The Search for Justice (47 page)

I thought, I have to get a grip here or I ’ll explode. Concentrating as hard as I could on getting Johnnie up, then helping
him to readjust his chair, I finally conquered my overwhelming desire to giggle. Vannatter and I studiously avoided eye contact
the rest of the day.

Larry Schiller, O.J. ’s book collaborator, had worked with Norman Mailer on the research for
The Executioner ’s Song.
When Mailer came to Los Angeles to launch the book tour for his new novel, Schiller invited Linell and me to attend a small
dinner party at Spago in Mailer ’s honor. Johnnie was there with his wife, Dale, and Bob Kardashian and Barry Scheck also
attended. It felt a little like we were all out on a school night.

I ’ve always been a fan of Mailer ’s, and we share a love for boxing. He told me that he ’d become interested in it later
in life, as I did, although he had boxed a bit as a kid. We had both boxed with our own kids. Mailer said he thought there
was probably something very tribal in that.

My boys, on their own and with little encouragement from me, had begun to develop an interest in boxing, especially Brent,
who was talking about getting involved in Golden Gloves. He was going through a growth spurt, getting tall and leggy, and
becoming tough as nails. The competitive instinct was there between him and Grant, and between them and me. I didn ’t mind
giving them the advantage when we were sparring—I
didn ’t need to boost my ego by beating my kids at sports.

Once I told Brent he could hit me as hard as he wanted, as long as he hit below the neck. I ’d be defensive, but I wouldn
’t hit back. He obligingly pounded away at my stomach, and then without warning threw a right to my face. Instantly, almost
as a reflex action, I came back with a short jab, and connected. His nose bled, his mouth was cut, and I ended our session
washing the blood off my son ’s face with a hose in the yard. I felt absolutely horrible about what I ’d done. And I knew
that I wouldn ’t be able to keep up with him much longer.

One of my dinner companions that night at Spago was the actor Martin Landau, who ’d won an Oscar that spring for
Ed Wood.
When he asked how the trial was going, I made a crack about
Mission: Impossible.
I was rewarded with a smile from my wife, who was used to my Hollywood faux pas and had been holding her breath in case I
didn ’t know to whom I was talking.

“How are you doing with all the celebrity stuff?” Landau asked.

“I ’m mixed about it,” I said. “I like being acknowledged for being good at my job. And we all know that this has more to
do with O.J. than it does with any of us as individuals. The tabloid stuff is pretty hard to take for my family, though.”

He nodded. “I can imagine,” he said. “Actors put our hands up for celebrity. We want people to know who we are, and losing
privacy is the trade-off. But it ’s different for you guys.” He was watching Barry Scheck across the room, surrounded by a
circle of admirers.

Later in the evening, Warren Beatty came in. Beatty is known as something of an expert on reluctant celebrity. His private
life has been the subject of intense press scrutiny for three decades.

Beatty ’s also a student of the American political and legal system, and our conversation about privacy included his acknowledgment
of the right of the press to “get the story.”

“There ’s a downside to it, though, Bob,” he said. “Once you forfeit your right to privacy, you never get it back.”

On May 8, we got our first look at George “Woody” Clarke, who had come from San Diego to work through the prosecution ’s DNA
analysis testimony with Cellmark lab director Robin Cotton. It was immediately apparent that Clarke had poise and style, and
his presentation with Cotton was well prepared. Good graphics, easily understood questions, and an easy manner on both their
parts made the dense material somewhat easier on the palate.

If I had been one of the prosecutors, I would ’ve been beaming all through Cotton ’s testimony, she was that good. Highly
educated, warm and affable, she was the high school teacher you hoped you ’d get. If she didn ’t know something, she readily
admitted it. What she did know, she did her best to make understandable to the jury, rather than boost her own ego by staying
with esoteric or indecipherable scientific technology.

However, DNA isn ’t inherently fascinating to the lay audience, even in this case, and thus the effective Clarke-Cotton team
lost their audience. By the third day, the most diligent note-taking jurors had put their pencils down, Cochran and I were
both fading, and O.J., who had only his cell to go back to, was nevertheless gazing longingly at the door.

