The Search for Justice (23 page)

That afternoon I met Joel Siegel for lunch at the Grill, a discreet restaurant off Rodeo Drive. While there we ran into Mort
Zuckerman, owner of the
New York Daily News,
and then superagent Michael Ovitz. Zuckerman, whose newspaper circulation had steadily climbed since the murders, joked,
“Keep it going as long as possible.”

Ovitz, who lives quite near Rockingham, protested. “No, no, Bob,” he said. “Get it over with, so I can return to a normal
life.”

When Johnnie Cochran came on board, so did his associate, Carl Douglas.

A former public defender who was intelligent and knowledgeable about the law, Douglas had an astonishing capacity for detail
and organization. Long entrusted with running Johnnie ’s practice, there is nothing Carl doesn ’t take care of; in fact, if
Cochran is a metaphorical airport, Douglas is his air-traffic controller. I did, however, have some reservations about his
actual trial skills. He didn ’t project well in court, and I felt that his style before a jury was somewhat pedantic. He often
seemed to lecture, rather than draw them in, and the net effect was boredom. In my experience, boring a jury can be more dangerous
than making them angry.

Carl was made case manager, in charge of keeping track of the discovery material, which quickly became voluminous. He also
kept track of the defense motions to the court and prepared the agendas for all the defense-team meetings. After I ’d known
Carl for a while, and understood how much Johnnie depended on him, I was asked to give a toast at his birthday party.

“You know,” I said, “when Johnnie first introduced me to
Carl, I wasn ’t sure what his last name was. For months, I thought it was ‘you-take-care-of-it. ’” It brought the house down.

For years, Linell and I have taken the kids to Lake Tahoe for a family vacation in the later summer. in 1994, we had gone
ahead and rented the house from mid-August through Labor Day. I had warned her that with so much work on the trial, and jury
selection a huge hurdle we still had to get over, I wasn ’t sure how much time I ’d be able to spend with the family, if any.

“Bob, they really need you to be with them,” she said. “They ’re not reacting to all of this very well.”

She was right. We ’d gone to a screening at producer Robert Evans ’s only a few days before, and the first words out of Grant
’s mouth this time were, “Are there any celebrities here?” Earlier, at the airport coming back from the Toney fight in Las
Vegas, Brent said, “I wonder how many people are going to ask for your autograph this time, Dad. How much do you think it
’s worth?”

I tried to wave him off, but he wasn ’t buying it. “Oh, come on, Dad,” he scoffed, “you ’re probably going to end up on a
baseball card or something.”

One night, Linell told me that our friends had been talking to Michael Klein and Bob Koblin, saying that I was changing, acting
differently—signing autographs, stopping to shake hands, allowing perfect strangers to come up to a table in a restaurant
and interrupt our private “off-duty” time and personal conversations.

I was taken aback; nobody had said anything to me about it, and now two of my best friends had gone to my wife, not wanting
to confront me directly. I ’m
not
changing, I wanted to tell them; the environment around me is different. The idea that my closest friends would think that
I was turning away from
them—or worse, that they would turn away from me—was very upsetting.

“This is a no-win situation,” I told Linell. “When people come up to me and ask for autographs, if I don ’t sign, I ’m a jerk.
If I do sign, I ’m still a jerk.”

When I was growing up in Los Angeles, there were no pro basketball teams, no major-league baseball teams. Instead, we had
the Pacific Coast League, with the Hollywood Stars and the L.A. Angels. The Hollywood Stars were on Fairfax, quite near to
where I lived, so I saw them play as often as I could. When the Dodgers came out to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, I quickly got
a part-time job selling Cokes and hot dogs in the stands at the Coliseum. I would ask players for autographs, and most of
them were generous and kind, not just to me but to all the kids who worked there, and to the fans who came to see them play.
Others weren ’t so kind, and I remember vividly their faces and voices when they said “Get lost, kid. I don ’t have time for
you.”

A person who aspires to be good, or even the best, at what he does wants recognition for achieving that. Anyone who denies
it is denying something basic about being human. And when people came up to me, as they increasingly did, and said “You ’re
doing a great job” or “My daughter ’s in law school, would you please sign this for her?” or “My father would love your autograph,”
what was I supposed to do? I didn ’t hit home runs or score touchdowns; I was a lawyer. Yet kids wanted my autograph. I simply
could not look anyone in the face and say “Sorry, I don ’t have time for you.”

I finally talked with Michael Klein about my mixed feelings, and his. “I know the publicity and everything is an intrusion,
on all of our lives,” I said. “Ultimately, though, it ’s not about me. It ’s about O.J.” I reminded him that we still had
a jury to pick. “Everybody ’s watching me, Michael, all the time, everywhere. I can ’t be a hard-ass with people; you know
I ’m not like that. Besides, I can ’t take the risk of alienating anyone at this point.”

He understood, he said. He just reserved the right to complain about it once in a while. Ultimately, I decided to stop signing
autographs when there were cameras around, and I stopped doing it at the courthouse entirely, because that was a place of
serious business—T-shirt hawkers and trial groupies notwithstanding. I always responded, however, asking people to write or
call my office, and I would send them something. In other circumstances, I tried, and still do, to be as courteous as I can
be to people who are courteous to me.

