Attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. on Wednesday launched the summation of his defense of O.J. Simpson with high rhetoric and dramatic flourish, seeking to knit the threads of reasonable doubt into an acquittal for his client.
Rising to impassioned crescendos, he beckoned jurors to join him on a “journey toward justice,” proffering what he said were the correct and reasonable explanations for what actually occurred on the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered.
Cochran even donned a knit ski cap-the kind prosecutors have said Simpson wore as a disguise during the murders-in an effort to show that a small hat does little to alter a person’s appearance.
Repeatedly intoning for the jury the rhythmic mantra “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” Cochran accused the prosecution of distorting evidence and squeezing testimony to force it into its theory of what happened the night of the murders.
“The only way they are entitled to a conviction is if our (explanation) is unreasonable and theirs is reasonable,” Cochran said as he leaned over a small portable podium just 3 feet from the jury box.
The celebrity attorney wasted no time in zeroing in on what the defense has long believed to be the Achilles’ heel of the prosecution case: former Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman.
Cochran said Fuhrman, who the defense says planted a bloody glove at Simpson’s home to frame him for the two murders, was a “lying, perjuring, genocidal racist.” He told the jurors that prosecutors had long known the truth about the detective, but that they intentionally had withheld the information to protect their case.
He said Fuhrman had lied on the stand when he testified about not having used racial epithets against African-Americans in the last decade, and that prosecutors had tried to cover this up.
“He swore to tell the truth, and he lied and other people knew about it,” Cochran said, his voice swelling in anger.
Jurors, who throughout the early part of Cochran’s summation had appeared bored and distracted, suddenly snapped to attention and began to focus on what he was saying. Several panel members appeared shocked when Cochran suggested the prosecution might have misled them.
The defense began its summation after Deputy District Atty. Christopher Darden ended the prosecution’s closing argument with an emotional presentation of Simpson’s decadelong history of domestic violence.
Cochran started his attack on the prosecution by suggesting that the time line prosecutors offered for the night of June 12, 1994, was concocted, and ultimately altered, to make it fit into the state’s version of how the murders were committed.
“Whenever there was a witness who didn’t fit into their little theory, they abandoned him,” the attorney said.
He laid out an alternative scenario that he said showed Simpson did not have the time to commit the murders and still be at home in time to meet the limousine that was waiting to take him to the airport.
Pointedly referring to one of Judge Lance Ito’s jury instructions, Cochran said that when jurors are presented with two reasonable explanations for a fact in evidence, they are required to accept the one that points toward the defendant’s innocence.
“That means you must acquit,” Cochran said.
Like a farmer sowing seeds, he scattered before the jury numerous questions intended to plant the basis of reasonable doubt and reinforce the defense contention that police conspired to frame Simpson:
– Why was no blood found in the area around the bloody glove discovered at Simpson’s Brentwood estate, while drops of blood were splattered in other areas of the compound?
– If Simpson returned from the murders soaked in blood as prosecutors suggest, why are there no bloody shoe prints inside his home, especially on the off-white carpeting on the staircase?
– If Nicole Simpson’s blood splashed onto Simpson’s socks during her murder, why was there no dust or dirt from the crime scene also found on the socks?
– Why, if Simpson wore the gloves that were recovered after the murders, did those gloves fail to fit him when the prosecution asked him to try them on in a dramatic courtroom experiment?
“The gloves didn’t fit,” Cochran said with a self-assured smile. “Their case from that day forward was slipping away from them, and they knew it.”
“Who’s fooling whom here?” Cochran asked. “They are setting this man up.”
Legal experts said that Cochran had done an admirable job of presenting his challenge to the prosecution case and that he had cleverly taken advantage of the fact that closing statements are arguments, not evidence, and thus subject to a lesser degree of legal scrutiny.
“It’s argument. It’s rhetoric,” said Los Angeles defense attorney George Bird on Cochran’s performance. “The object is to give the prosecutor unanswerable questions, as you heard Christopher Darden do to the defense.”
Earlier, Darden began by replaying the tape of a 911 call Nicole Simpson made in 1993 when Simpson broke into her Brentwood condominium.
On the tape, her panicked voice can be heard as Simpson shouts in the background, frequently using obscenities.
“He’s back. He’s O.J. Simpson. I think you know his record,” she said to the operator. “My kids are upstairs sleeping and I don’t want anything to happen.”
The prosecutor then traced the turbulent history of Simpson’s relationship with his wife, using a large blue board to show significant points in the 17 years they spent together.
After running through 10 years of documented domestic violence, Darden focused on the final two months of the stormy relationship.
“She couldn’t be controlled any more,” Darden told the jurors, suggesting that Simpson was paralyzed by his inability to put an emotional end to his relationship with his former wife.
“He can’t get over her. He can’t get beyond her,” Darden said. “He is becoming obsessive with her.”
The prosecution suggested that it was that obsession that ultimately led Simpson to his wife’s condominium on June 12, 1994, and to murder.
Continually returning to the image of Simpson as a bomb with an ever shortening fuse, Darden suggested that the detonation finally occurred on that balmy summer night.
Darden said rage began building inside Simpson early that afternoon following quarrels with Nicole and the new woman in his life, model Paula Barbieri. Less than four hours later, Simpson arrived at an evening dance recital for his daughter, where witnesses described him as looking angry and sullen.
After the recital, Darden noted, the Brown family snubbed Simpson, declining to invite him to a celebration at the Mezzaluna restaurant. And that, Darden said, finally drove Simpson to hatch his murder plot.
Darden said Simpson prepared for what was to come, returning home to his Brentwood mansion and changing from the casual shirt and dark trousers he wore to the recital into the dark exercise clothes he wore later that night.
Darden said what happened next was swift and well planned.
“He stabs this woman right in the neck,” Darden said. “. . . He releases all this rage and anger during this homicidal fit he was having.”
To cap his emotional presentation, Darden propped up before jurors full-color photographs showing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman smiling and healthy before their murders.
At the same time, an overhead projector showed pictures of their bodies lying in pools of blood at the crime scene.
Upon seeing the dramatic juxtaposition of the photographs of his son in life and in death, Ronald Goldman’s father, Fred, sobbed audibly, shaking so hard that the courtroom bench rocked. Three jurors appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“He’s a murderer,” Darden said dramatically of Simpson. “He is also one hell of a football player, but he is also a murderer.”
