by Jenner, Kris
“Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them . . .” Cochran said in court. “That’s genocidal racism. . . . Maybe this is one of the reasons we’re all gathered here this day. Maybe there’s a reason for your purpose. Maybe this is why you were selected. There is something in your background, in your character, that helps you understand this is wrong! Maybe you’re the right people at the right time at the right place to say ‘No more!’”
Fuhrman was then caught on tape making racist comments multiple times in crude contexts after saying that he hadn’t, under oath, which was a field day for Johnnie Cochran. Cochran was a really confident and well-spoken attorney known for representing Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Sean Combs, and many others throughout his career. And he often involved race and police corruption as part of his arguments.
Race was definitely a valid issue in the trial, but at some point, it seemed like it had outweighed the basic question of whether or not O.J. was guilty, and the fact that Nicole had been murdered.
Then came the moment when O.J. tried on the gloves.
I was at home that day watching it all unfold on TV. When I heard Chris Darden ask O.J. to try on the gloves found at the murder scene, I panicked.
“What are you doing, Chris?” I literally screamed at the TV. “Don’t let him try it on!”
The gloves had been soaked in blood. I knew they weren’t going to fit. Anybody who knows leather knows that if you get it wet on any level it’s going to shrink and change the integrity of the material.
The famous courtroom scene of O.J. seeming to struggle to pull the gloves on, saying, “They’re too tight,” would lead to Cochran’s famous and much-repeated quote: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Cochran would use this saying throughout the trial whenever he was trying to prove to the jury that a piece of the defense’s evidence didn’t make sense. In his closing arguments, Cochran would bring up the gloves again, and try on a similar pair of gloves himself in front of the jury to try to drive in his point: “You will always remember those gloves,” he told the jury. “When Darden asked him to try them on and they didn’t fit. . . . If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
It was such a ruse. The fact that the gloves didn’t fit and that the jurors bought that sideshow was shocking to me. Later, they even had O.J. try on a new pair of the gloves in the same size, and they fit. Wow. I couldn’t believe it. What I flashed back on was when Nicole and I were in New York at Bloomingdale’s and she bought those gloves as a treat for O.J.
According to the court testimony from Richard Rubin, the former vice president and general manager of the glove manufacturer, Aris Isotoner, the brown gloves were part of a limited batch of the Aris Isotoner Lights line, which were sold exclusively at Bloomingdale’s. Between 200 and 240 of the gloves were sold in 1990.
Richard Rubin knew every fact, detail, and statistic about the gloves. “No other retailer in the United States had this model,” Rubin testified. “And because of this particular type of sewing, which was unique to this model as well as the weight of the cashmere lining, the weight of the leather utilized and the way the vent is put into the palm, this could really not be any other style except 70263.”
I know Nicole bought a pair of this type of glove at Blooming-dale’s when we went to the store together during the first week of November 1989. She must have gone back for more gloves in December 1990. Had we only known what the future would bring.
There was a mountain of evidence piled up against O.J., but Johnnie Cochran and O.J.’s “Dream Team” of attorneys were really smart and clever. Independent of whether O.J. was guilty or innocent, race had become a huge component of the case, and many people believed that the police department had framed O.J. In a CNN-USA Today Gallup poll that came out in August, 67 percent of Americans thought that O.J. was guilty, and 30 percent thought that Fuhrman had planted the bloody glove.
The February before the verdict was announced, Dominick Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair about the country’s obsession with the trial: “The Simpson case is like a great trash novel come to life, a mammoth fireworks display of interracial marriage, love, lust, lies, hate, fame, wealth, beauty, obsession, spousal abuse, stalking, brokenhearted children, the bloodiest of bloody knife-slashing homicides, and all the justice that money can buy.”
I was sitting at home and got a call from Patty Fairbanks in Marcia Clark’s office.
“Come down to the courthouse immediately, and come to Marcia’s office,” she said. “The jury has reached a verdict.”
I couldn’t believe the trial was finally coming to an end. After almost a year of this spectacle, the jury was ready to announce a verdict on October 3, 1995, nine months after the trial had begun. It only took them around four hours of deliberation. Because the deliberation was so short, we thought for sure that meant a guilty verdict. One reason why: they had asked to once again hear the timeline for when the limo driver, Allan Park, picked O.J. up for his flight to Chicago. The driver was supposed to pick up O.J. on Rockingham at 10:45 p.m. on the night of the murders and take him to the airport for his flight to Chicago, but O.J. was late. All the lights of his house were off, like no one was home, so Allan Park called his boss, who told him to go around the back of the house, because O.J. sometimes watched TV in the room that was back there. The driver ran into Kato Kaelin in the side yard of O.J.’s house, carrying a flashlight, and later also saw a man Marcia Clark described in court as a “six-foot, 200-pound African American person in all dark clothing” walking into the front of the house at “a good pace.” A minute or so later, someone finally answered the intercom, and it was O.J. The timing of this weird sequence of events made it seem so obvious that O.J. was the man in dark clothing who had entered the house. Allan Park also testified that on the ride to the airport O.J. kept complaining about the heat and asking him to turn on the air-conditioning.