And by and large, people
are
courteous. Plus, there ’s no denying that VIP treatment can be pleasant. Convenient parking, hard-to-get tickets, front-row
seats, good tables in wonderful restaurants. I soon realized that there was another reason for the velvet-glove routine. Browsing
quietly in a bookstore one day, I quickly drew a crowd, all of whom were talking at once, some of whom quickly ran out to
buy disposable cameras so that they could get pictures. The management was not happy. And at a Kings hockey game one night,
a group of a dozen or so people gathered around my seat for autographs—which didn ’t much please the hockey fans in back of
me. Celebrities, I discovered, are not isolated simply because they ’re particularly special but because they ’re often security
risks, crowd-control problems, and traffic-jam instigators.

Before the trial began, I went to an annual charity gathering called the Sports Spectacular, which raises money for Cedars-Sinai
Hospital in Los Angeles. At the Spectacular, fifteen or twenty star athletes come together to auction off sports memorabilia,
meet fans, and give autographs. In other years, O.J. would ’ve been front and center, but not this time.

I was introduced to Joe DiMaggio by my friend Tommy Lasorda. Standing in front of the legendary DiMaggio, trying to talk to
him without stumbling all over my words, I felt all the old boyhood feelings—hero worship, awe, respect. In the noise of the
athletes and fans swirling around him, DiMaggio was a quiet, authoritative presence, almost majestic. As he autographed baseballs
for my sons, I was struck by how large and
strong his hands still were. Little wonder that in his prime he could wield a bat as easily as other men swing flyswatters.

The three of us—Lasorda, DiMaggio, and I—then went to the men ’s room together. In retrospect, it probably wasn ’t a good
tactical move. Security had to close off the door to the men ’s room while we were in there, and I was very aware of the people
on the other side of that closed door. What were they saying? DiMaggio ’s in the head with Lasorda and Shapiro. Lasorda ’s
in there with Shapiro and DiMaggio. Shapiro ’s in there with DiMaggio and Lasorda. Or more likely, “I wish whoever ’s in there
would get the hell out, so they ’d open the damn door and let
me
in!”

O.J. ’s new cell and his isolation in it were very difficult for him to adjust to. As stoic as it was in his nature to be,
he was completely miserable. His bunk, which was steel, had only a very thin mattress on the top of it. With his arthritis,
he could barely lie down on it. He couldn ’t sit up in it either, because his head hit the upper bunk. And when he was full-length
on the bed, his face was practically in the toilet. The television, just beyond his reach outside his cell, was often set
on the news—which was more often than not about him and the case, and he was unable to shut it off. One night he ’d been watching
the Dodgers game, and in the bottom of the ninth, with bases loaded, the guards shut off the television set.

He was supposed to take his arthritis medicine with his breakfast, but the food arrived at 6:00
A.M
. and the pills didn ’t arrive until 8:00. If he waited until 8:00, the food was cold, and the roaches were more interested
in it than he was. The same thing happened with his evening meal. At one point, when he realized that the video camera was
(in spite of assurances to the contrary) pointed right at the toilet, he draped a towel over the camera. Within minutes after
the first time he did it, the deputies came down and told him to remove the towel.

In addition, when they walked him out of his cell for any
reason, they handcuffed him from behind, which aggravated his arthritis. Couldn ’t he be handcuffed in front? “And why do
I have a pillow case that hasn ’t been changed in fifty days?” he asked a bailiff. “On the other hand, I guess I should be
glad I have a pillow. Some people in here don ’t even have that.”

I spoke with Captain Scaduto, and he met with O.J. to talk about the problems. Scaduto agreed to find him a thicker mattress
and take the camera off the toilet area. He would do his best to coordinate the food-and-medicine situation and also agreed
that from now on, O.J. ’s hands would be cuffed in front, not in back. Thereafter, O.J. was generally treated well by the
deputies in this, one of the most troubled, overcrowded, gang-infested jails in the entire country.

In addition to his living arrangements, O.J. was concerned about my treatment of his friend Bob Kardashian, whose constant
presence in court I had questioned. In fact, Lee Bailey had told me straight out that I ’d been too hard on Kardashian. While
I was grateful to him for all of his cooperation, and especially for the day-to-day care and attention he was giving to O.J.
in jail, I just felt it wasn ’t necessary for him to be at the defense table every day. He wasn ’t actively involved in the
pretrial preparation, and in all likelihood he wouldn ’t play a role once the trial began. However, I certainly didn ’t want
to alienate him; he was one of my client ’s best friends. I promised O.J. that I ’d make a point to call Bob, get together
with him, and talk it through.

That day, O.J. had a few things to say on the subject of violence and the way the media had been portraying him. Anyone who
knew anything about football would tell you that he ’d never been an attack player. “In eighteen years of playing football,”
he often said, “I only had one fight—and that ’s just because somebody jumped on my old friend Reggie McKenzie.”