by Kim Goldman
“You know why he made it up?
“He’s desperate.”
Noting that Mark Fuhrman was still at home, asleep in his bed, when other officers were gathering the evidence at Bundy, Dan reminded the jurors, “Mr. Baker told you earlier today, Mark Fuhrman found all the evidence in the case. That’s just false. What trial has he been attending?
“He said Mark Fuhrman was unaccounted for during an hour and a half at Bundy. That’s an absolutely false statement.” Dan read from the testimony of several witnesses who accounted for Fuhrman’s whereabouts during the time in question.
Just as in the criminal trial, the defense had attempted to characterize any minor discrepancy as evidence of a grand conspiracy. Dan conceded, “There’s no such thing as a perfect investigation, just like there’s no such thing as a perfect crime.” Bundy, he said, “is a crime scene; it’s not a museum.
“Things move. People walk. Photographs are taken. Bodies are moved. Folks are working. An envelope get moved. What does that mean?
“There’s a piece of paper missing. Oh, what are we going to do? A piece of paper was missing. That’s another point they made: A little white piece of paper is missing.
“Big deal. What about his blood? That’s not missing. And his hair, that’s not missing. And his shoe prints, that’s not missing. And his hat and his glove, that’s not missing.”
Now it was Tom Lambert’s turn. Point by point, in a lengthy but effective manner, he went over the evidence-gathering procedures and the volumes of incriminating material that it produced. He stressed the big issue that the defense never wanted to mention: Contamination can produce an unusable result, but it does not—cannot—produce a false result. Instead of contamination and corruption, Tom declared, the defense position should start with the letter D: “It’s desperation. It’s deception. It’s dishonesty.”
I woke up Tuesday morning with my jaws throbbing from grinding my teeth all night long. Over coffee, I said to Patti, “The way Dan and Tom laid it out—addressed all the manipulations and lies and explained the hoax they tried to perpetrate—how could anyone not believe that he’s the S.O.B. who murdered two people?”
Patti nodded her agreement as I continued to vent my feelings. “If we pile all our evidence on one side of the scale of justice, and the defense has no credible evidence on their side, what does that tell you? Do they have anyone else’s blood, hair, shoe prints—any shred of evidence that points to anyone else? No!”
“It’s so disturbing to look at the jury and wonder what they’re going to do,” Patti said. “They have heard lies and they have heard the truth. Now, they have to choose between the two.”
“I know,” I said, “there is no assurance. Last time, we had a jury say 12–0 that the truth didn’t matter.”
This was the day. Tom and Dan would need an hour or two to finish our rebuttal statement. Then the case would go to the jury.
The crowds outside the courthouse were larger and more vicious than ever. Many demonstrators had bullhorns. We heard shouting voices accusing, “Golddiggers!” and rabid, anti-Semitic chants such as, “You Jews just want money, money, money!” We also heard shouts, “Goldman, we love you—go get ’em!” We tried to keep our heads down and walk quickly.
As we sat in court awaiting the beginning of the proceedings, Kim thought: In two hours we put our trust in twelve strangers, again.
But Judge Fujisaki did not appear at the bench. Instead, he summoned the principal lawyers into his chambers. Something was wrong. We could feel it. Suddenly the audience was dismissed. Dan reappeared, grim-faced, and huddled with his colleagues. Patti and Kim raced forward to join us at the plaintiffs’ table.
Dan explained that two of the jurors had reported to the judge that someone had attempted to contact them at home. Patti gasped, “Dan was right! Someone tried to tamper with the jury. How can this happen at the eleventh hour?”
How could anyone find out who was on the jury? Our attorneys had no names—only juror numbers. Each day the jury was bussed to and from a parking lot at a location unknown to us. We learned that Channel 9, KCAL-TV, had been bounced from the courtroom for following the jury bus, and we wondered what other sinister forces may have attempted a similar ploy.
Amid all this turmoil, the killer sat at the defense table with some of his cronies, laughing, talking about movies as if he did not have a care in the world.
