So “garbage in, garbage out” should definitely have been the prosecution, not the defense mantra at the Simpson trial. There was no “garbage in” in this case, because if there had been, there would have been “garbage out,” i.e.,
there would not have been a Simpson blood match
—the test would have yielded no results. Stated another way, the fact there
was
a
DNA
match proves there was no contamination. Instead, unbelievably, it was the defense (playing on the jury’s conventional understanding of the word “contamination”) which used the concept of contamination and the term “garbage in, garbage out” to its distinct and overwhelming advantage. Because the prosecutors weren’t forceful and did not know how to make the above point effectively with the jury, the defense got away with it. With almost any jury, you have to spoon-feed them. That’s what I do. I never take a chance on assuming a jury is going to see something important without my help. So many times in life things are only obvious once they are pointed out.
Certainly the prosecution did not spoon-feed the jury in this case. Whenever I caught a snippet of the
DNA
testimony, with its extremely complex genetic, molecular, and statistical principles and completely unfamiliar and arcane terminology, I wondered how the jury, particularly the seventy-two-year-old black woman on the jury who said during jury selection she never read the newspaper or anything at all except the Racing Form, and had difficulty understanding even it, could have followed what they were talking about.
What does any of this have to do with chronology? For over a month, the jury had to listen to endless cross-examination of the
LAPD
criminalists like Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola by the two New York
DNA
lawyers on how all the evidence (except, miraculously, that which had been planted by the cops who were framing Simpson) had been contaminated and mishandled. The thrust of the cross-examination was that there was so much contamination of the blood during its collection and preservation, so many errors and slipups, that the jury should disregard all the
DNA
test results. The reason? Garbage in, garbage out. It was only
after
the long, painful ordeal of the highly misleading cross-examination of the
LAPD
criminalists that the DA called Dr. Robin Cotton, laboratory director at Cellmark and one of the DA’s
DNA
expert witnesses, to explain to the jurors that none of the alleged mishandling of the evidence they had been hearing about for days on end was relevant, since contamination couldn’t produce a false
DNA
positive of Simpson’s blood. But by that time, the incorrect contamination theory had been burned into the jurors’ brains, where it apparently remained. For instance, two of the jurors, Lionel Cryer and David Aldana, when asked by the media after the trial about the
DNA
evidence, blurted out like automatons, “Garbage in, garbage out.” In
Madam Foreman
, coauthor and Simpson juror Marsha Rubin-Jackson writes: “There was a lot of discussion about how sloppily the evidence had been handled. How it could have gotten contaminated.”
Since we know that first impressions are important, and since the prosecutors had already been placed on notice as far back as Cochran’s opening statement that the defense was going to try to float the specious contamination argument, wouldn’t common sense seem to dictate that you call Cotton to the stand for a primer on
DNA
before
, not after, the
LAPD
criminalists?
The DA’s chronology of evidence was so, shall we say, eccentric, that as I’ve indicated, instead of putting on photos and film of Simpson wearing gloves identical to the evidence gloves right after the testimony about the discovery of the gloves (in mid-February 1995), the prosecution didn’t offer this evidence at all during its case-in-chief and tried to squeeze it in during rebuttal on September 12, 1995,
seven months later
.
The prosecutors didn’t even know when to call the coroner. The coroner is always called by the prosecution to testify to the autopsy findings and cause of death right at or near the start of any homicide case. Here, remarkably, the prosecutors called the coroner on June 2, 1995, over four months after they called their first witness on January 31, 1995. Unbelievable. Show me a precedent.
There is undoubtedly much more prosecutorial incompetence in the area of incriminating evidence which was not offered. When I told Detective Lange that I had never seen a case where the prosecution decided not to introduce such a great amount of evidence damaging to the defendant—the suicide note, the passport, Simpson’s statement, etc.—he said: “Vince, there is so much more evidence you don’t know about that the DA didn’t present.”
But enough.
O
ne final, important tag before getting into final summation. More than being a celebrity, the main thing that Simpson had going for him with the jury in this case was that he was a black celebrity. If the defendant had been Joe Montana, his celebrity wouldn’t have gotten him a first down with this mostly black jury.
One of the very, very first questions the prosecutors in the Simpson case should have asked themselves is: How can we neutralize this advantage Simpson has? The prosecutors obviously did not do this. How do I know? Because they made no effort during the trial to chip away and erode that advantage. In fact, they went to the other extreme. They joined in with the millions of Simpson idolaters and encouraged the jury in the glorification of Simpson. Picture Simpson with a sharp knife stabbing two human beings over and over again. Now, with this thought still in your mind, listen to Marcia Clark talking to the jurors during jury selection: “He’s such a famous guy. He’s such a popular guy.” And, “We all saw
Naked Gun
. He made us laugh.” She also referred to him as a “good-looking man” with a clean-cut image. “This is not a fun place for me to be,” she said. (Isn’t this just like saying, “I’d actually rather not be prosecuting Mr. Simpson, but I was assigned to the case, so what can I do?” Instead of being proud that she’s representing the people of the state of California in trying to bring about justice in a brutal double murder case, Clark tells the jury “this is not a fun place for me to be”? Prosecutors just don’t talk like that.) Then, softly, “Do you feel a certain loyalty to the defendant? The defendant is such a famous guy, he’s such a sympathetic guy.” And, “You may not like me for bringing this case. I’m not winning any popularity contests for doing so.” Unbelievable. Unbelievable. There is no other word. Again, picture in your mind what Simpson did to the victims when you think of Clark’s words to the jury.
Although Clark added that whether or not the jurors personally liked Simpson, the law required them to convict Simpson if his guilt was proved, these highly flattering, sympathetic words for Simpson, particularly coming from the prosecutor’s own mouth, could only serve to fortify the good feelings the jury already had for Simpson. Wouldn’t a two-year-old know this?
