Outrage (3 page)

The third and final possibility is that the
LAPD
detectives planted Simpson’s blood just to the left of the killer’s bloody shoe prints leaving the scene. This is not as insane a proposition as the first two, but only because there are degrees of everything in life. It is still an insane possibility, and if any reader is silly enough to believe that the
LAPD
detectives decided to frame someone they believed to be innocent of these murders (Simpson) and actually planted his blood all over the murder scene (and, of course, planted the victims’ blood in Simpson’s car and home), again, this book is probably not for that reader. This book is for people who are very angry that a brutal murderer is among us—with a smile on his face, no less—and want to know how this terrible miscarriage of justice could have occurred. In any event, a thorough discussion of the defense’s allegation of an
LAPD
conspiracy to frame Simpson (and why such a charge is absurd) is in Chapters 4 and 5.

Let me point out to those who believe in the “possible” existence of either of the aforementioned three innocent possibilities for Simpson’s blood being found at the murder scene, that the prosecution only has the burden of proving guilt beyond a
reasonable
doubt, not beyond all possible doubt. So it isn’t necessary to have all possible doubts of guilt removed from one’s mind in order to reach a conclusion of guilt. Only reasonable doubts of guilt have to be removed. Of course, in this case,
no
doubt remains of Simpson’s guilt.

I
n discussing the five reasons why the Simpson case was lost, the reader should know that I have very little good to say about anyone associated with this case, because of either their offensive conduct and/or their abject incompetence. The choice I had was either to be candid or not to write the book at all. The reader should also know that I am, by nature, a critical person. I’d find fault with a beautiful morning sunrise. (I am also one who finds it easy to compliment.) However, where I do find fault I don’t simply make the allegation, thereby setting up a burden for myself, and not make a solid effort to meet the burden. That’s not my style, as it is that of so many people. While there will be interludes of calm in the pages that follow, when you couple my critical nature with the fact that for several weeks after the verdict I was so angry I could have eaten nails—and I’m
still
angry—the reader should be prepared for an almost unremitting scathing indictment of what took place in this case.

The biggest problem by far, of course, is that a brutal murderer was set free. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was Simpson’s demeanor throughout the case and in the wake of the verdict. I’ve seen many murderers in my life, but none even approached Simpson for audacity, which he has taken to previously unimaginable heights. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean. Although he had administered several terrible physical beatings to Nicole, causing her to fear for her life, and although he eventually killed her, in his farewell letter before his arrest he referred to himself as “a battered husband.” Going on, there is a way for a guilty defendant to plead not guilty at his arraignment. You know what it is? To say “not guilty.” That’s what 999 out of 1,000 guilty defendants say. And when they do, it doesn’t bother me. I expect them to plead not guilty, to deny guilt. But that wasn’t good enough for Simpson. He had to say “absolutely, one hundred percent not guilty.” Since he knew what he had done, that bothered me, a lot.

Throughout the trial, his knowing what he had done in no way inhibited him from showing disgust and contempt for the prosecutors whenever they did anything at all which he perceived to be even slightly improper or unfair. In fact, his entire demeanor and body language indicated that he felt he was being put out by the trial, the trial being an interference with his very pleasant and enjoyable lifestyle. It was as if he felt that this one little messy incident on the night of June 12, 1994, shouldn’t be held against him. After all, he was
still
O. J. Simpson, wasn’t he?

His lead lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, almost matched Simpson’s audacity, and in one instance may have exceeded it. In mid-trial there were rumors that a plea bargain was being negotiated between the defense team and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Cochran denied this, and to disabuse everyone, including the public, of any idea that Simpson was going to plead to a lesser charge, told Judge Ito in open court that there would be no plea bargain in the case. Then, outside of court, when the media continued to inquire about the possibility, he told them (and the remark was undoubtedly heard by the grieving survivors, since it was on television, radio, and in the newspapers), “Are you kidding? Absolutely not.
The only thing we’ll accept is an apology
and O.J. goes home today.” Can you imagine that? Simpson is entitled to an apology. The question I have—and no one has been able to give me an answer—is: Where do you get guts like this? Are some people just born with them? Can you buy them?

