The Search for Justice (3 page)

That night, Linell and I went to a private party at the House of Blues. A great blues singer was behind the microphone, Cher
would be entertaining later, and the champagne was flowing. At about nine o ’clock, a security guard came up to me and said,
“You have an emergency phone call, Mr. Shapiro,” telling me I was welcome to take the call in the club ’s private office.
My heart started to pound—all I could think was that something had happened to one of our boys. Murmuring a quick excuse to
Linell, I followed the guard into the office, where I picked up the phone to hear a totally unfamiliar voice on the other
end of the line.

“You don ’t know me, Mr. Shapiro,” the man said. “My name is Roger King. I ’m the chairman of Kingworld, and a dear friend
of O.J. Simpson ’s. He needs a good lawyer right now, and I think you ’re the man to represent him. I ’d like to engage you
on his behalf.”

King, whose company owns and syndicates such television programs as
Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy,
and
Oprah,
had a reputation as a respected and powerful businessman. And he was clearly someone who could cut to the chase when the
situation required it.

“Mr. King, I can appreciate what you ’re asking me,” I said, “and I take it as a compliment. But I understand he already has
a lawyer. Besides, it ’s pretty late in the evening, and at any rate, I couldn ’t consider going forward without talking to
O.J. himself. We would need to meet personally.”

“I ’m going to get O.J. on the line right now,” King insisted, “so you can talk to him about this tonight.”

King then tried to reach O.J. at his home, but whoever answered there said O.J. couldn ’t be disturbed right now for a phone
call; he was understandably occupied with other things. King and I continued talking about the situation for about half an
hour, during which he kept repeating his intention to retain me immediately.

“You ’re obviously a loyal friend,” I said, “and this is a generous thing that you want to do for O.J. But let ’s wait until
I talk to him before we go any further.”

When I returned to the table, Linell had grown concerned. She was relieved to hear that the call wasn ’t about the boys, and
when I told her about my conversation with King, she asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I don ’t know yet,” I said. “It has to wait until tomorrow.” Wanting to enjoy the rest of the evening, I didn ’t tell anyone
else at the table about the phone call.

Later that night, I heard from Roger King again as he put me in touch with the head of legal affairs for a motion picture
company that had released some of O.J. ’s films. I reiterated that no matter how urgent the matter seemed to everyone, we
had to put it to rest until I could actually meet with O.J. Finally, I called Alan Schwartz, one of O.J. ’s longtime friends,
in New York. Schwartz, the founder of ABS (a national women ’s apparel manufacturer and retailer), had also been a friend
of mine for some time. A hardworking, hands-on man who is at his factory every day at six-thirty in the morning, his opinion
of this case and my participation in it would prove to be a big part of my decision. Alan assured me that he had in fact spoken
both to O.J. and Skip Taft, O.J. ’s personal attorney, and that they would call me in the morning.

I arrived at my office early the next day. I had watched the morning TV news programs and wanted an opportunity to read as
much of the newspaper coverage as I could before talking to Simpson himself.

I had learned that Nicole had been killed, along with a second person, a young man whose name was Ronald Goldman. The deaths
were the result of multiple stabbings, and the crime scene was out in front of the Bundy Drive condominium that Nicole had
purchased shortly after she and O.J. had been divorced in 1993. The two young children of O.J. and Nicole, Sydney and Justin,
were unharmed—they had evidently been asleep in their rooms when the murders took place—and were now with Nicole ’s parents,
Louis and Juditha Brown, down in Orange County.

After being notified of Nicole ’s death, O.J., who had been in Chicago on business, had returned to Los Angeles early Monday
morning. He was met at the airport by his longtime assistant, Cathy Randa, and Skip Taft. Minutes after they pulled into the
driveway at his home on Rockingham, he was in handcuffs, in full view of his companions and the press already assembled in
the street in front of his house.

Simpson had reportedly given the police a statement, but his
attorney, Howard Weitzman, had not been present for it. My inner alarm went off when I heard this. It was clear from the TV
and news reports (not to mention the initial handcuff incident at his house) that the police considered the man a suspect.
What on earth was he doing talking to them, or anyone else for that matter, without legal counsel present?

By the time O.J. ’s call came, I had learned as much as I could. I had never talked to him on the phone before. In spite of
an obvious tension, his voice was measured, much as it had been whenever we had met. Despite my awareness of the tragedy,
I realized that this was an important moment. This was one of the greatest football players in history, a man who was still
a major sports figure even though he hadn ’t been on the gridiron for the last fifteen years. He was calling to seek my advice,
my counsel, and he wanted it immediately.

“What are you doing right now?” I asked.

“I ’m just sitting here with Skip Taft and my friend Bob Kardashian. We would like to meet with you.”

“O.J., stay where you are, I ’m coming right over,” I said. “Don ’t go anyplace, and don ’t talk to anybody else.”

As I drove, I wondered about the meeting ahead. For one thing, O.J. was represented by my friend Howard Weitzman, which created
a somewhat awkward situation. In addition, the first meeting with a potential client is always an anxious situation, especially
when the focus of suspicion is already on him. I hadn ’t agreed to anything yet, and I didn ’t have much information. Even
without the specifics, I knew that if I was going to take this case, I needed to start thinking like a prosecutor. Since I
had actually been one early in my career (and in the Los Angeles D.A. ’s office, too), it wasn ’t so hard to do. What, I wondered,
did they have? Was it possible that O.J. could have killed Nicole?

Some defense attorneys say that they never ask clients whether or not they committed the crime, because they don ’t want the
burden of knowing. I disagree. I want to know, I have to know, it ’s in my client ’s best interests that I do know. I ’m
never afraid to ask the question right at the beginning, and I keep asking it throughout a case. I want a client ’s confidence,
and I want him to have mine, so that we can operate as a single entity. No surprises, no plot twists. I want the truth, no
matter what it is, and I want the inconsistencies up front.