We thought for sure that the jury asking about the timing of all of these things involving the limo driver meant they thought O.J. was guilty.
When it was announced that the jury was going to give their verdict on October 3 at 10:00 a.m., Bruce and I drove to the courthouse. I was eight months pregnant, and Marcia Clark and Chris Darden didn’t want me to go into the courtroom because they weren’t sure what was going to happen. I was to watch the verdict on a television upstairs in Marcia Clark’s office with two of Nicole’s sisters. We drove up to the courthouse. As always, it was a circus and the media swarmed around our car. Marcia Clark had security officers waiting for us to take us into the building. They met us at the car and walked us inside to the elevators to Marcia’s office. As I walked through this sea of media, everybody was calling my name and yelling out, “Good luck, Kris!” Or “We love Nicole!” Or “O.J.’s innocent!”
Everyone on both sides thought they were going to win, I believe. I don’t know for certain about O.J.’s side, but I knew we had a strong case and I knew Marcia Clark believed we would win. Nobody really said it out loud, but I think everybody was pretty confident because of the jury only taking four hours.
While I was watching the television in Marcia’s office, Peter Jennings was broadcasting live from the courthouse and did some commentary about our arrival, which had occurred moments before. “And here comes Kris and Bruce Jenner,” I roughly recall Jennings saying over footage of Bruce and me walking into the courthouse. “Now, you know Kris is the ex-wife of defense attorney Robert Kardashian and . . .” He explained my whole history and why I was relevant to this trial. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever been through in my life. I was in such an emotional place, I don’t think I even remember walking into the building, and here I was, watching it played back on television. The rest of the country was watching too.
“Essentially the whole country stopped,” Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker said of America’s absolute fascination with the trial. “Long distance phone calls dropped during that period. Trading on the stock exchange dropped. Ev
erything simply stopped for the announcement of the verdict because that’s how much the country was interested.”
I’ll never forget what happened next. Judge Ito invited the deputy to bring the jurors into the courtroom. Judge Ito said, “Good morning again, ladies and gentlemen,” and then asked Mrs. Deirdre Robertson, the law clerk, to hand the sealed envelope containing the verdict to the deputy, who returned it to the jury foreperson to make sure the verdict was correct.
“Madame Foreperson, would you please open the envelope and check the condition of the verdict forms?” Judge Ito said. Those few minutes leading up to the actual announcement felt like the longest moments of my life. I was sitting up in Marcia’s office and it was so still. The office was full: Bruce, Nicole’s sisters and friends. The closed-circuit TVs were on as well as regular TV. But no one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe. It was like we were all frozen. In that moment, I said a silent prayer for Nicole.
Dear Lord, just give her justice and bring her peace, I prayed, and then repeated it over and over in my mind while waiting for the woman to speak.
As all this was happening, O.J. looked like he was trying to stay calm, but I could see that he was on edge, looking back and forth between the jury and the judge and the deputy and fidgeting in his seat. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that the man on television was the same man I had known all my life. The foreperson agreed that the verdict forms were accurate and then the judge asked everyone to “carefully listen” to the verdicts as they were read by the clerk and to “remain calm.” He warned that the bailiffs would remove anyone causing “any disruption.”
Then everyone stood up and Judge Ito asked O.J. and his lawyers to stand and face the jury while she read the verdict. O.J., looking almost bewildered, was the last to stand. At one point Johnnie Cochran, wearing his bright blue suit, pressed his palms together beneath his chin as if he were praying. The law clerk, Deirdre Robertson, began reading:
“In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097211. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony, upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being, as charged in Count 1 of the information.”
Not guilty.
The words burned in my brain.
Robert had the most serious expression on his face the entire time that both of the verdicts were being read. It almost seemed like disbelief. He didn’t smile or hug O.J. He just looked right at him and then turned back to face the jury.
I looked over at O.J. at the moment he broke into that soon-to-be-infamous little grin the moment the words “not guilty” rang through the air. He shot a little wave to the jury and mouthed the words “Thank you.” I watched so many intense feelings of relief, disbelief, and then joy go across O.J.’s face in those few seconds. Johnnie Cochran immediately gave O.J. this little victory hug from behind right after the verdict was read. Then right away the sounds of sobbing from the Team Nicole side of the courtroom. Fred Goldman held his daughter, Kim, as she immediately collapsed and began weeping in his arms. O.J.’s smile got bigger and bigger as the court reporter kept reading:
“‘The Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, in the matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony, upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being, as charged in count 2 of the information. We the jury in the above entitled action further find the special circumstances that the defendant . . .’”
The courtroom was in shock. Women were holding their heads in their hands, or running their fingers through their hair, or collapsing with their heads in their laps and their hands covering their faces. That image of Fred Goldman holding Kim, shaking his head, will always remain with me.