At the defense’s celebration party at Simpson’s home on the night of the verdict, while two precious human beings were decomposing in their graves, Simpson, with a broad smile on his face, held a Bible up in the air with his outstretched right hand. A Bible. The word “unbelievable,” a tired adjective, doesn’t really describe this type of audacity. Suffice it to say that Simpson has elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. And as if the not-guilty verdict was not painful enough to all right-thinking people, Simpson immediately attempted to profit from his murders. He tried to make more money than he has ever made in his career (it was said his people hoped for $30 million to $40 million) by giving a pay-per-view television interview. Fortunately, instant vocal opposition from outraged Americans squelched this crass endeavor. He did succeed, however, in getting paid a reported $3 million for filming a two-hour $29.95 mail-order video declaring his innocence.

And during the trial, he published a book of photographs and letters from supporters titled
I Want to Tell You
that made him more than $1 million. Unbelievably, and shamelessly, Simpson exploited for money the person he had murdered, putting many pictures of Nicole in the book.

And it wasn’t enough for Simpson to walk out of court a free man with a smile on his face when the
LAPD
and DA’s office knew he was guilty. He had to rub their noses in their defeat by actually demanding that they now go out and look for the real killer or killers, adding that it would be his “primary goal in life” to search for the person or persons who had killed his Nicole. One courthouse wag remarked: “Doesn’t he have a mirror in his home?” (A month or so after his arrest, Simpson had offered reward money for the capture of the killer or killers. Since he committed the murders, he could have offered his entire net worth and it would have been an utterly risk-free offer.) Within days of the verdict he was also seen smiling and soaking up the sun on golf courses. In an interview he gave to the Associated Press, he said about himself: “The only thing that endures is character. Fame and wealth—all that is illusion. All that endures is character.”

After the verdict, Simpson challenged Marcia Clark to get in a room with him and debate the case—you know,
mano a mano
. And he wanted to really lay it all out in an interview with NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric (called off by his civil lawyer). And, of course, the title of his book was
I Want to Tell You
. All of this showed he was a real stand-up guy. No B.S. He wanted to tell everyone what really went down, “tell it like it is.” But he didn’t want to tell it like it is to the jury at his trial,
the only
twelve people who held his life in their hands, the twelve people who could have convicted him of first-degree murder and sent him to prison for life. In over nine months of trial, he had no desire to say one single word to them. But after the trial he wanted to talk to everyone
else
about what happened.

No sound in any courtroom is as loud as the defendant’s silence when he is accused of the most serious crime of all, murder, and he chooses not to deny it from the witness stand. When a person is falsely accused of a murder, it should take a team of wild horses to keep him from the witness stand. Simpson didn’t testify, of course, because he was guilty. There is no other truly valid reason in this case for his not doing so. H. L. Mencken once said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Simpson obviously subscribes to this, because he has tried to con us into accepting a friendly out-of-court chat with a TV commentator, or a rehearsed video as a legitimate and satisfactory substitute for his refusal to testify at his own trial.

Now for why this case was lost.

F
rom the moment O. J. Simpson became a suspect in this double murder case, it was “in the air,” perhaps as in no other case within memory, that he might get off despite the conclusive evidence of his guilt. In fact, even before the murders, it was in the air, Nicole presciently telling her close female friends that “O.J. is going to kill me someday and he’s going to get by with it.”