When a client says “I ’m guilty,” what he means is “I ’m responsible”—for setting in motion certain events that culminated
in a crime or act of violence. To the public, a defendant is either guilty or not guilty. But a criminal attorney recognizes
that the law is not black and white—everything is shades of gray. In a death case, is it murder? Is it manslaughter? Or is
it justifiable homicide? In a burglary, is it first-degree or second-degree? What is the difference between assault with a
deadly weapon and assault with intent to commit murder? All have the same basic elements, but each has tremendously different
legal consequences. It is up to the courts to ascertain the level of responsibility and the penalty, if any, to be paid for
it.

For example, the first time I talked with Marlon Brando ’s son Christian, who had been charged with first-degree murder for
shooting his sister ’s boyfriend, Dag Drollet, he told me, “I killed him.”

“Killing him doesn ’t mean you murdered him,” I said, explaining that there were extenuating circumstances, and thus different
degrees of responsibility, that we hadn ’t yet explored. And indeed, as I began to learn the details of the case, I concluded
that Christian wasn ’t guilty of murder. At best it was manslaughter, and possibly accidental death as the result of negligence.

I hired expert investigators (including two who would later work with me on the Simpson case) to do a complete reconstruction
of the shooting, which indicated that the victim was in an upright position at the time he was shot. This, we argued, was
evidence of a struggle between two men, not, as the police had concluded, the premeditated murder of a sleeping man by someone
standing over him. And later, in fact, when Marlon was walking barefoot in the room, he stepped on the spent
bullet-shell casing; the detectives had missed it in a two-day search. It was imbedded in the floor, beneath the carpet, at
a location and angle that proved the theory of our reconstruction; the shot was fired while Drollet was upright. Thus, the
level of Christian ’s responsibility was quite different than the police had originally believed, allowing him to plead guilty
to voluntary manslaughter, which carries a sentence of three to sixteen years. First-degree murder would have been twenty-five
years to life.

On another occasion, a man walked into my office after shooting his wife and dumping her body on the freeway.

“You should surrender yourself immediately,” I told him.

It turned out that he had a significant defense. He had been living in a destructive marriage with a woman who insisted on
having sex with a mutual friend of theirs and required her husband to watch. Slowly but surely he was pushed beyond his capacity
to think or act in a rational way. Guilty, yes, but of what? Murder? First degree? Second? None of the above. He was found
guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five years.

What if he had told me he didn ’t do it and I had built a defense on that? And then found out about the bad marriage and sex
angle later—from the prosecution, as they cross-examined my witness? I don ’t want any surprises; I want everything up front
from day one. I remembered the strategy one veteran lawyer told me that he always used on his clients at their first meeting:
“You tell me what happened, and then
I ’ll tell you
what happened.” What, I wondered as I drove, was I about to hear from O.J. Simpson?

Skip Taft has a small law firm, and adjacent to his suite of offices is a room that resembles someone ’s personal study or
den, with star-studded pictures on the wall, a large television, a couch, a sound system, and a lot of sports memorabilia.
Decorated with classic American pieces and a large wooden partner ’s desk, this is O.J. ’s office, which for years has served
as the center of his business and professional activities and his sports corporation,
Orenthal Productions. When I arrived, O.J. was waiting anxiously with his two friends.

Leroy “Skip” Taft, a tall, lanky man in his late fifties who had been a star basketball player at USC, and O.J. ’s personal
attorney and business manager for many years, was clearly stressed out. Bob Kardashian, who was only slightly less agitated
than Taft, is, after Allen “A.C.” Cowlings, probably O.J. ’s oldest friend. They met on a tennis court twenty-five years ago.
O.J. was an usher at Kardashian ’s wedding; Kardashian was with O.J. when he first met Nicole and had stayed friends with
both of them throughout their separation and divorce. A business and entertainment entrepreneur who received a law degree
in 1969, Kardashian was and has remained O.J. ’s closest advisor.

No one can deny the charisma and kinetic energy that O.J. Simpson projects, and I saw from the minute I walked into the room
that his frustration, added to the grief and stress of the previous days, was barely contained within the four walls. Clean-shaven,
wearing a T-shirt and a pair of slacks, he was in control, but it was clear that he wanted to get his innocence across quickly
and without any equivocation whatsoever. Essentially, everything I ’d heard and read in the newspapers so far accurately depicted
the previous thirty-six hours.

After attending his daughter Sydney ’s dance recital, O.J. had flown to Chicago on the Sunday night red-eye to play in a Monday
morning golf tournament sponsored by Hertz, the auto-rental company for which he had been a longtime spokesman. At 6:05 L.A.
time on Monday morning, he received a phone call at his hotel room from L.A.P.D. Detective Ron Phillips informing him that
Nicole Brown Simpson, his former wife, had been murdered.

After making a number of phone calls to family members, O.J. got on a plane back to Los Angeles, landing before noon. Skip
Taft and Cathy Randa met him and drove him back to Brentwood. Immediately upon entering the grounds of his
home on Rockingham Drive, he was handcuffed on orders by L.A.P.D. Detective Philip Vannatter.

Skip Taft had called O.J. ’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, who had represented Simpson in 198, when he pleaded no contest to
charges of spousal abuse. Weitzman prevailed upon Van-natter to take the cuffs off, and at noon O.J. was then taken downtown
by the detectives, with Taft and Weitzman following in their car.

In the police car on the way down to the station, O.J. told the police that when he ’d gotten the call in his hotel room about
Nicole ’s death, he was completely distraught. “I just kind of went bonkers for a little bit,” he told them.