Marcia Clark’s and the other prosecutors’ faces were just stone cold—expressions of either complete exhaustion and pure defeat or shock and bewilderment. As the court reporter asked the jurors to confirm the verdict one by one, O.J. and his lawyers bowed their heads in a huddle. Then O.J. leaned toward Robert for a hug and Robert held the back of O.J.’s head. Robert took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes almost like he was wiping away tears or stress—or maybe tears of stress. This entire time, sobs were just racking the courtroom. O.J.’s side of the courtroom was crying and holding their hands in prayer, too, but out of happiness. And then it was over.
We couldn’t believe it. Not guilty! I was sitting in a chair in the office, and I just bowed my head, said a prayer for Nicole, and cried my eyes out. Wow, there is no justice for her, I thought. There is no peace for her.
“He’s going to kill me and he’s going to get away with it.”
I couldn’t get those words out of my mind. Not then. Not now. Those were Nicole’s words, and I could just hear her voice saying, See, I told you.
Nicole’s sisters were sitting with me, but we couldn’t even talk. I mean, what do you say? We just kept saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” to one another. We were all so devastated.
Another thing I couldn’t get out of my head: O.J. thanking the jury. He was relieved, I think, that he could get out of there and go home. The thing is, not only was Nicole’s life over, O.J.’s own life, as he had known it, also was over. To have been and to continue to be shunned by his community and his peers and the people who had always adored him would be as devastating as a prison sentence to O.J. Simpson. If you know anything about O.J. Simpson, you know that that fact itself would be torturous for him. So I knew that, on some level, he would suffer for what I felt he did. I took some solace in that.
Robert rode with O.J. back to his house on Rockingham, where there was a celebration. I was not there, obviously, but I heard all about it. There was champagne and laughter and tears. Everybody was so happy. O.J. was innocent, of course, and blah, blah, blah. Everybody on Nicole’s side just went back to his or her own home.
At some point during the early evening, Robert came over to my house. He knocked on the front door and said, “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
He had been to O.J.’s celebration party and he looked good. But he wasn’t gloating. Anything but. He had a calmness to him, and I sensed that he was hopeful that I would welcome him into the house. I felt that he had something important to say.
“Sure,” I said, wondering what could come next after this already insane and exhausting day.
Bruce was there. Robert asked me to go out to the patio with him. So we went outside and sat down.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I know you must be upset because we won,” he said.
I know he wasn’t gloating, but just to hear him say “we won” really upset me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I just think that you and I need to put this behind us,” he said.
“We can’t let this be a part of our lives anymore. It’s almost ruined mine. We really need to be great parents for our kids, and that’s all that should ever matter. I really want to go back to just being a great dad and a good friend, and I don’t want this to get in the way of our friendship, because it could really destroy our family, and we’re still a family.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I told Robert that I didn’t agree with what had just happened, but I certainly never wanted to let our family be pulled apart as a result. Eventually, Robert and I were both crying, and Bruce, poor Bruce, was standing there probably feeling very uncomfortable, thinking: What am I watching here? Robert and I both told each other that we loved each other as people, and then I told him I was really happy he was the father of my children. We agreed to carry on as parents and friends, and from that day forward we really started working on our friendship and our relationship as parents, vowing to always put our kids first.
We weren’t going to let O.J. Simpson eat away at us anymore. We decided that day that after being on two opposite sides of something so big—something so much bigger than we were—we had to take control of our feelings and move forward for the sake of our kids. The case could either destroy us or it could make us stronger. We decided to let it make us stronger.
As for O.J., I never saw him again after the trial. Often, I’ve thought about what would happen if I did see him. What would I do? What would I say? I still don’t know. As for Nicole, there isn’t a day that passes when I don’t think of her.
The day after the verdict was announced, Robert Kardashian sent a letter to the Los Angeles Times in an attempt to explain why he had decided to stand by O.J.:
“O.J. Simpson never lied to me,” he wrote. “He has told me that he did not commit these horrible crimes and I have no reason not to believe him. It is from that perspective that I came to stand by his side during his trial. For me, the question was: What would you do for a friend? Would you give up your business, put your personal life on hold and devote a year and a half of your life to a friend? I did, without realizing what an awful journey I was about to take.”
A year later, in an interview on 20/20, Barbara Walters asked Robert what he thought when he heard that O.J. had failed a lie detector test a few days after the murders. “I was devastated,” Robert replied. “I didn’t know what to believe.”
“What’s your relationship now with O.J. Simpson?” Barbara asked later in the interview.
“The relationship is not the same as it once was nor will it ever be,” Robert said.
“Why not?” Barbara asked.
“Because I have doubts,” Robert said.
To this day and quite often, considering it has been sixteen years since the trial, I will be watching TV and for one reason or another the powerful image of Robert and O.J. together at the defense table will come flashing across the screen. It will literally stop me in my tracks. It’s always the same image: the moment the not-guilty verdict is read, and I can see the serious expression on Robert’s face. It never fails to jolt me and take me back to that exact moment in time at the end of the trial, while simultaneously sparking the same exact emotions I had that day. Now, sixteen years later, with Robert gone, the televised image of my former husband with O.J. Simpson still brings me to tears. Watching it, I often crumble and pray for both Robert and Nicole with everything inside of me, hoping that somehow, through some miracle, we could bring them both back.