It was
in the air
from the day (June 17, 1994) when mental midgets stood atop the freeway overpasses holding “Go O.J., Go” signs during the slow-speed chase prior to his arrest. Everywhere one looked, it was
in the air
. People predicting confidently, “This jury will never convict Simpson—they wouldn’t convict him even if they were shown a film of him committing the murders.” People carrying signs outside the courtroom during the trial declaring “Free O.J.,” “Save the Juice,” and even “Whether you did it or not, we still love you, O.J.” The incessant jokes and tasteless comedy routines on TV and radio about the case, which could only serve to subliminally trivialize the murders of the victims. U.S. Senate Chaplin Richard Halverson beginning the Senate’s day on June 23, 1994, with a “prayer for O. J. Simpson.” The first juror called for questioning in the case happening to be juror number 32, the number Simpson wore throughout most of his football career, prompting Judge Ito to say, “I don’t know if this is an omen,” and Simpson to smile and nod his head in agreement. Marcia Clark, during jury selection, making one of the most ill-advised statements ever made to a jury by a prosecutor: “You may not like me for bringing this case.
I’m not winning any popularity contests
for doing so.” Chris Darden’s almost equally incredible and ill-advised statement to the jury in his summation at the end of the case: “Nobody wants to do anything to this man. We don’t. There is nothing personal about this, but the law is the law.” (Can you imagine being almost apologetic to a jury when you believe the person you’re prosecuting committed a brutal double murder?)

T
o this day, virtually everyone refers to Simpson only as “O.J.,” a friendly nickname that implies the speaker still likes Simpson or at most views him as one would an errant friend or relative, certainly not a brutal murderer. “How’s O.J. doing?” Larry King would solicitously ask any guest of his who was a Simpson intimate and who had visited Simpson recently at the jail. These and many other small signs of respect, or awe, or affection, indicated that Simpson, even if guilty, might be given some break tantamount to a papal dispensation. In the absence of a powerful prosecution, it became almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that he would be found not guilty.

This feeling, this sense, which permeated every segment of our society, was obviously known to the jurors before they were selected, even manifesting itself during the trial. Because when something is in the air, it reaches everyone, by osmosis, by accident, or, if by no other means, by the weekly conjugal visits to the sequestered jurors. Surely, no one can doubt that the jurors were speaking to those loved ones who visited them in the privacy of their quarters. Everyone knew this. You don’t have to take my word for it. What conceivable reason would Marcia Clark have had to beg Judge Ito not to let Simpson make a statement near the end of the case, when Simpson wanted to do so outside the presence of the jury, if she didn’t virtually know that what Simpson said would get back to the jury?

This “in the air” phenomenon couldn’t help but contribute, in some way, to the eventual not-guilty verdict. It made it so much easier, either consciously or subconsciously, for the jury to give Simpson every benefit he was legally entitled to, and then some. In such an atmosphere a not-guilty verdict would no longer seem to the jury like the very worst thing that any jury could do—let a brutal murderer walk out the door a free man. They were just doing what everyone had already
predicted
they were going to do, and apparently, if the jury was to believe the prosecutors themselves, what most people
wanted
them to do. Wasn’t that really what prosecutor Darden himself was suggesting to the jury when he said, “Nobody wants to do anything to this man”? And what Clark was suggesting when she said she “wasn’t winning any popularity contests”?

I’ve been asked to explain more than once why, right from the beginning, I was saying publicly that there was no question Simpson was guilty. I take no pride in having been the first public personality to come out publicly against Simpson. It just happened that way. I was asked by the media how I felt about the case way back in the early summer of 1994, and I decided to be candid. Before I tell you why I did, I should point out that some people objected to my having done so. One reason was the presumption of innocence in our society. Also, they felt that as a member of the bar, I should, therefore, not have spoken of Simpson’s guilt before the verdict.

Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this. Even the editorial sections of major American newspapers frequently express the view, in reference to a pending case, that “we”—meaning the editors and their readers—have to presume that so-and-so is innocent. To illustrate that the presumption does not apply outside the courtroom, let’s say an employer has evidence that an employee has committed theft. If the employer had to presume the person were innocent, he obviously couldn’t fire the employee or do anything at all. But of course he not only can fire or demote the employee, he can report him to the authorities.