The Search for Justice (53 page)

It wasn ’t so much what O.J. ’s sisters said or even how they said it, but their presence was a powerful endorsement of their
brother. “He was always there for us,” they said.

And finally, there was O.J. ’s mother, Eunice Simpson, who, in spite of advanced age and failing health, had sat patiently
in her wheelchair for days at a time in the courtroom. While there, she had often been warm and affectionate toward the Brown
family, as they had been to her. The families, after all, shared their grandchildren in common.

Mrs. Simpson looked elegant, dressed in shades of yellow, conveying serenity and faith in her son. Kardashian and Cochran
opened the low swinging “bar” doors that separated the lawyers from the spectators, and helped her out of her wheelchair.
Like the stoic she was—and like she ’d taught her son to be—Mrs. Simpson would not allow anyone to help her, using her cane
to take minuscule steps to the witness stand under her own strength and power.

She talked with great dignity about her son ’s life, his upbringing, and her special moments with him. She evoked a palpable
love and empathy in the courtroom, and a sadness that she had seen her son go from the championship field to being a defendant
in a murder case.

We began our timeline witnesses with a young man named Dan Mendel and a young woman named Ellen Aronson. They had been on
a blind date the night of the murder and had walked past the Bundy residence at 10:30, only a few minutes after the prosecution
said the murders were being committed and the dog supposedly began wailing. Both testified that they neither saw nor heard
anything unusual as they passed. Their testimony was simple and unequivocal.

Denise Pilnak, a Bundy neighbor, was another timeline witness. Pilnak was so time-sensitive that she usually wore two wristwatches,
she said. Yes, she ’d heard the dog barking, but not until 10:35. Until then the neighborhood had been quiet.

I had some reservations about Robert Heidstra, the next timeline witness, who was also a Bundy neighbor. I was concerned about
his credibility. According to Lee Bailey, who had talked to him extensively, Heidstra didn ’t hear the dog barking until precisely
10:37. He ’d heard men ’s voices as well, raised in an argument in front of Nicole ’s apartment at that time. I was worried
about that kind of absolute precision, which is easy
to impeach. Bailey assured us that Heidstra would be a good witness.

Heidstra, of French birth, had a very thick accent. Either he had trouble understanding the attorneys or they had trouble
understanding him. Whatever the reason, his testimony came across as halting, equivocating, and confused. He further complicated
matters by stating that he had seen a light-colored sports utility vehicle speeding away from Bundy. He couldn ’t say what
exact make of car it was. However, he stated that it drove
down
Bundy when it left, which would mean the driver was going away from, not toward, O.J. ’s house at Rockingham.

It ’s hard to say who won the Heidstra round, but I regretted that he ’d been a witness for us. We should have known more
about him, more about his background, and more about what he was going to say. During the next break, we were livid with Bailey.
He had vouched for Heidstra ’s credibility; clearly, his judgment was off.

While Chris Darden was cross-examining Heidstra, the witness at one point agreed with Darden that, yes, one of the voices
he ’d heard was a “black” voice. Cochran immediately objected to what he called Darden ’s “racist” questioning.

“It was the witness ’s word,” said Darden. “If it ’s racist, then it ’s the witness that ’s racist, not me.”

Cochran continued to argue, and so did Darden.

“This is what created a lot of problems for myself and my family,” Darden said angrily, “these statements that you make about
me and race, Mr. Cochran.”

I thought Ito was going to physically come down from the bench and break it up. “We ’ll take a recess,” he said, “because
right now I ’m so mad at you guys, I ’m about to hold you both in contempt.”

I always thought that Darden had the second-toughest job in the courtroom. As a black man working for the prosecution—in a
case that increasingly focused on race—he was caught in an almost constant bind. Johnnie ’s incessant baiting just intensified
things.

But the most difficult job in the courtroom was Judge Ito ’s. Each lawyer had the benefit of a team of researchers and the
advantage of having studied the evidence for more than a year. He had a research assistant and a couple of volunteer law students.
As he heard the evidence for the first time, he had to make his rulings spontaneously from the bench, with the whole world
watching him. When the criticism of him came, as it invariably did on an almost daily basis, the rules of judicial conduct
prohibited him from doing what the rest of us did: walk out into the hallway and explain what had just happened in the courtroom
and why.

