Lance let the lawyers do the first walk-through. I’d gotten no farther than the foyer when I realized something was very wrong here. On my previous visits, the house had struck me as neglected and lifeless. Now it looked like a squadron of fairies had scrubbed it with Q-Tips. It was gleaming. In the living room, a fire was blazing. Fresh-cut flowers had been artfully arranged in a vase on the side table. But the most dramatic transformation was that collection of photographs.
The Wall of the Fat Cats had been cleansed of Caucasians. Gone were the golfing buddies and shots of Nicole in Aspen. Every single shot contained a black face. Simpson’s mother, his sister, their husbands, their kids. Upstairs, there was even a Norman Rockwell reproduction: the little black girl going to school accompanied by federal marshals. In the bathroom, there was a poster made by Simpson’s children; that had not been there on June 13. But the pièce de résistance was the master bedroom. On the mantel above the fireplace sat books on philosophy and religion. On the nightstand, next to a Holy Bible, stood a photo of the defendant’s mother, Eunice.
But these distortions were merely cosmetic compared to the more material misrepresentation I discovered when my little tour party took its turn down the path behind Kato’s room.
Seven months earlier, during the preliminary hearings, Robert Shapiro had tried to argue that if Simpson had been on the south pathway, he wouldn’t have had to walk around to the front door to get back into the house. This was because two other doors along the south pathway led inside. I’d made a note to myself to check that out.
What I’d discovered in examining the photos and talking to Kato was that neither of those doors was operable. One of them, which led into the garage, had been blocked from the inside by a large dresser that supported a television set. The other, which led into the laundry room, was kept bolted from the inside and blocked by a stepladder and a laundry basket.
Today, however, the laundry-room door, free of obstacles, was standing wide open.
They’d altered the conditions. The defense team had deliberately changed things, both to pander to the jury’s racial prejudices and to obscure the facts in the case. I turned to Chris. “We have got to have them put this place back to the way it was, or else cancel the whole damned viewing,” I said.
Chris predicted that this would not sit well with the Little Prince, his pet name for Ito. I knew he was right, but we had to try.
When I demanded that Lance call a hearing right then and there to consider my motion, he was visibly irritated. He’d orchestrated this sound-and-light show down to the last detail and he didn’t want to change the program. He also knew that if he canceled the viewing, the defense would go nuts. Never mind that the Bundy condo had been rendered a lifeless husk. Forget that Rockingham had been transformed into a soundstage for Leave It to Beaver. Lance still seemed to be worried about pissing Johnnie off.
Under protest, however, Ito convened a hearing on the front lawn. Both sets of attorneys stood in a semicircle around the court reporter while I argued, ticking off the items, that the scene had been materially altered.
“This is a sympathy play on their part. That’s all it is,” I concluded. “There’s no evidentiary value to it.”
Ito allowed that he was a little worried about the photographs. He asked Johnnie about them. Cochran’s response was interesting in light of what was later documented in Larry Schiller’s American Tragedy. Schiller, appointed scribe of O. J. Simpson, writes that the defense team had supervised every step of this extraordinary effort to tamper with the jury view. Cochran himself is quoted as demanding that the white faces be replaced with black ones-in fact, the Norman Rockwell print came from his office!
Now, put on the spot, Johnnie equivocated.
“As to the photographs, Mr. Douglas is in charge of that,” Johnnie said. “I don’t want to respond to the argument… This is preposterous.” Then he turned the question over to Carl Douglas, whose response was equally evasive: “I was not here on June the thirteenth, so I am unable to adequately respond specifically to what pictures were up and where they where. I don’t know for a fact.”
“Your Honor,” I put in, “I was here on the thirteenth, and I know-”
Johnnie cut me off. “I would not ask Miss Clark to tell you anything,” he said to the judge. “Gigi the housekeeper, she would be the one to tell you.”
Rising to the bait, Lance turned to the housekeeper and asked if anything had been changed.
“Just add his mother picture there,” she said in broken English.
“She’s not a detective,” I protested, “she’s a housekeeper!”
Of course, Ito refused to cancel the viewing. In the end, the only thing he was willing to do was to order the defense to take down the photo of Mama Simpson and to put out the fires.
“Nice try, guys,” he told them.
“Nice try?” That’s a reprimand? You’ve got to grab these guys by the collar and demand respect, Lance. They’re only lawyers.
The result of all my objections? Lance climbed onto the jurors’ bus and told them to “ignore anything you see in the photographs that are inside the residence.”
Great. Like “Ignore the pink elephant in the living room.”
Ito ordered the deputies to escort the jurors as they went through the trophy room, so that they wouldn’t linger over the mementos of the defendant’s glory days. Of course no warning issuing from the lips of Lance Ito could keep them from gawking. And they did. Openly. Michael Knox, the guy in the 49ers gear, all but pressed his nose against the photographs.
It was the only sign of animation I saw in our jury all day.
CAR TAPE. February 15. I haven’t had a day off, not even one day off, in about a month. I’m so exhausted right now I can’t even think… Bailey took on this cop yesterday, a really mild-mannered guy that was only there to make sure the crime-scene tape was up properly. And he starts thumping him about all this stuff that’s got nothing to do with him. About when to notify the coroner. And instead of sustaining my objections, the judge lets him go running wild with it…
His sexism, their sexism, has gotten so irritating. It’s funny, you know. I never, never used to cry sexism. But this case is rampant with it. The judge makes these cute little corrections to me about “personpower” instead of “manpower.” That’s just a change of a word, Judge. How about your fucking attitude? And Cochran is so condescending and patronizing. We got to sidebar and I’m arguing against him and he starts calling me “hysterical.” I mean, Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s absolutely frightening. I mean… I don’t think we have come a very long way, baby.
Ito continued to let the defense bash away at the first cops on the scene: Riske, Rossi, and Phillips. And then they kept Tom Lange on the stand for four painful days of cross-examination.
I had entertained the possibility of not even calling Tom. We really didn’t need him for anything except to identify the crime-scene photos and key pieces of evidence, and that could be done by others. Still, it’s customary to call your lead investigator; my colleagues pointed out that it would look kind of odd if we didn’t.
Tom’s upside, to my way of thinking, was that he didn’t have much of a downside. Since the Fuhrman business surfaced, we’d had to ask each and every cop, “Do you have a package at Internal Affairs?” “Do you have a package at SID?” We’d had to run background checks on our officers-a process formerly reserved for shady witnesses and known ex-felons.
Tom came out squeaky clean. His only possible error in judgment at the crime scene was the blanket he’d use to cover Nicole on the scene. Nicole had lain uncovered in full public view for more than three hours. In a gesture of decency, Tom had found a blanket in a closet to spread over her. Now, of course, the defense was going to argue that the incriminating trace evidence found on Ron’s body and the knit cap-hair and fibers that matched Simpson’s-had somehow come from that blanket. Unfortunately, the LAPD had disposed of the blanket after the coroner arrived. Still, I felt we could defuse this by pointing out that neither Ron nor the knit cap had ever come in contact with the blanket.