His Name Is Ron (54 page)

Dan objected, noting, “There is no such tape, and he knows it…. Make him point to the evidence where there's such a tape. Make him point to it.”

“Approach the bench,” Judge Fujisaki instructed.

An angry, loud sidebar ensued. Philip Baker raged, “There was a tape made by Paula Barbieri's answering machine. It was analyzed by the LAPD, and they couldn't identify whether there's a Bronco.”

Dan admonished, “Shhh. Keep your voice down.”

“You're the one!” Philip Baker almost shouted, pointing a finger at Dan.

Dan asked the judge, “Can you control this guy? He's trying to make an argument to the jury.”

Judge Fujisaki drew laughter when he turned to the jury and said in a folksy voice, “Excuse me, folks. Would you step out in the hallway?”

Then the bickering resumed until Philip Baker made a mistake, arguing that the tape “should be in front of the jury.”

“Should be?” Dan asked. And that was the point. Dan did not believe that such a tape existed. But even if it did, it had not been placed into evidence. Therefore, Baker could not—should not—refer to it. Judge Fujisaki called the jury back in and told them to disregard Baker's comments.

But before long, Baker issued yet another bald-faced lie: “Is there a second glove near Ron's body? You bet.”

Finding another opportunity to remind the jury that Mark Fuhrman had not testified, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence in this case is simply not trustworthy. … If you can't trust the messenger—and believe me, the messenger in this case—we have one messenger that came to testify. We have one messenger that didn't.”

Kim said to Michelle Caruso, “It's taking everything I've got to keep it inside. I want to scream and run out of the room.”

Patti studied the jury. Some were taking notes. She thought: Do they really believe this stuff—these lies? She wanted to shake Baker. She wanted to get up and scream, “What is wrong with you? How can you call yourself an officer of the court?”

Baker moved toward his finale. “Now, I want to, just for a moment, talk about reality, and it may seem somewhat harsh to do this, but this is a lawsuit. I just want to talk a little bit about the parties in this lawsuit.

“And Mr. Petrocelli got up here and told you in a very emotional appeal that Ron Goldman would probably be opening his restaurant now and he would be going into his restaurant.

“Let's examine reality.

“Fred Goldman, for reasons that he called tough love, didn't help his son go through bankruptcy, and he had to go through bankruptcy.

“Ron Goldman wouldn't have a restaurant now.

“He'd be lucky to have a credit card.”

Kim was crawling out of her skin. Inwardly she yelled: How dare you try to paint Ron as a loser.

I ground my teeth and glared. My fists were clenched so tightly they went numb. I wanted to leap forward and punch this liar in the face.

Baker concluded, “You can't give him his son back. You can't give Ron Goldman's life back. But you can give back Mr. Simpson his life … and give Justin and Sydney their dad back.”

I thought I might vomit.

During the lunch break, I said to Patti, “I feel so much—hate? I don't like to use that word—but what he did is so despicable. He might just as well have been there and helped the son of a bitch commit murder.”

Dan tried to calm me, promising that, in rebuttal, he and Tom Lambert would throw all the lies back in the defense team's collective face.

Kim implored Dan, “Can you just clean up this point? Can you fix it? About the money. Dad offered. Ron didn't want his help. He wanted to handle the bankruptcy thing by himself.”

Dan told her not to worry. “I'm going to get Baker for what he said,” he promised.

Kim said to a friend, “It's a damn good thing there's a gag order.”

When we started this journey two and one half years earlier, a courtroom was the last place I expected to find blatant fraud, deception, and lies. Many defense attorneys continue to mystify me. Because of the knowledge he gains through the attorney-client privilege, not to mention the evidence, a lawyer often knows that his client is guilty. And still, he does his best to help him walk free. Never for a moment would I suggest that the accused should not have representation, but when the concept was developed, it was to protect an individual's rights and produce evidence in his favor. Today, these so-called officers of the court, who are supposed to be part of the search for truth, are willing to win at any cost. They must sit around and carefully plan what lies they will tell in open court.

