The Search for Justice (44 page)

Since the heart of our DNA strategy was to attack the L.A.P.D. ’s collection and contamination of the evidence, a key
moment for the defense was Barry Scheck ’s cross-examination of criminalist Dennis Fung. I was amazed to remember that only
months before, I ’d been unenthusiastic about Scheck ’s pugnacious, hard-edged courtroom style. In short order, Scheck got
Fung to admit that he actually hadn ’t performed many of the procedures he ’d claimed to have done in the preliminary hearing;
the trainee, Andrea Mazzola, had done them. Fung didn ’t want anyone to know that someone so inexperienced was handling key
evidence.

This was only Mazzola ’s second case, and here she was collecting important DNA evidence at a critical stage in the “case
of the century,” making textbook errors that were caught on a news video. She didn ’t change rubber gloves between blood samples,
and the video recorded her touching the ground with supposedly “clean” gloves.

Fung had other problems. Evidently Tom Lange had ordered that Nicole ’s body be shielded from press and onlookers, so it was
covered with a white cotton blanket from the Bundy apartment. It may have been an act of consideration, but scientifically,
it was a significant mistake. Since the blanket had been in her house, and had presumably come in contact with Nicole, O.J.,
the children, the animals, and any number of other people, there was now a serious question of cross-contamination. Scheck
ran a video that showed Fung handling evidence with his bare hands, rather than with gloves, as he ’d stated. “There, how
about
that
, Mr. Fung?!” Scheck said with relish.

The challenge rang in the courtroom, and some of the jury members leaned forward to get a better look at the video. “Is that
a question, Mr. Scheck?” asked Judge Ito.

There were a number of questions concerning the whereabouts of the vial of O.J. ’s blood that Detective Vannatter had taken
from downtown to the crime scene. Fung had previously testified that Vannatter brought it to Bundy in a gray envelope, whereupon
Fung took custody of it. He later amended his testimony to say perhaps he could ’ve carried it out in his hand, or put it
in a paper bag, or put it in his lab kit, called a “posse.”
However, when he saw the videotape, he realized that none of those three things happened. First Vannatter arrived, and moments
later, Andrea Mazzola carried out a garbage bag. Without knowing the answer, the defense didn ’t want to ask, “What ’s in
the bag, Mr. Fung?” Judge Ito asked the question for us, and after a moment ’s hesitation, Fung answered, “I think it ’s the
blood vial.”

Fung had asked the cops for a plastic bag, and they ’d supplied it from who knows what sources. He put the blood vial in it,
and Mazzola, without being told what was in the bag, put it in the front seat of the evidence truck, where it sat until Fung
drove off.

If Scheck ’s cross had been a fight, it would have been stopped as a technical knockout. If it were a horse race, the animal
would ’ve been shot out of humane considerations. In fact, during a break, Judge Ito said to Scheck, “You ’d better be careful,
you ’re getting close to being reported to the Humane Society for cruelty to indefensible witnesses.”

Like a good boxer, Scheck homed in one jab at a time, and the cross put a litany of errors into the record. The jury heard
about the blanket error (covering Nicole ’s body); the fact that trainee Mazzola, not Fung, collected the blood samples; the
possible degradation of blood samples left sealed in plastic baggies in the truck. Fung didn ’t see or record blood evidence
found in the car; he didn ’t inventory blood samples, and he later left them vulnerable to tampering in an unlocked storage
cabinet. He confirmed that Vannatter carried blood from place to place, which was unprecedented in his experience. He acknowledged
the July 3 pictures of the gate, which showed blood that hadn ’t been evident on June 13, and conceded that he didn ’t see
blood on the socks until weeks later, which raised the question: When did it get there?

Afterward, one lawyer commented, “They ’ll probably rewrite all of the L.A.P.D. lab procedures and call it the
Barry Scheck Memorial Manual.”

During the Fung testimony, we were momentarily interrupted
when frequent court visitor and cross-dresser Will B. King was removed by the bailiffs. He was screaming at another court
visitor who had supposedly sat on his dress. Said an impatient Judge Ito, “Eject that m… wom… person!”

On April 17, Hank Goldberg was faced with the unenviable task of “rehabilitating” Dennis Fung. Goldberg was tall, lanky, pale,
and all business. He and Scheck glared daggers throughout the whole examination, constantly objecting and interrupting each
other. Ito grew noticeably angry with the constant back-and-forth on the redirect and the recross, with Goldberg at one point
accusing Barry of trying to have “a Perry Mason moment.” As effective as Scheck had been, after this session neither he nor
Peter Neufeld was ever cut much slack by the judge.

After Fung ’s testimony, I offered a fortune cookie to writers Dominick Dunne and Joe McGinniss, joking that they were from
the Hang Fung Restaurant. It was an off-the-cuff flip remark that showed up as a lead news story. “Shapiro is a bigot,” was
the upshot, and the bad reaction lingered for days.