I had been talking with Dr. Henry Lee about how much blood can come from a nick or a scrape, and how a drop of blood expands
upon contact with the ground. I started doing experiments at home with water in an eyedropper, dropping it on different surfaces
from different heights. I was surprised to find that a drop from three feet would end up between the size of a nickel and
a dime. I then tried it with cooking oil, and got the same result. But I wanted to see what would happen with blood.

While shaving, I took the razor and made a little slice in my
chin. I was immediately rewarded with blood—far more than I had expected. Even hitting what I thought was the right pressure
point, I couldn ’t shut the blood off with a hand towel, and in minutes there was blood all over the tile on the bathroom
floor. Minutes after that, the towel was soaked through.

Once the bleeding had finally stopped, I made sure I took the towel in the car with me. I picked Johnnie up on the way to
court and showed him the towel.

“Bob, you ’ll do anything for a client, won ’t you?” he said, laughing.

I put the towel into my briefcase and took it into the courthouse. I showed it to Judge Ito and the prosecution team, telling
them I would have liked to be able to show it to the jury. No one was amused.

Perhaps the greatest misconception in this case is the prosecution ’s “mountain of evidence” versus the amount of blood that
was actually found. At the Bundy crime scene, the blood from the victims was of course enormous, as large an amount as the
police had ever seen. But the amount there that was not the victims ’ that was available for analysis—the drops of blood leading
away from the Bundy crime scene—amounted to four blood drops inside the walkway, and one outside the walkway, each the size
of a dime. If these were all left there at the same time, as the prosecution contended, each should ’ve had relatively the
same amount of human DNA. A drop of blood will contain approximately fifteen hundred nanograms of DNA. However, the four drops
inside the walkway had amounts varying from two to ten nanograms, much less than anyone would expect, even with degradation.
The drop outside the walkway contained thirty-five nanograms. The blood on the sock found in O.J. ’s bedroom contained upward
of one thousand nanograms of DNA—ten times more than all the other blood samples combined.

Bacteria causes degradation, and degradation causes a loss
of sample. The blood on the gate behind the Bundy residence wasn ’t seen by any of the detectives or technicians until three
weeks after the murders, long after everything had been washed down. Yet that blood had more DNA than the samples found on
the ground, and was less degraded than the blood on the ground. How was this possible?

It was not the obligation of the Simpson defense to prove how the blood got there, when it got there, why it got there, whether
it was planted there, whether it had been there for some period of time, whether it was contaminated, whether it came from
sloppy techniques in the lab, or whether the reference samples of O.J. ’s blood, when they were opened in the lab, spewed
out onto other samples. This was not our job. Our job was to ask the questions, point out the improbables. For every single
item—sock, glove, knit hat, blood—we were able to show doubt, reasonable and real.

Early in May, Gerry Uelmen and I met with the judge and the prosecution away from the jury to discuss the admissibility of
the autopsy photographs. Uelmen had been teaching full-time but had agreed to return for motions whenever we felt we needed
him in court.

The assistant district attorney who would be arguing for the prosecution was Brian Kelberg, a medical/legal specialist who
had attended medical school before law school. He would be examining the deputy coroner, Dr. Golden, and trying to diminish
the impact of his performance in the preliminary hearings.

Kelberg wasted no time in telling us how he was going to present Golden as a witness. He was first going to go through the
mistakes that Golden had made during his career as a coroner, and then the specific mistakes he ’d made on the autopsies.
His tactic was to show that this doctor had made mistakes throughout his professional life; that in fact mistakes were endemic
to his career.

Kelberg ’s strategy called for the prosecution to take the lead in destroying Golden, so that we could not. And they would
argue that the autopsy photographs had to be admitted into evidence, in order to show Golden ’s errors. There were wounds
that he said existed that didn ’t exist; there were others he ’d referred to in his report that weren ’t evident in the photographs.