In both the criminal and civil “Trials of the Century,” there never was any shared responsibility to find the truth about who killed Ron and Nicole. “Scheme Teams” I and II sought to hide or misrepresent the truth whenever it pointed to their client.

I wondered: How do these people get up in the morning and look in the mirror, knowing they are putting food on the table with blood money? How can they smile and laugh and joke, and pat the back of a man they
know
viciously murdered two innocent people?

They are part and parcel of what allows guilty, violent predators to walk free. Forty percent of murders are committed by people who have previously committed violent acts. We are haunted by the knowledge that if the killer had been dealt with severely the first time he laid a hand on his wife, Ron might still be with us.

After lunch, Dan told the jury, “What you have heard in this courtroom, ladies and gentlemen, from the defense over the last four months, and from these lawyers over the last two days, is what a guilty man has to say in response to all this evidence.

“It was all planted.

“It's all contaminated.

“All of the photos are fake.

“All the law enforcement people are corrupt or incompetent.

“Every witness who gets on that stand and testifies against me is lying or mistaken.

“There's a conspiracy the likes of which has never before been witnessed, all to get me.

“That's what a guilty man does.”

He pointed out some of Baker's more obvious lies: “Mr. Baker came up here and told you straight-faced that there was a second glove near Ron Goldman's body…. He just made it up.

“You know why he made it up?

“He's desperate.”

Noting that Mark Fuhrman was still at home, asleep in his bed, when other officers were gathering the evidence at Bundy, Dan reminded the jurors, “Mr. Baker told you earlier today, Mark Fuhrman found all the evidence in the case. That's just false. What trial has he been attending?

“He said Mark Fuhrman was unaccounted for during an hour and a half at Bundy. That's an absolutely false statement.” Dan read from the testimony of several witnesses who accounted for Fuhrman's whereabouts during the time in question.

Just as in the criminal trial, the defense had attempted to characterize any minor discrepancy as evidence of a grand conspiracy. Dan conceded, “There's no such thing as a perfect investigation, just like there's no such thing as a perfect crime.” Bundy, he said, “is a crime scene; it's not a museum.

“Things move. People walk. Photographs are taken. Bodies are moved. Folks are working. An envelope get moved. What does that mean?

“There's a piece of paper missing. Oh, what are we going to do? A piece of paper was missing. That's another point they made: A little white piece of paper is missing.

“Big deal. What about his blood? That's not missing. And his hair, that's not missing. And his shoe prints, that's not missing. And his hat and his glove, that's not missing.”

Now it was Tom Lambert's turn. Point by point, in a lengthy but effective manner, he went over the evidence-gathering procedures and the volumes of incriminating material that it produced. He stressed the big issue that the defense never wanted to mention: Contamination can produce an unusable result, but it does not—cannot—produce a false result. Instead of contamination and corruption, Tom declared, the defense position should start with the letter D: “It's desperation. It's deception. It's dishonesty.”

I woke up Tuesday morning with my jaws throbbing from grinding my teeth all night long. Over coffee, I said to Patti, “The way Dan and Tom laid it out—addressed all the manipulations and lies and explained the hoax they tried to perpetrate—how could anyone
not
believe that he's the S.O.B. who murdered two people?”

Patti nodded her agreement as I continued to vent my feelings. “If we pile all our evidence on one side of the scale of justice, and the defense has no credible evidence on their side, what does that tell you? Do they have anyone else's blood, hair, shoe prints—any shred of evidence that points to anyone else? No!”

“It's so disturbing to look at the jury and wonder what they're going to do,” Patti said. “They have heard lies and they have heard the truth. Now, they have to choose between the two.”

“I know,” I said, “there is no assurance. Last time, we had a jury say 12–0 that the truth didn't matter.”

This was the day. Tom and Dan would need an hour or two to finish our rebuttal statement. Then the case would go to the jury.

The crowds outside the courthouse were larger and more vicious than ever. Many demonstrators had bullhorns. We heard shouting voices accusing, “Golddiggers!” and rabid, anti-Semitic chants such as, “You Jews just want money, money, money!” We also heard shouts, “Goldman, we love you—go get 'em!” We tried to keep our heads down and walk quickly.