We listened intently to the plan. Judge Fujisaki would interview each of the twelve jurors and four remaining alternates separately to assess the damage. We had no answers, only questions. It was good that the two jurors had reported the contacts to the judge, but what if he found that others were contacted and did not report the fact? If we lost more than four jurors, would we have a mistrial?
Patti and Kim fled for the hallway. Kim was numb. She said, “Two hours ago, I thought this would all be over. Now this. I cannot believe this.”
The press circled. Everyone wanted to know what the delay was all about. Patti and Kim, of course, could say nothing. They paced the hallway, wondering: Is the defense responsible for this? Are they that desperate? That evil? It was possible!
After interviewing the jurors, Judge Fujisaki concluded that there was no misconduct on their part and he allowed the trial to conclude.
Tom Lambert began the day with a final primer on DNA. “Those DNA test results are extremely significant evidence,” he said, “… establishing the guilt of Mr. Simpson.”
He reminded the jury of Robert Blasier’s attempt to illustrate his contention that DNA test results are not as significant as they seem. Step by logical step he figuratively tore apart Blasier’s Tinkertoy defense: Dr. Robin Cotton noted that DNA testing is a well-established method used to match donors and recipients for bone marrow and organ transplants; Dr. Brad Popovich uses the same technology day in and day out to make life-and-death diagnostic decisions; the defense’s own witness, Dr. Henry Lee, did not challenge the DNA test results; another defense witness, Dr. John Gerdes, never said there was any contamination, merely a “risk” of contamination.
“This DNA evidence is reliable evidence,” Tom proclaimed. “The experts told you so. Even their expert told you so.”
Patti thought: Tom is making it so clear. Does the jury get it like I do?
Dan followed on Tom’s heels without a break in the proceedings, and he hammered away relentlessly at the legion of lies told by the defendant and his attorneys. “Mr. Baker actually wanted you folks to believe this was a professional hit,” Dan said with a hint of amazement in his voice.
“Can you imagine that?
“And he said two professional assassins…. That’s what he wanted you to believe. Thirty stab wounds. Two professional assassins.
“[If] this was a professional assassin, it would have taken a single bullet in about three seconds. Gone. Not a shred of evidence.
“Is a professional assassin, let alone two, going to stab people over and over and over again? You going to leave all the evidence behind?
“Does that make sense to anybody?”
Instead, Dan said, it was an amateur assassin. “There was only one person the evidence in this case showed had any problem, any hostility, any antagonism, any enmity, any animosity toward Nicole, and that was O. J. Simpson.
“Is it just a coincidence that near the very end of her life these two were at war with one another? …
“And then she’s just found dead?”
Time after time Dan pointed out the killer’s lies and pleaded for the jurors to use their common sense in evaluating what that meant. “Why didn’t he just say, You know what, Mr. Petrocelli, I did hit her? I did hit her. I battered my wife that night.
“You know why he didn’t tell you?
“Because he knows how damning that is. He knows that if you believe he’s the kind of man who could hit his wife in anger, who could lash out and strike her, then you can understand that he did the same thing on the evening of June 12, except this time he
had a knife in his hand.”
Dan had specific rebuttal points to cover. “You know,” he said, “I got a kick when Mr. Baker … said that this Bronco was a white elephant. He called it a white elephant. He said, Why would Mr. Simpson go commit a murder in a white elephant?
“You know what Mr. Simpson’s other choices were: a Bentley and … a Testa Rosa Ferrari, a red one, no less, a fire-engine red.”
Dan continued. “Mr. Simpson says he is an innocent man because he didn’t act like a guilty man after the murders. … An innocent man doesn’t put a gun to his head, forty-seven years old, four children, two small, their having just lost their mother—an innocent man doesn’t do that….”