I arrived at court one morning to be greeted by an Asian protestor in a black hat, with a sign in Chinese characters. I got
out of the car and started to walk up to him, when Jim Amarino, the head of L.A.P.D. security for the courthouse, came running
over to me, quite concerned. Amarino, his colleague Laurie Taylor, and the other L.A.P.D. officers responsible for my security
had always gone out of their way to protect me and were especially considerate to my wife and sons whenever they attended
the trial. This was ironic, given that while they were taking care of me outside the courtroom, inside I was attacking a couple
of their L.A.P.D. colleagues. It was out of gratitude for their care that I continued to wear the blue police support pin
on my lapel in the courtroom.

This particular day I told Amarino that I wanted to speak to the protestor. With a shocked grin on his face, he went over
to the Asian gentleman and respectfully asked if he could pat him down for security. The man nodded. I then went up and intro-
duced myself to him, apologized for my bad joke, and we spoke together for a few minutes. I invited him to join me for lunch
that afternoon, but when I came down to look for him during the break, he wasn ’t anywhere to be found.

In the days to come, I learned that my fortune-cookie remark had done damage that I deeply regretted. I made a formal apology
to Dennis Fung and his family in open court and published a letter of apology to the Asian community, which was graciously
accepted. I later addressed numerous Asian groups and gave scholarship money and donations to an Asian charity. Cochran, who
afterward quipped “We ’re having Fung now,” never apologized to anyone, for anything.

By the time he ’d been through a direct examination, a cross, a redirect, a recross, and, I think, one last round, Dennis
Fung had spent a torturous eight days on the stand. We ’d heard that before coming to testify, he ’d told his colleagues that
he ’d been a fan of O.J. and hoped the football hero wasn ’t involved in this crime. Fung certainly couldn ’t have predicted
what happened to him at the hands of one of the Simpson lawyers. When at last it was all over, one of the more bizarre moments
in the whole trial occurred. On his way out of the courtroom, Fung stopped at the defense table and shook hands with O.J.
and the whole team. It not only made the papers, it led to an immediate investigation of court security. The deputies were
unnerved that in mere seconds, someone had come that close to the defendant.

In mid-April, Cochran arranged a lunch meeting in the courthouse for himself, Chris Darden, Marcia Clark, and me. His purpose,
he said, was “to find a way for us all to act more professional.” Johnnie ’s wife, Dale, delivered lunch, setting up china
and silver on the linen tablecloth and serving an excellent fish dish, with rice, peas, and potatoes.

It was an oddly wonderful hour. The four of us joked and talked; and the meeting was more like a gathering of old friends
than a detente among adversaries. Whether we liked each other
or didn ’t, whether our styles clashed or our views differed, we were all in this together. We agreed that we had to cooperate
in finding ways to speed things up, cut the sidebars, and reduce the rhetoric. We had no way of knowing at that point, of
course, that we were barely halfway through the trial.

Judge Ito had decided, after Jeannette Harris ’s dismissal, to interview the remaining jurors, with both prosecution and defense
attorneys present. He wanted to discover if the charges of racial animosity were true. It was clear that some antagonism was
boiling up: We ’d heard about a kicking incident, a hitting incident in the video room, and a tripping incident in the jury
box. Ito wanted to do what he could to keep the panel intact, in good spirits and good faith, until the trial was over.

While Ito conducted these interviews, four of us—Cochran, myself, Marcia Clark, and Chris Darden—sat on a small couch in his
chambers. Our quarters in court were close; these were even closer. The judge ’s clerk, Deirdre Robertson, was there also.
She had become a good friend to all the jurors and had heard many of the negative stories directly.

The jurors, considering their living conditions, were faring better than I would have expected. The pressure of doing everything
together and having nothing in common except the trial—and they couldn ’t even acknowledge that—had to be very, very difficult
to bear. For more than three months, these people had been separated from their jobs and families, completely isolated from
their lives and what was going on in the world. They were like astronauts, except astronauts train for this kind of isolation
and have a pretty good idea about when they ’re going to land.

We came to the end of the interviews not as worried about what had gone wrong with them as we were in awe of what they were
doing each day. It was clear, however, there were going to be more problems if the trial dragged on much longer.

Immediately after the Dennis Fung testimony and the interviews with the jurors, we had some unscheduled time off, due to the
Oklahoma City bombing disaster on April 19. When we returned, the security at the courthouse had been intensified, and we
were requested to come directly into court, not linger outside with press or admirers.

We had had previous bomb threats at the courthouse. Each lawyer, on both sides, had received threatening mail. But we had
dismissed those threats. “They ’re all just nuts,” we ’d say. Now, all of those people so tragically murdered in Oklahoma
had been the victims of exactly the same kind of “nuts” we ’d been hearing from. It was a sobering, sorrowful thought.