The Search for Justice (29 page)

Although the district attorney ’s office and the police said that these pointed to a motive for O.J. ’s rage and the subsequent
murders, to anyone else they indicated a desire on Nicole ’s part for another reconciliation. If Nicole hadn ’t desired to
remind her husband of the good times they ’d shared, and the children that had come from their marriage, why would she have
sent these videos to him, in a gesture that seemed almost loving? This didn ’t seem like the action of a woman who was hunted
or stalked by someone she wanted nothing further to do with.

I did, however, object to the fact that we weren ’t informed of the existence of this material until very late in the game.
“Oh, yes, you were,” Marcia Clark argued in court, gesturing at me with a document. “It was in the property report.”

Glaring, I took the document out of her hand and read it. “In this report it makes no mention of the notes from Nicole,” I
said adamantly. The newspapers later reported what O.J. whispered at the table. “Clark ’s busted, busted.”

There seemed to be a new Marcia Clark in court that day. Her clothes were different, her hairstyle was different. Overall,
her demeanor had been quieter, calmer, almost as if she ’d been taking tranquilizers intravenously. Obviously, she ’d taken
to heart what some of the participants had said at the mock-trial weekend in Arizona. However, our exchange over the videos
and the notes brought out the Marcia that had been my sparring
partner over the past months. My continuing suggestion that procedure wasn ’t being followed by the prosecution, that the
defense was somehow being short-changed, made her noticeably angry. She seemed so intent on finding flaws in defense strategy
that I wondered how much attention she was paying to her own.

Bill Pavelic, our investigator, kept reminding me that the district attorney ’s office hadn ’t turned over to us the police
logs and tapes for June 13, Some months before, he ’d heard from a source inside the L.A.P.D. that Fuhrman and his partner,
Detective Phillips, were using a department-issued cellular phone in the early morning hours of June 13, This source contended
that Fuhrman and Phillips called from outside O.J. ’s house to the West L.A. police station, where Sydney and Justin had been
taken, and asked the watch commander to find out from the children where O.J. was. Pavelic ’s source reported that the kids
had said something to the effect of “out of town for business.” Therefore, contrary to what they ’d testified in the preliminary,
the police knew quite early that O.J. was not at Rockingham. This meant the police had no reason to scale the wall in order
to notify him or protect him from danger. Pavelic was adamant that we obtain the watch commander ’s log and the cellular phone
records to document this call, because his informant was suggesting that it was made before the robbery/homicide detectives,
Lange and Vannatter, were in the picture—which gave Fuhrman time to manipulate evidence.

“Hodgman knows how important this stuff is,” Pavelic fumed, “and he and Clark are deliberately withholding it.”

I told him there was a more likely explanation. “It ’s the L.A.P.D. that doesn ’t want us to have it,” I said, “not the D.A.
That ’s why they ’re stalling. I ’ll bring it up before Ito again, he ’s already told them at least once to turn it over.
Don ’t worry, Bill, our chance will come.”

In September, to celebrate Brent ’s fourteenth birthday, Linell and I took him and thirty of his friends to play paintball
at a
concession out in the hills of Newhall, about thirty-five miles from our home. Paintball is where you get all dressed up in
camouflage combat gear, form teams, and run through the fields and hills playing guerrilla warfare—with mock guns filled with
bright, splattering paint.

Linell and I and the kids all rode out to Newhall on a chartered bus, and once we got there we had a twenty-minute hike up
a dirt road. As we got closer to our destination, I was astonished to see that TV satellite trucks had arrived there before
us. A reporter called out a question, but I shook my head and turned away, heading instead into the building with the kids
to get fitted out with our gear and fatigues and instructions. Linell, ever the diplomat, walked over to the reporters and
said, “Please. This is a private party, for the kids. Nobody ’s going to say anything to you today about the case, Bob ’s
not going to give you anything. There ’s nothing going on here about O.J. So won ’t you please be kind, and respect our privacy?”

As we left that afternoon, the reporters tried again to talk to the kids, asking their names, asking what their parents thought
of the case. “Does your dad think O.J. is guilty?” one guy shouted. That night, Linell ’s civilized request for respect and
privacy for the kids showed up on the local news.

