Being handicapped was bad enough, even if Clark had made the most out of what she had. But she proceeded to make the most garbled, God-awful argument imaginable concerning Simpson’s cut on the night of the murders. Talking about the fact that Simpson had blood on the outside door handle of the Bronco, she told the jury that Simpson had told Baden he cut himself while going out to the Bronco to get his cellular phone. She then proceeded to tell the jury in garbled language: “Now, although we don’t know for a fact that he certainly did not receive that cut on some razor-sharp cell phone, it certainly does not make sense that when he went out to get the phone [Clark is actually embracing what Simpson told Baden as true] he opened the door to the Bronco and his knuckle grazed the wall of the door handle reopening the cut [he had received during the murder].” If you are a little confused about what Clark was saying, you can imagine the jurors’ confusion.
When she got to the key inference to be made about the cut and bleeding, again, she was so inarticulate she actually took a coincidence of astronomical odds down to something that sounded almost plausible. Listen to this: “So now we have the defendant getting his hand cut on the night of his wife’s stabbing, cut on his left hand,
which just happens to be the hand that the murderer cut that same night
. That’s an alarming coincidence.” From the literal context of what she said, Clark seemed to be arguing to the jury that the coincidence was not that Simpson innocently cut himself around the time of the murders, but that he cut himself on “his left hand, which
just happens
to be the hand that the murderer cut that same night.” Remarkably, she succeeded in reducing a coincidence in the millions down to one out of two hands.
On a roll, she became even more off-base in her argument. Referring to Dr. Huizenga, the defense doctor who examined Simpson two days after the murders and saw four cuts and seven abrasions on Simpson’s left hand, but didn’t ask him how or even when he got the cuts, Clark made this incredible statement to the jury: “You know,
I can see getting one cut, maybe two on your hand
[What? Marcia, please!], but four cuts and seven abrasions? And we’re supposed to believe that that’s unrelated to a murder in which the killer’s left hand was cut and bleeding as he left the scene?”
In view of this statement, maybe Clark hadn’t misspoken after all when she seemed to say earlier that the
main
coincidence was that Simpson had cut himself on the same hand as the murderer had. Maybe Clark really didn’t believe that innocently cutting yourself around the very same time your former wife was murdered is much of a coincidence at all. It was only the
number
of cuts that was suspicious to her. Unbelievable.
Continuing on her bad roll, she asked the jury: “What does a person do when we cut ourselves and we drip blood? What do we do?” I was sure she was going to say the obvious, that we stop the bleeding, not bleed all over the place. But she said: “We clean it up.” Again, what? If we’re to believe Clark, the first thing one normally does when bleeding is to clean up the floor, not stop the bleeding. Doesn’t everyone know that stopping the bleeding is a much more immediate and automatic response than cleaning it up? In fact, even though we know Simpson is guilty, since he had to catch a plane to Chicago, his postponing cleaning up until he returned from Chicago isn’t incriminating at all. But whether you’re going to Chicago or not, if you’re dripping blood all over your car and home you instinctively try to stop the flow of blood. As if her drawing the far weaker of the two inferences were not bad enough, after saying that if she and the jury had dripped blood they’d have cleaned it up, but Simpson didn’t, Clark just left it at that, not bothering to go on and tell the jury what, in her mind, the failure to clean up meant in terms of guilt. The reason may have been that there was nothing for her to say, since under the circumstances, Simpson’s failure to clean up before he left for Chicago meant very little, if anything at all.
I have to believe that if Clark had bothered to look over, just once, her prepared remarks on this all-important issue of Simpson’s bleeding on the night of the murders, this intelligent and experienced criminal prosecutor would have vastly improved her argument and articulation on this issue. If she in fact did look over her prepared remarks and still did not see how weak her argument was and how poor and garbled were the logic and language she used, then Garcetti had no business assigning a prosecutor of this level of ability to this case. But if she didn’t look over the remarks she prepared for her opening argument, then I say to her that she owed it to her client, the People of the State of California, to have done a hell of a lot more preparation than she did before she stood up and argued on their behalf.