As we sat in court awaiting the beginning of the proceedings, Kim thought: In two hours we put our trust in twelve strangers, again.

But Judge Fujisaki did not appear at the bench. Instead, he summoned
the principal lawyers into his chambers. Something was wrong. We could feel it. Suddenly the audience was dismissed. Dan reappeared, grim-faced, and huddled with his colleagues. Patti and Kim raced forward to join us at the plaintiffs' table.

Dan explained that two of the jurors had reported to the judge that someone had attempted to contact them at home. Patti gasped, “Dan was right! Someone tried to tamper with the jury. How can this happen at the eleventh hour?”

How could anyone find out who was on the jury? Our attorneys had no names—only juror numbers. Each day the jury was bussed to and from a parking lot at a location unknown to us. We learned that Channel 9, KCAL-TV, had been bounced from the courtroom for following the jury bus, and we wondered what other sinister forces may have attempted a similar ploy.

Amid all this turmoil, the killer sat at the defense table with some of his cronies, laughing, talking about movies as if he did not have a care in the world.

We listened intently to the plan. Judge Fujisaki would interview each of the twelve jurors and four remaining alternates separately to assess the damage. We had no answers, only questions. It was good that the two jurors had reported the contacts to the judge, but what if he found that others were contacted and did not report the fact? If we lost more than four jurors, would we have a mistrial?

Patti and Kim fled for the hallway. Kim was numb. She said, “Two hours ago, I thought this would all be over. Now this. I cannot believe this.”

The press circled. Everyone wanted to know what the delay was all about. Patti and Kim, of course, could say nothing. They paced the hallway, wondering: Is the defense responsible for this? Are they that desperate? That evil? It was possible!

After interviewing the jurors, Judge Fujisaki concluded that there was no misconduct on their part and he allowed the trial to conclude.

Tom Lambert began the day with a final primer on DNA. “Those DNA test results are extremely significant evidence,” he said, “… establishing the guilt of Mr. Simpson.”

He reminded the jury of Robert Blasier's attempt to illustrate his contention that DNA test results are not as significant as they seem. Step by logical step he figuratively tore apart Blasier's Tinkertoy defense: Dr. Robin Cotton noted that DNA testing is a well-established method used to match
donors and recipients for bone marrow and organ transplants; Dr. Brad Popovich uses the same technology day in and day out to make life-and-death diagnostic decisions; the defense's own witness, Dr. Henry Lee, did not challenge the DNA test results; another defense witness, Dr. John Gerdes, never said there was any contamination, merely a “risk” of contamination.

“This DNA evidence is reliable evidence,” Tom proclaimed. “The experts told you so. Even their expert told you so.”

Patti thought: Tom is making it so clear. Does the jury get it like I do?

Dan followed on Tom's heels without a break in the proceedings, and he hammered away relentlessly at the legion of lies told by the defendant and his attorneys. “Mr. Baker actually wanted you folks to believe this was a professional hit,” Dan said with a hint of amazement in his voice.

“Can you imagine that?

“And he said two professional assassins…. That's what he wanted you to believe. Thirty stab wounds. Two professional assassins.

“[If] this was a professional assassin, it would have taken a single bullet in about three seconds. Gone. Not a shred of evidence.

“Is a professional assassin, let alone two, going to stab people over and over and over again? You going to leave all the evidence behind?

“Does that make sense to anybody?”

Instead, Dan said, it was an amateur assassin. “There was only one person the evidence in this case showed had any problem, any hostility, any antagonism, any enmity, any animosity toward Nicole, and that was O. J. Simpson.

“Is it just a coincidence that near the very end of her life these two were at war with one another? …

“And then she's just found dead?”

Time after time Dan pointed out the killer's lies and pleaded for the jurors to use their common sense in evaluating what that meant. “Why didn't he just say, You know what, Mr. Petrocelli, I did hit her? I did hit her. I battered my wife that night.