews up strong men and spits out their bones.
Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to throw in the towel myself. To go in to Gil and say, “I can’t do this anymore. Give it to… God, I don’t know who, just give it to someone else.” But I caught myself. How would I ever explain to my children why I walked out on the biggest case of my life? How could I ever look them in the eye and explain the necessity of seeing a job through to the end? What would I be teaching them? “Cut your losses, boys. Pick only those battles you can win.” That was not what I wanted to leave them. I wanted them to realize that sometimes honor demands fighting even to an almost certain defeat.
And how would I explain it to the Browns, to the Goldmans, who were expecting justice?
“Forgive me for doing this, Dr. Mark,” I said, turning once again to Goulston. “But I’m watching Bill, and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to go there.’ Could you give me a prescription for Xanax?”
I’d do anything I had to do; zonk myself into a coma if necessary. But I intended to stay in the goddamned ring.
Exposure
After Bill’s gurney disappeared down the hallway, all of us, deputies and law clerks alike, milled around the War Room, stunned. I stood for a moment, as confused as any of them. Then I pulled myself together, marched back to my office, and shut the door. Cheri Lewis slipped in behind me. She thought I might want some company, but I was beyond talk. I paced for a while. Then, in direct violation of county rules, I lit up a Dunhill.
Cheri arched her eyebrows.
“So what are they going to do?” I snapped as I blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Send me Downtown and make me try the Simpson case?”
A knock on the door.
“Who is it.”
Gil poked his head in. I quickly stubbed out the cigarette.
Here was the man who’d told me to “lay back,” to “lighten up” a little. “Don’t be so tough,” he’d said. “Humor the judge.” But there was nothing conciliatory in Gil Garcetti’s expression now.
“Fuck him,” he said tersely. “Take the gloves off.”
No problem, Chief.
The defense’s misconduct had made Ito look like a stooge for Simpson. Right after the hearing the public flooded our office-and presumably Ito’s as well-with faxes and telegrams venting their outrage at how badly we’d been treated. This kind of reproof wounded Ito’s pride and often caused him to veer wildly in the opposite direction. I figured he’d be pretty sympathetic to whatever we suggested in the way of sanctions.
If I’d wanted to play hardball, I could have demanded that every witness for which the Scheme Team had not provided discovery be excluded from testifying. Bye-bye to Mary Anne Gerchas, Howard Weitzman, and Skip Taft, among others. Exclusion is the most serious penalty-short of contempt-that can be imposed upon attorneys who have deliberately hidden witnesses to gain tactical advantage.
Tempting as this was, such a demand would have been counterproductive. For one thing, exclusion posed an appellate risk. Preventing witnesses who might offer material evidence from testifying is arguably an infringement of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. All things considered, I felt that it was more equitable to let the disputed witnesses come to the stand-provided we be allowed to let the jury know how they’d been illegally hidden from them. This way they could make up their own minds about these folks’ credibility.
I figured Lance would give us that much. But I wanted more. I intended to request that he allow me to reopen my statement: do a second opening! This would let me expose at least some of Johnnie’s misrepresentations-that this was a drug murder, that the defense had proof of a second assailant, that Simpson was at home during the time of the murders. But I had no idea if there was any legal precedent for this. Never in my fourteen years of practice had I heard of it happening.
I buzzed my law clerk, Dana Escobar.
“Dana,” I told him, “I’ve got a tricky one for you.”
“No problem, boss.” He and a handful of other clerks set to work. Amazingly, within the hour, they had pulled up a 1964 civil case in which the court had allowed the reopening of the statement. Cheri and Hank commandeered a corner of the War Room and began drafting a motion to reopen.
Our investigators had also picked up a paper trail on Mary Anne Gerchas, who’d supposedly seen the four men in watch caps running from Nicole’s condo.
“Looks like she stayed at a Marriott for about four months and stiffed them on the bill,” one investigator told me. “She owes thousands.”