While it was advisable for Clark to meet Simpson’s fame and popularity head-on, gushing over him and granting him sympathy was clearly not the way to do it. She could simply have said words to this effect: “The defendant in this case, Mr. Simpson, has obviously been a famous and popular sports figure. You all realize, of course, that in determining whether he is guilty or not guilty of these two terrible murders, the fact of his fame and previous popularity cannot enter, in any way whatsoever, into your deliberations.”
In answering the question of how to neutralize Simpson’s popularity, the thought that should instantly have come into the prosecutors’ minds was that throughout his adult life, Simpson had been black in color only. Many observers have postulated that part of the reason for the not-guilty verdict in this case was the antipathy for whites that some blacks have. But if there is
anyone
such a black person dislikes more than whitey, it’s an Uncle Tom. And although Simpson wasn’t the classically passive and submissive black memorialized in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, he easily fell within the more expansive popular definition of the term—a black who has not only forgotten his roots, but virtually turned his back on the black community, striving to become a white man in every possible way.
The prosecutors in this case should have immediately opened up an “Uncle Tom” file for Simpson and had an
LAPD
detective, or one of their own detectives from the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, start working full-time on it to fill it up. And they should have started looking for some opportunity furnished by the defense to present the contents of that file to the jury. If Cochran intended to clothe Simpson with the garments of the oppressed black man, the prosecutors should have been ready to show the jury that those garments (like, supposedly, the gloves) just didn’t fit. More important, by far, they should have been prepared to show the jury that with all of Simpson’s wealth and connections, he had never helped the black community, even when requested to do so.
Such a tactic would have been improper if the defense had decided to try the case solely on the evidence, which is the way a case is supposed to be tried. But since it decided to make a racial case out of one that involved no racial issue, the prosecutors should at least have tried to tell the jury the truth about Simpson, something they made no effort to do.
Cochran, because of his consistently loose statements and arguments to the jury in his opening statement and final argument, provided the prosecutors with the legal opportunity to introduce evidence of Simpson’s not helping the black community. In opening statement, a lawyer can only refer to evidence he intends to introduce at the trial. As I will point out in the Epilogue, Cochran not only
argued
during his opening statement (which is not allowed), but referred to the expected testimony of many witnesses whom he never ended up calling. In this same vein, he blurted these words out to endear Simpson to the predominantly black jury: “This man gives five thousand dollars a year to the Angel City Links, the inner-city black organization, and the only condition of his gift every year is it has to be anonymous, that he doesn’t want them to know he does this.”
This was a totally improper remark, since Cochran knew he could not introduce the fact of such a charitable contribution at the trial, it having no relevance to any issue in the case. And since he couldn’t, he had no right to mention it in his opening statement. But inasmuch as he did, the prosecutors should have argued (supported by a legal brief) that they had the right to offer contrary evidence. In fact, even without the Angel City Links reference by Cochran, since the defense built most of its case on the contention that Simpson was framed simply because he was a black man, evidence that showed Simpson to be black in color only would arguably be admissible. It would logically decrease the likelihood that the police would treat Simpson in the same way the defense claimed racists like Fuhrman treated a typical black man: evidence such as that Brentwood contains an extremely small percentage of blacks; that Simpson moved exclusively in the white corporate and establishment world; that other than his childhood friend Al Cowlings, virtually all of his close friends were white; that he joined an all-white, stuffed-shirt golf club in New Jersey five years ago, the first black member in the over-one-hundred-year history of the conservative club;
but above all, that he never found time to help those in need in the black community.
In writing this book, since I had always been under the impression that Simpson had not been that supportive of black causes, if at all, I wondered what in the heck the Angel City Links were, the
only
black organization Cochran mentioned. It was a rather strange name, one I had never heard. There was no listing for such a group in the telephone directory, so I called the Los Angeles chapter of the
NAACP
. The woman on the switchboard had never heard of the group, nor had the person on the staff to whom she referred me. Same at the Urban League, and at the Community Services Department at Los Angeles City Hall, and at black city councilman Ridley Thomas’s office, and at several other offices in the black community.
A week later I found a few free moments from my writing, so I started calling the same organizations and offices again, asking to speak to different people. Finally, I found someone at the
NAACP
who had heard of the Angel City Links. It was a black sorority, my informant told me, and the reason the group had no listing, he said, was that whoever becomes the sorority president each year operates the group out of her home, not a permanent office. The group, I was told, did on occasion raise money for black causes. Since the Angel City Links was a sorority, I immediately started to think it might be one that Simpson’s first wife, Marguerite, or daughter Arnelle was a member of, but I reached dead ends on this inquiry, not being able to locate anyone in the group. I even called Howard University, the black school in Washington, D.C., from which Arnelle graduated, but they had no sorority by that name.
On the issue of Simpson’s relationship with the black community, the first prominent black person I thought to call was Jim Brown, the Cleveland Brown’s all-time football great. In the 1980s Brown and I played a lot of fairly competitive tennis together. (When he has time, he now plays golf instead, telling me it’s “addictive.”)
Brown, a brooding, introspective, and very intelligent man who has never been comfortable with the white establishment, has for many years been an involved activist for black causes and economic power. But in 1988, he almost completely forsook his Hollywood lifestyle to work full-time helping black criminals turn their lives around. He formed an organization called Amer-I-Can, shorthand for “In America, if I try, I can make something of myself.” The underlying motivational themes of Amer-I-Can are education, a sense of self-worth, and economic empowerment. Brown oversees a sixty-hour self-improvement and life skills training program which is provided to inner-city gang members and to convicts in the major prisons of the land. Amer-I-Can employs close to two hundred former gang members and ex-convicts to administer the course.