His Name Is Ron (24 page)

This was not a trial. It was theater of the absurd.

Perhaps an even greater absurdity occurred when, after eight days of testimony, Dennis was finished. He left the stand and shook hands with Chris. Then he stopped at the defense table and, with a smile on his face, said goodbye to the group of lawyers who had attacked him without mercy for more than a week. He shook hands with Cochran and Shapiro. Barry Scheck, the architect of Shapiro's “Hang Fung” strategy, actually said,
“Thank you.” Then, to our utter horror, Dennis reached his hand toward the killer and shook hands with him.

Whose side are you on? Patti wondered. Are you trying to be polite or are you just stupid? It was a royal slap in the face, and done in full view of the jury. Anything Dennis had said in our favor was instantly negated by this sophomoric show of support for the defense.

During a break Patti voiced her disgust and surprise to Chris Darden. He simply shrugged his shoulders in mute embarrassment.

Throughout Dennis's testimony, another disturbing distraction occurred. The jury had consistently been described as expressionless and difficult to read, and that was certainly true. We were, of course, anxious to know how they were reacting to the evidence. With the dismissal of juror Jeanette Harris on April 5, we got a sobering glimpse.

Judge Ito dropped Harris from the jury after he was informed that she had once been a victim of domestic violence, and had failed to report that on her jury questionnaire. She was the latest of several jurors to be dismissed, but she was clearly the most outspoken. On the evening of April 5 she gave an interview to KCAL-TV and stated that she was “quite impressed” with the defendant. “He's gone through a lot,” she said. “Whether he did it or not, he presents a picture of someone who's dealing with a lot.… He hasn't been allowed to grieve. He's got two minor children at home that he's not allowed to comfort. … He sits there, and it totally amazes me that he's able to handle it.”

It was difficult not to throw a rock at the television set.

Harris told interviewer Pat Harvey that “from day one I didn't see it as being a fair trial,” and that black and white jurors may be under pressure from their peers to cast their votes along racial lines. She also said that she did not believe Detective Fuhrman and when asked if she thought that someone who made racial slurs was also capable of planting evidence, her response was, “Yes, I do.” At best, she predicted, the case would result in a hung jury.

Patti said, “There's too much racial bullshit going on here.” It was clear that Harris had her mind made up before she ever took a seat in the jury box. She was not about to let the evidence dissuade her. The defendant was not guilty and that was that. How people like this end up on a jury is disturbing. Perhaps she should have tried to put herself in our shoes.

Because Harris made allegations, the judge conducted separate interviews with Harris and with each of the twelve jurors and six remaining alternates.

Some of the jurors complained about toes being stepped on, occasional pushes, shoves, and hurt feelings. At one point someone whined that the black and white jurors did not like the same movies and that when it came time to choose which movies to watch, the white members were frequently outvoted by their black counterparts. The Sheriff's Department responded by providing separate movie-viewing rooms. In an attempt to stave off disaster, Judge Ito directed that the deputies be replaced.

This caused further division. On Friday, April 21, the jurors stamped their collective feet and threw a temper tantrum. It was the 101st day of their sequestration, and they asked Judge Ito to visit them at their hotel so they could explain their anger. Ito refused, and summoned the jurors to the courthouse, where thirteen of them arrived wearing black or dark clothing in an apparent gesture of solidarity. Four others were attired in brightly colored garb in an apparent gesture of defiance. The standoff continued as the offended jurors refused to go back to work.

We appreciated the fact that sequestration is difficult, but from our perspective, the jury was beginning to sound like a bunch of spoiled brats.

The trial was in chaos. Speculation ran rampant that this group would never be able to reach a verdict. We were confused and deeply worried because it seemed that, at the very least, this jury was predisposed to taking sides. They were clearly communicating with one another about some aspects of this case.

We were terrified that a mistrial was in the making. Kim was so nervous that she was sick to her stomach, and she was losing what I thought was a dangerous amount of weight.

It was a real snake pit. Foremost among our concerns was that if Judge Ito excused the entire jury and a higher court disagreed with him about the legal necessity of doing so, prosecutors would be unable to pursue their case because of the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. A killer would walk free.

One morning, as Patti was attempting to enter the courtroom, she was stopped by a bailiff whom she knew only by his last name, Jex. He pointed to the water bottle peeking out of her purse. “You're not supposed to have that in there,” he said, in a rude, disrespectful tone. “You better watch it, and you better not drink it.”

Patti went on the attack. “I can't believe you're telling me this,” she said. “I've been carrying a water bottle in my purse since the beginning of
this trial and I have never taken it out in the courtroom. I will never take it out in the courtroom. The nerve of you to assume that I would do that!”

Jex stood firm. “Well you're not supposed to have it in there.”

“Well, what's the difference if I'm not going to drink it?”

“Well, you better not drink it!”

“Do me a favor,” Patti growled. “Don't talk to me. I don't like your tone of voice and for you to think that I would do something I'm not supposed to do in here is insulting to me.” She walked away and never looked back.

Kim congratulated her for fighting back. “It's the power of the red hair, Patti!” she quipped. “You've got the power!”

Later, Patti wrote a letter to Judge Ito complaining of the bailiff's treatment, but never received a response. In and of itself, the incident was not a big deal. But it underscored the question: Where were the priorities?

As disheartening as Jeanette Harris's comments were, we took hope in the knowledge that the prosecution had not yet presented the most damning and important part of the case, the physical evidence. So, we tried to be patient.