Dan effectively used sarcasm to mock the grand conspiracy theory. He referred to the chart that he had presented during the earlier phase of his argument, the chart entitled:
Either: Simpson Is Lying
Or: All of These Witnesses and Documents
Are Lying, Mistaken, or Faked
Dan said, “I did this list before I heard Mr. Baker’s argument and Mr. Blasier’s and Mr. Leonard’s arguments. And frankly, I left a lot of names off. … I should have put on all the FBI agents, because he says they’re all … out to get Mr. Simpson. So I’ve got to put Bill Bodziak’s name and Gerry Richards’s name and Doug Deedrick’s name on there.”
The defense had accused the plaintiffs’ team of intimidating its witnesses to testify properly. “You know, we call that fondly, the Doubletree Defense,” Dan said.
“I guess we have the ability to pick up the phone and call people up, and hey, you know, we don’t know each other, but I’d like you to testify in this case. Meet me at the Doubletree Hotel; meet me in my room, and I’m going to try to get you to commit perjury, a felony, risk your life, maybe go to jail for many, many years, just to help me out.
“Maybe I should—my name should go up there as a criminal. I’m suborning perjury. That’s against the law. That’s what they say we’re doing. I would go to jail for many years, suborning perjury. All my partners, too. Put their names up there.
“We’re all begging people to commit perjury.
“I guess we may even have to put Mr. Baker’s name up there, because Mr. Simpson says he has a different opinion than Mr. Baker on some very important facts. I guess Mr. Baker’s wrong, too.
“I don’t know.
“Did I leave anybody off?”
Dan was through with humor now. His jaw tightened. His eyes glared. As he turned to the most distasteful portions of the defense team’s closing argument, his temper burst forth. He said, “And Mr. Baker got up here—in one of the lowest moments of this trial—he mocked this young man who lies in his grave.
“Now what I want you to think about this is: If O. J. Simpson were innocent, truly innocent, would he let his lawyer mock this young man? This young man tried to save the life of the mother of his children. He is a hero to O. J. Simpson.
“… And Mr. Baker has the nerve to tell you it only cost $200 to file a lawsuit. Can you imagine that?
“And in their zeal to get your verdict, have they become so insensitive to the greatest of human tragedies, the loss of life, that they want to speak about these two dead people in terms of $200?
“My stomach turned when I heard that.”
Dan pulled a wad of twenty-dollar bills out of his pocket and shook them in the direction of the killer. He raged, “You know, Mr. Simpson, here’s $200. You want it? Give me back my client’s son.”
Baker yelled out, “Give it up.”
But Dan would not be silenced. In one, final burst he roared, “They want this verdict that bad, take it. Give my client back his son, and we will march out of here in a heartbeat.”
Court recessed for lunch. As we rose and turned, we saw five uniformed officers lined up at the back of the courtroom, waiting for us. They were standing, rigid, hands behind their backs. Seeing the crowds in the morning, Dan had called the Santa Monica Police Department and requested protection for us all.
And we needed it. Once we stepped outside, throngs of people surged toward us, yelling, pushing, threatening. This was the worst it had ever been. Cameras and microphones were everywhere. The short walk across the street seemed endless. I had my arms around Patti and Kim, trying to shield them. “Get out of our face,” I yelled. “Let us go!”
After lunch, Judge Fujisaki, reading in a monotone, gave the jury its instructions. Then, at about 2:30 P.M., the jury left to deliberate.
Leaving the courthouse after the jury instructions was, again, unbelievably scary. Our initial contingent of police officers was augmented by several more on motorcycles. They formed a line and tried to keep the media and the crowd—swarming like killer bees—away from us. Two police cars were positioned to stop traffic as we crossed the street. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Patti could only imagine what it would be like when the verdict came in. “I am dreading that day,” she said, “and at the same time, I can’t wait for this to be over.”
I was somewhat morose, because I realized that even if we got a verdict of “liable,” the killer would still be a free man. He would still be able to get up in the morning, have breakfast, play golf, visit with his family and what few friends he may have left. He would still breathe the fresh air and feel the sunshine. There would still be no justice. He belonged in a cell, awaiting the day he is hauled into a chamber and put to death.