And don’t let anyone tell you about a lack of time to prepare. No prosecutors, perhaps in any case in criminal history, had more help than Clark and Darden did on the Simpson case. And the trial dragged on for almost a year. So they had all the time in the world. Going over a five-or six-hour argument only takes five or six hours. (Of course, it should have been gone over ten times.) Whatever personal problems Clark had in her custody fight with her husband, she had time (as Darden did) to be seen here and there on weekends and in the evening throughout the trial, and at least one time, in March 1995, with Darden throughout the evening and into the early-morning hours at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard in West Los Angeles.
When a prosecutor is on a big case like this, there shouldn’t be any “sightings” of the prosecutor by the paparazzi. He or she should be in one of only three places (except for necessary time Clark had to spend with her two children outdoors)—court, office, and home. Even to and from work is valuable work time, and a driver should be found to free up the prosecutor. (In the Manson case, my driver was a bodyguard from the DA’s Bureau of Investigation.) Routinely, I put in one hundred hours a week on all complex murder cases. This was not done here. No way. It couldn’t have been. The terrible performances prove that.
T
he argument to the jury on the subject of Simpson’s bleeding on the night of the murders should have gone something like what follows. (Had I been the prosecutor on the case, I would have put in many, many more hours than I have here to prepare such an argument, and all the items of evidence I am “throwing out the window” here would obviously have been separately argued to the jury in much more depth elsewhere in my summation.)
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the evidence of Mr. Simpson’s guilt is so overwhelming in this case that you could throw 80 percent of it out the window and there still would be no question of his guilt. For instance, as we’ve previously discussed, we know that Simpson beat poor Nicole savagely, and she was in fear of her life at his hands. You recall she told officer Edwards, ‘He’s going to kill me, he’s going to kill me.’ I mean, who else would have had any reason to murder these two young people, who apparently were both very well liked and popular, and particularly in such a brutal, savage way? But let’s throw this evidence out the window. Let’s assume Mr. Simpson and Nicole got along well, just swimmingly, that he never laid a hand on her.
“When he was charged with these murders, if he were innocent, he would have been outraged, blazing mad, at being charged with murders he did not commit, and would desperately want to prove his innocence and find out who murdered the mother of his two children. Instead, he writes this suicide note that absolutely reeks with guilt. Show me an innocent person on the face of this globe charged with murder who would write a note like that. But let’s assume there was no such suicide note, let’s throw it out the window. After that slow-speed freeway chase, as you recall, the police found a gun, a passport, and a cheap disguise in Mr. Simpson’s possession. And his closest friend, Al Cowlings, just happens to have $8,750 in currency stuffed in his pockets, which he told the police Mr. Simpson gave him in the Bronco. We all know what all of this means. We’ve already discussed it. Throw this evidence out the window. It doesn’t exist.
On the night of the murders, the limo driver, Alan Park, arrived at the Simpson estate at 10:22 p.m., and he was scheduled to pick Mr. Simpson up at 10:45 p.m. for the trip to L.A. International Airport. Incidentally, we can rely on all of the times Mr. Park testified to, since knowing the exact time is a limousine driver’s stock in trade. As you know, Park testified that at 10:22 p.m., which the evidence has shown is around the very time of the murders, he didn’t see Mr. Simpson’s Bronco at the estate. It wasn’t parked on Ashford or Rockingham. He then parked his limo on Ashford, and at 10:39 p.m., when he drove over to the Rockingham side of the estate, the Bronco, which was found parked there in the morning,
still
wasn’t there. Park further testified that from 10:40 to 10:50, he rang the intercom on the gate several times, and there was no answer from inside Simpson’s residence.
At about 10:55 p.m. he sees a black person around six feet tall, two hundred pounds, and wearing all dark clothing walking briskly toward the front door of Mr. Simpson’s home. After this person enters the residence, the light in the entryway is immediately turned on, and within seconds Mr. Park goes back to the gate and rings the buzzer again, and this time Simpson immediately answers the intercom. So we know it was the defendant who had just entered the front door. Simpson tells the limo driver, ‘I overslept, I just got out of the shower, and I’ll be down in a minute.’ It’s pretty obvious what Mr. Simpson was trying to do here. Only he knew exactly when these murders took place, and he was trying to establish an alibi for himself. What other reason under the moon would he have had to tell this blatant lie to the limo driver if he hadn’t just committed these murders? Throw all of this evidence out the window. It doesn’t exist.
