I whistled softly. “No wonder they wanted to hide discovery on her.”
Our investigators had also turned up an exercise video that Simpson had taped only two weeks before the murders. It showed Simpson, at a trim 212 pounds, doing push-ups and throwing jabs and uppercuts. The video would refute the defense’s claim more vividly than words ever could; no way was this guy the feeble cripple described by Johnnie in his opening statement. Simpson was also running on at the mouth-an infuriating trait his fans seemed to perceive as charm.
“I’m tellin’ you,” he joked, throwing out his right arm as if delivering a punch. “You just gotta get your space in if you’re workin’ out with the wife, if you know what I mean. You could always blame it on workin’ out.”
It was incredible. Here was the defendant making light of wife-beating. I wanted the jury to hear that; I would push for both the video and audio portions of the tape to be entered into evidence. And then I worried, Will this jury even get it?
For two days in court, we haggled over what punishment the defense should receive. Ito, clearly chastened by Bill’s collapse, gave us a receptive ear. But when it came right down to sanctions, as usual he split the baby.
I could reopen my statement, but I’d only get ten minutes. We could show the exercise video, but we couldn’t run the sound, which, of course, meant losing the wife-beating remark. And most disappointing, he denied us the chance to correct the impression that Nicole had the blood of some unknown suspect under her fingernails. His reason? We hadn’t lodged an objection at the moment Johnnie made the statement. Those jurors needed to know that Johnnie had misled them. Maybe I could live with the damage, I told myself, as long as Ito dressed down the defense in front of the jury. Ito had us half believing that he would do this. He also promised to make sure the jury realized that the trial had been delayed for two days because of the defense’s misconduct. But at the last moment, Lance lost his nerve.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he told the jurors after they had settled into the box on the morning of Monday, January 30. “I need to advise you of certain things.”
His voice was so soft, it was scarcely audible. This was how he intended to censure Johnnie Cochran?
“I need… to explain to you some of the reasons for the delay that we have had over the past two days… During the course of the opening statements, defense counsel mentioned witnesses who had not previously been disclosed to the prosecution… This was a violation of the law. And one of the causes of the two-day delay, including the absence of Mr. Hodgman.”
The absence of Mr. Hodgman! I couldn’t believe it. Listening to this castrated admonishment, the jury could reasonably infer that the delay was Bill’s fault.
If anyone was going to repair the damage, it would have to be me. And I would have to do it with a surgical strike. When it came time to do what would be called my “historic” reopening, I walked very slowly to the lectern. I paused. This was not to be an angry scatter blast or rebuttal. I would be calm and deliberate. I would limit myself to three points-each of them a promise to definitively refute Johnnie’s reckless assertions. When we delivered, and the defense failed to back up their claims, the jurors would know which side was credible and which side depended on lies.
Item: That on the night of June 12, O. J. Simpson was physically unfit to commit murder.
“You will see him doing push-ups,” I told the jury. “You will see him stretching, reaching, throwing jabs and uppercuts… You will see him doing trunk twists… We are going to show you that tape during the course of this trial.”
Item: That the LAPD refused to allow O. J. Simpson to have an attorney present when he gave his statement to police.
“In fact, what the evidence will show is that the detectives asked Mr. Weitzman to stay for the interview, but that he declined to do so, stating that he would prefer to go out to lunch… Mr. Simpson… said, ‘Go ahead.’…”
Item: That we’d deliberately hidden from the jury the existence of Mary Anne Gerchas. We hadn’t told them about her, I explained, because we didn’t know about her.
“You’ll be hearing a lot more about Ms. Gerchas along the course of the trial,” I told them. “But right now, I’ll address a few points that Mr. Cochran didn’t tell you about. For example, she spoke to [a friend] the day after the murders… [and told her] that she was not even at Bundy on the night of the murders. [The friend] will tell you [that] Ms. Gerchas is one of these people who comes out of the woodwork in high-profile cases… [She] was obsessed with this case and she talked as if she knew the defendant personally… The evidence will show that Mary Anne Gerchas is a known liar and a Simpson case groupie.”
I spoke for only seven of the ten minutes allotted to me. I didn’t want to take a chance of running over and having Lance bawl me out in front of the jury.
CAR TAPE. It’s Wednesday, February first. I reopened our opening statement yesterday very briefly just to tell them about some of [the defense’s] lies, but I don’t know if it’s enough to bring them around. If it was an ordinary jury I’d just be sitting there laughing because no reasonable mind could possibly buy the garbage they’re feeding them. But with a jury where people don’t want to believe the evidence, they’ll seize on anything. We may all be playing to the second jury, assuming this one hangs up and doesn’t acquit. What a lovely frame of mind.
A common procedure in murder cases is to call the coroner as the first witness. It’s easy to understand why prosecutors do this. Calling the coroner places the victims’ bodies squarely in the jury’s line of sight. You can’t say it any more bluntly: “Two people have been murdered, folks. That’s why we’re here.” If ever a jury needed a reminder of that, it was in this case, where so much of the attention had been riveted upon the defendant.
But this wasn’t a standard case. We simply could not afford to lead with Dr. Golden.
Even before preliminary hearings back in July, we’d realized that the deputy medical examiner’s report was riddled with errors. Some of the victims’ wounds, which could be clearly seen in the coroner’s photos, hadn’t been documented at all. Worse, the tissue samples removed from Nicole’s brain showed evidence of a brain contusion, but Golden’s report had made no mention of it. The problem with the omission was that now we couldn’t determine which side of the head had been struck-and not knowing this seriously hampered any reconstruction of the attack upon Nicole.
The contusion was critical because it lent support to other findings that Nicole had been attacked, but left alive and unconscious for at least a minute or two before the coup de grâce to her throat. This indicated that Simpson had stuck around after the first attack on Nicole. Now, why would a man who had just committed murder hang around to risk getting caught, not to mention missing his alibi flight to Chicago? The crucial minutes of Nicole’s unconsciousness were clearly Simpson’s window of opportunity to kill Ron.
How could we salvage this fiasco? Bill had a good idea. Why not get a reputable M.E. from outside Los Angeles to examine all the data, and testify either in addition to or in place of Dr. Golden? He suggested Dr. Werner Spitz, former chief medical examiner of Wayne County, Michigan. Spitz had written a key textbook in the field, and had consulted on other high-profile cases. Gil had heard that he was a “good man” and told us to give him a call.
It occurred to me that Spitz might not like the idea of having to second-guess another pathologist’s work. But I thought that he might be sympathetic to our dire circumstances and agree to lend a hand. Bill and Dr. Spitz exchanged phone calls for about a week, but in the end, he never testified for us.