by Kim Goldman
The presentation reached the height of absurdity when he commanded an assistant, “Bring me my Tinkertoys.” He was provided with a large plastic bag. Reaching inside, he produced a cumbersome, multicolored replica of a DNA ladder, fashioned from Tinkertoys. He noted proudly, “My wife and I, my lovely wife, who is in the courtroom, spent last night painting these.” He tried to make the ponderous point that a DNA molecule contains some 6 billion “Tinkertoy” modules and to make a positive match one would have to compare all 6 billion—ignoring the simple truth that DNA tests comparing only a few molecules have proved utterly reliable. To Blasier, it seemed, the search for justice was child’s play.
Judge Fujisaki’s expressive face sported raised eyebrows and a puzzled half-smirk, as if he were silently saying to Blasier: Give me a break. Do you really expect to sell this load of manure to the jury?
As the courtroom filled following the lunch break, the killer stood, inches away, as Charlotte Blasier struggled to maneuver her husband’s wheelchair through the swinging gate that separated the spectators from the attorneys. Not once did the killer offer to help. He simply shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on them.
We were told during lunch that the defense had complained about Judge Fujisaki’s facial expressions. For the remainder of the afternoon session, he kept his eyes downcast.
Blasier’s afternoon performance continued to be dull and full of dubious detail, without passion or conviction. At one point, I glanced back at his “lovely” wife, Charlotte, and realized that, during the “crowning glory” of her husband’s career, she had nodded off. I noticed that Baker’s eyes were also shut.
At times, Dan and the rest of our attorneys could not hide their reactions to the preposterous things Blasier was saying. Once, Dan simply shook his head in amazement.
Blasier turned to him and asked, “Is there something funny?”
Dan responded, “You don’t want me to answer that.”
Finally, it was Dan Leonard’s turn to speak. Throughout the trial, we had found him to be one of the most offensive members of the defense, and we groaned inwardly as he began: “Did you really think Coach Baker was going to keep me out of the lineup?”
Another sports analogy, Patti thought, how insulting.
Leonard presented himself as a “hardheaded Irishman,” and said that he used “common sense” to analyze the thirty-one photographs of the defendant wearing Bruno Magli shoes. “Common sense will tell you,” he said, “that these are photographs that come too late and cost too much.”
Why, he asked, did these photographs not surface earlier? “There’s a reason for that,” he declared. “Money. Dough. There’s money to be made in those photographs; that’s what it’s all about.” There was the money theme again. Everybody in the world was out for a fast, easy buck—with the notable exceptions of the defendant and his attorneys, who were obviously working pro bono.
He spent some time detailing Groden’s dozen supposed “anomalies” in the Scull photo, and dismissed the dramatic rebuttal of former FBI photo analyst Gerald Richards. But his major point had nothing to do with scientific objectivity. He said, “I would suggest to you that there’s another very important factor here, and that would be factor 13.”
Leonard displayed his “factor 13” on the video screen. It was a price list for publication rights to the Scull and Flammer photographs. He derided this iron-clad, expert-documented evidence, as “store-bought … evidence with a price list.”
What about “factor 14?” I thought. What about the fact that one of Flammer’s photos was published eight months before the murders?
For his finale, Leonard strolled over to the killer, placed a hand on the shoulder of the Heisman trophy winner, turned to face the jury, and asked, “What this comes down to is, Are you going to be able to come back, based on this evidence, and tell my client that he killed the mother of his children?”
Damn straight, I thought.
That evening, Patti, Kim, and I joined several of the attorneys and reporters for Happy Hour at the Doubletree bar. For the others, this was a regular early-evening routine, but we found them somewhat on guard. Michelle Caruso, a reporter for the New York Daily News, explained to Kim that, two nights ago, they had noticed a man sitting alone at a nearby table. This stranger seemed to have his head cocked in a “what are they saying” posture. Yesterday in court Philip Baker had made a few comments about things he would have known only had he been privy to this group’s conversation the previous evening. And then last night another man—another outsider—had appeared. He, too, sat alone, but fairly close to the group, cocking his head to one side. Michelle and plaintiffs’ assistant Steve Foster had decided to call his bluff. Standing close enough to be overheard, one of them said, “Gee, I wonder how much Baker and Company would pay to have someone sit in a bar all evening and listen to our conversations.”
The man fled from the bar, never looking back.
Kim wondered if the defense had hired a few KGB spies; she was glad that our war room at the Doubletree was complete with a sophisticated security system that included even a motion detector.
Dan was concerned about the three-day hiatus before the arguments concluded and the jury got the case. Some people speculated that the defense was desperate and would try to lure jurors into discussing the case prematurely. Rumors of jury tampering were whispered.
That led us to a discussion of whether the criminal defense team or the civil defense team was the most despicable. Both, in their own loathsome styles, had manipulated facts, lied repeatedly, and used every cheap trick in the book to exonerate a murderer.
Finally, we concluded, “It’s a draw.”
Patti looked around and realized what a tremendous impact there would be once this case was finally over. She knew it would be a big load off our shoulders, but we would also suffer withdrawal. We had grown so close to these people. We respected, admired, and cared for each of them. She vowed that we would never lose contact. These friendships had become too important.