“In fact, throw out the bloody glove found on his estate with Mr. Simpson’s and Ron’s and Nicole’s blood on it, the glove that matches the glove found at the murder scene. We don’t have the glove anymore. In fact, let’s throw out all the
DNA
evidence that puts Mr. Simpson’s blood at the murder scene, and that conclusively proves his guilt beyond all doubt. Let’s also throw out the
DNA
evidence that Ron’s and Nicole’s blood was found inside Mr. Simpson’s Bronco, and Nicole’s blood was found on the socks inside the bedroom of his home. Throw out all of that evidence. It doesn’t exist. There’s
still
no question of this man’s guilt. Why do I say that? Because the defendant, from his own lips, told us he committed these two murders. How did he tell us? Let’s take this step by step.
“You heard his statement to the police on the day after the murders. We played it for you folks here in this courtroom. As you know, the detectives told Mr. Simpson that they found blood in his car, in his home, and on the driveway, and when they asked him why that was so, he answered that he had cut himself the previous night, and was dripping blood while he was getting ready to leave for Chicago, which we know was somewhere between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. on the night of the murders. And we know from the testimony of several witnesses that the murders occurred somewhere between 10:15 and 10:40 that night. Mr. Simpson admits, then, that around the very same time of the murders—which was around sixteen hours
before
the police removed blood from his arm and would have had any opportunity to sprinkle or plant it, which we know is pure moonshine—he was dripping blood in his car and home and on his driveway. So even if we bought the absurd defense allegation that the police in this case tried to frame Simpson by planting his blood in various places, including his car and home—which never happened, and there isn’t a speck of evidence that it did—it still couldn’t be more obvious he’s guilty. Because whatever blood that would have been planted had to be
in addition
to blood of Mr. Simpson’s that was
already
in his car and home and on his driveway on the night of the murders. We know that because the defendant, from his own lips, told us so.
“And as we heard on the tape, when the detectives asked him how he had cut himself on the night of the murders, his exact words were: ‘I don’t know.’ He said he had no idea. Can you imagine that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury?
“Now let’s just stop to think about this for a moment. We’re not talking about a little nick or scratch here. We’re talking about a deep cut to his left middle finger. You’ve seen photos of it, and Detectives Lange and Vannater told you that it was bandaged on the day after the murders. And yet Mr. Simpson claims he has no idea how he got that cut. This ridiculous statement alone shows an obvious consciousness of guilt on his part. You folks ask yourself back in the jury room how many times, if at all, in your life that you’ve cut yourself badly enough to bleed all over your car and home, and yet you had absolutely no idea how you cut yourself. It’s absurd on its face, and all by itself tells us that this man is guilty of murdering these two poor people.
“But there’s an even more powerful reason why Mr. Simpson’s own statement shows that it was he who, on the evening of June 12, 1994, viciously murdered the two victims in this case. What is the likelihood, I ask you, what is the likelihood that Mr. Simpson innocently cut himself very badly on his left middle finger around the very same time that his former wife and Ron Goldman were brutally murdered? I mean, come on. What is the statistical improbability against such a thing happening? One out of ten million? One out of a million, one out of a hundred thousand? We’re talking
DNA
numbers here, aren’t we?
“I want you folks to think back, not to when you were children, but to your adult life. It hasn’t been too often, has it, that you’ve cut yourself badly? The last time I remember cutting myself badly was almost thirty years ago when I was working with a small electric saw in the garage of my home and I cut my wrist. But it’s not common, is it, that adults cut themselves badly? Here, Mr. Simpson just didn’t cut himself badly within the same
decade
his former wife was murdered, not just within the same
year
she was murdered, not just within the same
month
, or even within the same
week
she was murdered. In fact, not just within the same
day
she was murdered. No. The defense wants us to believe that around
the very precise time
she was murdered, he innocently cut himself very badly. And to top it off, he tells us he has absolutely no idea how. Is there one reasonable person in this entire courtroom who would believe a cockamamie story like that? People who would believe a story like that would believe someone who told them they once saw a man jump away from his own shadow. Remember, the prosecution only has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond all doubt. But here, of course, we have proved this man’s guilt beyond all doubt. His guilt is so obvious I’m almost embarrassed having to stand up in front of you folks telling you these things. But he’s pled not guilty, which is his right, so I have no choice.