Now the prosecution had moved to the core of its case. Greg Matheson, a chief forensic chemist and assistant director at the LAPD laboratory, provided the key point to blast the “incompetence” theory out of the water: If blood samples were contaminated, they might fail to yield any results, but they would
not
produce false results that implicated the defendant.

Matheson's testimony began to forge an incontestable link between the killer and his victims. He had conducted basic tests of blood types and enzymes; other experts would follow with the results of more sophisticated DNA testing.

According to this expert, only one out of every two hundred people could have left a specific telltale blood drop at the crime scene; that person was the defendant.

Referring to blood found on a sock in the defendant's bedroom, Matheson testified that it could not have come from the defendant; it could have come from Nicole.

Predictably, the “Scheme Team” spent days attempting to tear down Matheson's testimony. Defense Attorney Robert Blasier's questions insinuated that minuscule amounts of blood had been taken from one sample and used to taint others. He questioned the record-keeping abilities and
storage procedures of the lab and, in general, attempted to bolster the contention that a multitude of investigators had conspired to frame the defendant.

Hank Goldberg responded with a touch of sarcasm. On redirect examination, he asked a question that he knew would be disallowed: “Is there any kind of a mechanical device or other device in the evidence processing room that would warn … that someone was approaching and about to enter, maybe a device that might yell out: ‘Warning, someone is about to enter the evidence processing room! All evidence tampering must cease'?”

Blasier objected and Judge Ito, with a wry shake of his head, sustained the objection, but Hank had made his point.

On May 5, Kim and I filed a wrongful-death lawsuit, charging that the defendant had “brutally murdered” Ron.

This was a difficult decision for us. We did not want anyone to perceive that we were trying to make money off the tragedy. After all, we had bitterly resented Sharon when she filed a similar suit so early on. But it was a question of erring on the side of caution. Nearly eleven months had passed since the murders, and the statute of limitations for a wrongful-death case is one year. We could always drop the suit if we chose to, but after the deadline passed we would be prohibited from filing.

We sought an unspecified amount of “punitive and exemplary” damages “in order to send out a message … that such vicious and outrageous savagery inflicted by one human being upon another shall be met with the severest of civil penalties.”

We hired attorney Robert Tourtelot, who also represented Detective Mark Fuhrman. Bob is a congenial fellow, and we trusted him.

Bob Tourtelot declared that he was confident he could get a substantial judgment.

Kim spoke for all of us when she said, “It doesn't have anything to do with money. If we can make the killer feel a quarter of the pain we feel, it's worth it.”

I vowed publicly to “haunt the halls of justice.”

SEVENTEEN

Finally the preliminary bouts were over. It was time for the main event.

Dr. Robin Cotton, director of Cellmark Diagnostics in Germantown, Maryland, the nation's largest private DNA laboratory, took the witness stand. She would be the first of three DNA experts who would testify about the results of three separate rounds of tests. Neatly drawn charts helped illustrate her points.

Deputy D.A. George “Woody” Clarke, who had vast experience prosecuting cases on DNA evidence, led Dr. Cotton through a basic primer of what DNA is and how it can link evidence to a particular human being. She explained that DNA is present in nearly all human cells, and that each person inherits a combination of characteristics from his or her parents. In humans more than 90 percent of all DNA is identical—that is what makes us human. But the remaining 10 percent is unique, and that is what makes each person distinctive. Dr. Cotton said, “If we make the assumption that a blueprint contains all the information for how to build your house, the analogy is that DNA contains all the information on how to build you.”

This was certainly the most complex subject the jury would have to consider, yet Dr. Cotton explained it with remarkable clarity. Gazing directly at the jury and speaking in a soft, clear voice, she said, “You can look around even in a very large room … and you'll see that, with the exception of identical twins, people are different. Even closely related people, brothers, two brothers, are different. You can always tell them apart. And the exception
is identical twins. And identical twins are identical because they have identical DNA.”

Aha! Kim thought. Will the defense now try to convince us that the killer's evil twin, Bozo, committed these murders?

Skewering the defense's attack before it was launched, Dr. Cotton told the jurors that even if a sample was contaminated or degraded, it would
never
point falsely toward a suspect. “There is no environmental effect that can work to simply change one type and make it become another,” Dr. Cotton testified. “You may lose the type altogether. You may degrade the DNA so much that you can't type it, but you won't just change types from one to another. It doesn't happen.”

Due in large measure to the frequent objections of Defense Attorney Peter Neufeld—Barry Scheck's longtime partner—Dr. Cotton was on the stand for two days before she was able to testify about specific results. Near the end of the second day, prosecutors introduced into evidence X rays that portrayed the results of the genetic tests as a series of striking black “bands” arranged in identifiable patterns. As the “Scheme Team” huddled about the defense table, inspecting its own copy of the set of X rays, someone must have offered a quip, for Simpson suddenly burst into laughter. He covered his mouth quickly and worked to regain a serious expression.

We wondered if he would still be smiling when Dr. Cotton finished her testimony.

Over the next few days her testimony became very specific, concentrating on two samples:

• Only one person in 170 million has the genetic characteristics of the blood found near Ron and Nicole's bodies; the defendant's blood matched those characteristics.

• Only one person in 6.8 billion has the genetic characteristics of the blood found on the sock in the defendant's bedroom; Nicole's blood had those characteristics.