Much of our discussion centered around Dan’s rebuttal statement on Monday, and how he would counter the defense’s absurd presentation. Kim was full of ideas. Referring to Baker’s blatant reference to the defendant’s large hands, she urged Dan, “Take that and run with it. Show them how easy it would be for those huge hands to overpower Ron or yank a woman’s hair back and slit her throat.” She also suggested throwing Blasier’s “cockroach in the spaghetti” comment back into his face. She said, “Point at the killer and shout, ‘There’s a cockroach in this courtroom!’ ” Finally, she commented, “Dan, if you’re sort of tired, I’ll get up and do the rebuttal for you.”
The funny thing was, she probably could have.
A sheriff wrote down our addresses for security purposes and told us they were putting their force on tactical alert prior to the verdict. We were also told that we would have four hours, rather than the usual one, to get to court. Patti’s fear of reprisal was rekindled. “Will you protect us going to and from court?” she asked.
“Anything you want,” the sheriff responded.
Implicit in all this security was the unspoken prediction of a verdict that the killer was culpable and that protests, or worse, could erupt. We remained angered, and saddened, that the issue of race had ever surfaced. Once again, we said, “Thank you, Johnnie Cochran.”
Tension crackled through our house like fireworks. The littlest thing was capable of setting Patti, Lauren, or me off. We snapped at one another, apologized, and snapped again. Volatile mood swings were becoming the norm.
Michelle Caruso said to Kim, “You know, I just have to tell you that I am so happy your Dad and Patti have stayed together. Usually in situations like this, one person ends up leaving.”
Remembering all the highs and all the lows, Kim smiled and told the truth. “We’re a pretty healthy dysfunctional family,” she said.
Tom Lambert called late Sunday night to assure us that the team had worked nonstop
over the weekend. They had no way of knowing how long Baker would take the next morning or what points he would cover. But they had made educated guesses. Dan had two rebuttal arguments prepared. One was three or four hours long, the other, a shortened version.
But even after the call, our anxiety level was at a maximum. “Say what you will about Baker,” Patti warned, “but he’s got a tough reputation and he’s not going to roll over and play dead. He’s had three days to shore up his attack, and I’m expecting something bad to happen tomorrow morning.”
“I’m counting on Dan,” I told her.
The first thing that Baker said to the jury on Monday morning was, “I apologize to you because this flu hangs on a long time and I still have it. But we’ll get through this.”
Before long, Baker was deriding the possibility that only one person could have committed the murders. He asked, “How can you keep Ron Goldman off of a single assailant? If it’s O. J. Simpson or the biggest football player who played in the Super Bowl yesterday?”
Kim had the answer to that. She wanted to stand up and scream: How about if you catch him off guard while you’re wielding a six-inch knife? She whispered to Patti, “I don’t know if I can sit here and listen to this.”
Referring to our time line for the murders, Baker said, “So they’ve got to make them virtually instantly occur…. The more you make them quick, the more I would suggest to you it would appear it would have to be a professional killer or professional killers. Not somebody who’s in an uninitiated blind rage as they want you to believe.”
He once again railed at the LAPD for its so-called rush to judgment. “They had their man,” he said. “… They had the big fish. O. J. Simpson.” Because the LAPD and the District Attorney’s office had failed to win other recent, high-profile cases, he charged, “This case they were going to win.”
Baker moved easily from dubious to forbidden territory. He declared, “There’s one man that wants to be, more than anybody, the linchpin of that case, and that’s somebody who you’ve, I’m sure, now felt there has been an effort to keep out of this trial. Mark Fuhrman.”
Dan objected immediately, and Judge Fujisaki sustained him. The court had ordered that there would be no references to the failure of Fuhrman to testify.
But that did not stop Baker from mentioning his name at every opportunity. Now he told a whopper: “And what happens from two-forty-five to four o’clock? Nobody seems to know the whereabouts of Mark Fuhrman.” The implication, of course, was that the detective was hopping between Rockingham and Bundy, sprinkling blood, hair, and fibers about with abandon and, of course, planting an Aris Isotoner glove behind Kato Kaelin’s room. Why? Because “the big fish was O. J. Simpson…. And anybody who doesn’t believe that believes in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy,” Baker declared.
More clearly than any member of the original “Scheme Team” ever dared, Baker said, concerning the glove, “That’s planted evidence; there’s no question about it…. And it’s done by Fuhrman. And there’s no question about it.”
At the 10 o’clock break, I said to Patti, “I have probably ground my teeth down to the roots already.”
After the break, Baker continued with his lies until he told one so blatant that it got him into immediate trouble. The subject was the killer’s call to Paula Barbieri’s answering machine at 10:03 P.M. on the night of the murders. We contended that he made it from his Bronco; he said he was standing in his yard. Baker said, “And you and I know that if he had been in the car when that call was made at 10:03, there would have been somebody on this witness stand who would have said, I analyzed the sound from the tape that was on Paula’s answering machine when he left the message. …”
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 mom
ent 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.