A
t one point, Judge Ito considered doing something very unusual: asking jurors to sign a contract, stipulating that they would
not sell their stories nor profit in any way from their participation in this jury for six months after the verdict. I could
certainly understand his motivations; we still were weeks from actually beginning the trial, and every day there were two,
three, four stories about the inner workings of both the defense and prosecution teams, on television and the newspapers.
I felt that giving jurors a contract to sign would have a chilling effect and compromise their autonomy at the very beginning
of what would no doubt be a difficult task for them. Some might even want to consult with lawyers before signing—or, worse,
during the case itself, if they were surreptitiously approached by reporters or publishers. Ito wisely decided not to ask
for contracts.

I was learning that behind the scenes Lance Ito was a very complex, intense man. He arrived at court at six-thirty in the
morning, the first one there and always the last to leave. His chambers looked like the archives of a pawn shop, with memorabilia
in every nook and cranny. We had in common a passion for pens, and Ito proudly displayed his collection to me, telling me
where I could find collectible pens at good prices. Anything
that came in relative to the case—cups, pennants, buttons, posters, even the most devastating editorial cartoons—found a niche
in Ito ’s small office, and he gave away as much as he kept. In one instance he passed along to me a baseball card with my
picture and stats on it; in another, he showed us a button that read, “O.J. Defense: No Comment.”

The judge prepared diligently for the case, putting in three months preparation for the DNA alone, and his books—on law, science,
and any number of other subjects—were strewn everywhere. In the center of all this chaos were two computers on which he typed
his daily rulings, a printer, and a complete set of all the evidence in the Simpson case. His desk was piled high, but he
could always immediately find whatever he needed.

Initially, Judge Ito took pride in reading five newspapers a day, but midway through the trial, he stopped. “I wouldn ’t read
a word of what they ’re printing about all of this,” he said disgustedly. His finest moments were when both the defense and
the prosecution were displeased by one of his rulings. “I must be doing my job,” he ’d say.

Ito is a great storyteller, and he loves a good joke. We told a lot of them in chambers, often about the case, frequently
at our own expense, and he gave as good as he got. He was a good sport about Jay Leno ’s Dancing Itos. Marcia Clark, who had
studied dance, wasn ’t nearly as sanguine about the dancing Marcia.

Near the end of the trial, Ito gave me one of his pogs, the cardboard disks that kids trade and play with that resemble old
milk-bottle caps. One side of the pog read “guilty,” the other “not guilty.”

The following is a conversation I had in my car with Johnnie Cochran, on the way to the courthouse September 26, the first
day of actual jury selection:

RLS: Good morning, Mr. Cochran! How are you today?

JLC: Good morning, Mr. Shapiro, I ’m just fine, thanks.

RLS: I ’m taping this, if you don ’t mind, Mr. Cochran.

JLC: [laughing] Don ’t mind at all. Got enough newspapers in here, Bobby?

RLS: [laughing] Oh, shut up. Hey, did you get a good night ’s sleep last night, Mr. Cochran?

JLC: I did, I certainly did. I worked hard yesterday, got enough sleep last night, and I ’m ready to go. How about you?

RLS: I ’m ready to go, I feel great.

JLC: Then we ’re both ready. A couple of clever minds. The prosecution better be ready, too.

What greeted us at the courthouse was simply incredible. Although we had been mobbed by reporters before, now the chaos was
somewhat more organized, with red cones out in front and two L.A.P.D. officers standing guard. These were the early days of
what came to be known as Camp O.J. By the time the trial actually began, the staging for lights and cameras would be nearly
five stories high, and the parking lot would be filled with large vans for the reporters, anchors, and television crews.

We walked in greeted mainly by cheers and a few shouts—no boos yet. There were cameras behind roped-off areas stretching one
hundred feet on either side of the sidewalk. There was a sea of still photographers, video crews, radio and television announcers,
lookie-loos, shouters, and souvenir vendors creating a noisy, somewhat gala carnival-like atmosphere. Like a medieval mob
about to witness a beheading, they had all come to see if a man would be convicted of two brutal murders and sentenced to
life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Inside the courtroom it was eerily silent. Court cameras were covered in dark fabric, and the public was not admitted. Only
three press representatives were present. The judge had made an unprecedented decision of allowing us to walk in with O.J.,
rather than having him come in through a separate door from the holding cell. Even though everyone in the courtroom knew he
was in police custody, he was allowed to have the
appearance of someone who was not. He walked in first, followed by me, Cochran, and Jo-Ellan Dimitrius.

The room seated 250 potential members of the jury. In that group were some who would ultimately be on the jury, and the awesome
nature of their task—and ours—was palpable. The security was subtle but obvious; there were six or seven armed sheriff ’s
deputies in uniform. I recognized another six undercover deputies, and there were probably more.