In the war room at the Doubletree, Dan checked his watch. The jury had been deliberating for fifteen minutes. He quipped nervously, “You mean they haven’t reached a verdict yet?”
“I don’t want an instant verdict,” I said. “And I don’t want 9–3, 10–2, 11–1. I want a 12–0 ruling. I want there to be no hint of racial division. I want twelve people to say, based on the evidence, they all agree that this man killed two people.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The wait began.
Michael prepared to fly home on a moment’s notice. Our house was a bizarre mixture of fevered anticipation and somber reflections on the devastation we had experienced after the criminal verdict. We knew that truth was on our side, but we could not allow ourselves to count on that to carry us through. We all tried to protect ourselves from expecting a favorable decision from the jury. We had been sucked in before, and we could not allow that to happen again, but it was difficult.
Kim told Dan how proud and grateful Ron would have been for everything he and our other attorneys had done on his behalf. “Thank you,” Dan said. “I needed to hear that right now.”
Dan was optimistic, but, as Patti said, “He has to be; he can’t allow himself to get down.”
We drove one another crazy with our analyses of what had happened and what might occur at any moment.
“Regardless of the outcome,” Patti said, “everything that could have been done was done. It’s out of our hands, now.” I agreed, but it did not make the waiting any easier.
I said to Patti, “As of now the criminal trial was 225 percent longer than the civil case. It is amazing to me. We had all the same evidence as before, plus we had the killer’s testimony, new witnesses who contradicted his testimony, the Bronco chase, the disguise, the suicide note, the Bruno Magli photographs, new experts, and still Dan was able to condense it all into a concise, understandable, logical package. It’s been almost four months to the day. The criminal trial dragged on for nine.”
“We also had Judge Fujisaki instead of Judge Ito,” Patti reminded me. “This time the defense was not permitted to put the LAPD on trial and to sidetrack the jury with racial issues.”
Kim said, “You know, it drives me nuts when people ask me to compare the two trials and insinuate that Marcia and Chris were not up to the job. I’m not taking anything away from Dan—he was incredible, all our attorneys were—but the criminal trial lawyers had their hands tied behind their backs, thanks to Judge Ito. It’s not fair to compare them.”
Words were inadequate to express the appreciation I fel
t for what Dan, Ed, Tom, Peter, and Yvette had done. If, for some incomprehensible reason, this jury had not been convinced of the killer’s culpability, I would never be able to understand it.
People constantly asked, “How long do you think the jury will be out?”
Patti’s answer was always the same. “More than four hours.” We were all sure that this jury would take more time than the criminal trial jury. They would surely want to avoid criticism that they had not examined the evidence thoroughly.
Some people also asked, crassly, “How much do you think you’ll get?”
Our response was: “It doesn’t matter. It’s never been about money.”
Kim said, “All I want is to hear them say he’s liable, so I can go to the cemetery and tell my brother.”
The jurors had been deliberating for six hours when, on Wednesday, they requested a magnifier and a photograph of a purple top test tube, similar to the one used for the reference sample of the killer’s blood. Judge Fujisaki provided them with a magnifying glass but not the photograph, reminding them that they had an actual test tube available to them in the jury room. Like everyone else, we asked ourselves, What does this mean? There was no way to know, and we did not want to torture ourselves with unanswerable questions.
We tried to maintain some sense of order, some structure in our lives. Patti and Kim went to work. Lauren went to school. We talked to Michael and Brian frequently. I tended to some business responsibilities for Safe Streets, but my main task was to stay close to the telephone. Each of us pledged to help the others keep calm once the verdict came in. We knew that we would have four hours to reach the courtroom, and we vowed to maintain our self-control.
Our attorneys called frequently to keep us informed. Each time the phone rang, the hairs on the back of my neck bristled and my throat tightened, making me wonder whether I could keep my composure once the moment arrived.