That night, Johnnie and I met with Matthew Schwartz, Laura Hart McKinney ’s attorney. He outlined the material contained in
the tapes of Fuhrman. “They ’re important, and we know you ’re going to get them,” he said. “We just want the opportunity
to try to sell them first.”

Once we ’d heard about the existence of the tapes, both Johnnie and I immediately began to fear they ’d be destroyed— which
could lead to an obstruction of justice. Schwartz understood our concerns. His client was honorable, he said, and wouldn ’t
do anything to undercut our case. She just wanted to explore the financial possibilities before the tapes became public and
ceased to be of any value. We pledged that we would try not to subpoena them for a week, and in the meantime they would be
kept in a safe. The safe was in McKinney ’s home, in North Carolina.

While the Fuhrman discussions took place offstage, the trial continued. For three days in mid-July, Dr. Rob Huizenga testified
to O.J. ’s physical health. His osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis was quite serious, Huizenga said, and seriously limited his
ability to move back and forth—laterally—even if O.J. ’s appearance belied that.

“He looked like Tarzan,” Huizenga said, “but he moved more like Tarzan ’s grandfather.”

Once again Brian Kelberg performed one of his physical demonstrations to illustrate a hypothetical—this time holding Huizenga
in front of him and making slashing motions—to show the jury that even someone with restricted lateral motion could have performed
the physical actions necessary to slash a victim. Indeed, Huizenga had to admit that he could not say absolutely that O.J.
was physically incapable of doing so.

In order to rebut Huizenga ’s claim that O.J. ’s arthritis was serious, the prosecution played the exercise video O.J. had
made just a few weeks before the murders. The video showed that O.J. could indeed raise his arms and move up and down, but
he was quite limited in his capacity to move laterally, as Huizenga said he was. In fact, O.J. was working hard in the video
to show he wasn ’t impaired by the disease that had so crippled his mother. “He did not want to see himself as arthritic,”
Huizenga testified. Richard Walsh, the physical trainer who directed and produced the video, would confirm Huizenga ’s view.

The press reported that Huizenga ’s testimony and the video were setbacks for the defense, but I wasn ’t so sure of that.
Although O.J. appeared in high spirits on the tape and exuded great energy, there was a plodding quality to his movements,
an absence of quickness and flexibility. I wondered if the jury tried to imagine him leaping over the back fence at Rockingham,
dropping the glove, running into the wall, sprinting into the house, and making his limo in time to get to the airport. From
the tape, I couldn ’t see it. I didn ’t think that they would, either.

We were at the bench, and the court reporter needed to change the paper in her transcribing machine. “Don ’t let Marcia Clark
talk,” she said. Ito responded: “Would that I could prevent it.”

I was always interested in the mail that came to me via the courthouse. Often there were tips and information; just as often,
I was fascinated and interested in what the “real” people were thinking, as opposed to the pundits and self-appointed experts.
Throughout the summer, the letters to the defense team had been running about half in favor and half against. And then I opened
a letter from Canada.

A man identifying himself only as a “Canadian citizen” said it was obvious that I was the only person O.J. Simpson would listen
to. It was my duty, therefore, to make him plead guilty immediately. If I did not do so and O.J. walked, the man would find
us, follow us, and approach us with twelve sticks of dynamite attached to his body. Dying didn ’t matter to him, he said—he
had terminal cancer anyway, and no heirs. And if the dynamite didn ’t work, the one hundred thousand dollars he had in the
bank would be used to hire a hit man. Shaken, I gave the letter to the sheriff ’s deputies.

Later that day, in an entirely unrelated matter, we heard that one of the deputies had been killed. At home and off-duty,
he had gone to investigate a burglary in his own neighborhood and was shot. The news rocked all of us. The minutiae of a trial
can sometimes distance you from the very reality that brings you there. You ’re in a courtroom, people in uniforms have guns,
and the whole adversarial procedure is focused on crime—the people who commit it, and the people who try to prevent it. As
in a morality play, the drama focuses on the good guys versus the bad guys. I am always jarred to realize that a courtroom
is still an artificial, reconstructed reality. Every now and then the real pain of the streets intrudes.