Then my thoughts had turned to Bill. We’d worked together in management, and we’d clicked. I was brassy and often abrasive; Bill was gentle, a conciliator. We laughed a lot together—and a sense of humor would be as essential as a law degree in a pressure cooker like this one. But most important, he was one hell of a lawyer.
Bill had started out in Long Beach, one of the branch courts. Shortly after he arrived Downtown, he prosecuted savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating. The resulting conviction (though ultimately reversed) was a thrilling triumph in an office starved for victories, and for a while Bill was the golden boy. He’d been with us only about a year when Gil appointed him director of Central Operations. He was the first real trial lawyer I can recall who ever held that job. His placement had been a boost in morale to all of us on the front lines.
All the same, Bill’s experience with Downtown juries was fairly limited. I’d done some of my juvenile work in Long Beach: the community was conservative, so the jury pool tended to be law-and-order types. The judges pretty much mirrored that point of view. As a result, criminal trials were relatively orderly affairs, seldom the grueling battles that were the daily experience of deputies Downtown.
The Simpson case was shaping up to be the ultimate Downtown case. I didn’t know if Bill was up to the rough-and-tumble. I didn’t even know if
I
was. Of one thing, however, I was certain: Bill Hodgman had a gift for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses in evidence. Bill and I had talked through a number of cases in the last year, and I had come to admire his instincts.
I needed him.
His door was open, and I leaned in. “Got a minute?”
“Sure, partner, come on in.”
Bill took a seat behind his huge desk, framed by a postcard-worthy panorama of downtown L.A. It was very luxurious by county standards. It was even carpeted.
“Bill,” I said, “remember how we’ve talked about wanting to try a case together?”
He nodded. I couldn’t read his expression.
“How would you like to do Simpson with me?”
He smiled.
“I have been kind of anxious to get back into court,” he said slowly. “I don’t know how my wife will take it, and I hate to miss my time with Alec.”
I knew what he meant. When Bill had been trying Keating, I’d been knee-deep in Bardo. We’d find ourselves in the office on weekends slaving away at our respective witness lists, and we’d commiserate about how our cases were cutting into family time. I remember him telling me that his son, Alec, then four years old, was taking his absences hard.
But Bill was too intrigued by this once-in-a-lifetime case to let it pass. “Let me talk to my wife, see how she feels about it,” he said finally. And we left it at that.
I don’t know what went on in that conversation, but when Bill showed up at my office the next day, he gave me the thumbs-up. We went down to Gil’s office to get his blessing. We received not only that but our marching orders.
“I want you two to work as equals,” said Gil. “No first- or second-chair situation.”
I didn’t like that. It wasn’t that I felt competitive, but for strategic reasons, every team needs a capo. Otherwise, you lose too much time negotiating over every little disagreement in approach. I also admit that it was disappointing to have Gil zing me like that. Again. I thought I’d hidden my feelings, but apparently not. Bill pulled me aside and said, “Marcia, it’s your case. I know what the realities are.” And during the months to come, he was as good as his word. Bill knew someone had to lead.
We needed to move fast. Shapiro was demanding that the preliminary hearing be held within the time set by statute, ten days after the arraignment. That meant we would have to be ready to go within a week. We knew that the media were gearing up to cover these hearings extensively; they would be beaming testimony into the homes of our jury pool. Our office has an official policy about cameras in courtrooms: don’t object to it. So I had no choice in the matter. This left no room for the fumbles or rough spots that in normal circumstances are routinely tolerated at an early stage of a case. No more flying by the seat of our pants.
I’d told Gil earlier in the week that we should assemble a team of experts from our office to analyze the case—a sort of war council. That way, deputies with different specialties could lend us their expertise for formulating strategy. Gil thought it was a good idea, and called a meeting for Saturday, June 25. On Friday, Gil and I hashed out who should attend. He first suggested Curt Hazell, the head of the Narcotics Unit. Hazell was an expert on search and seizure, and we needed someone who would help us deal with problems arising from the search of Simpson’s house.
I also wanted to hear from Lydia Bodin, our expert on domestic violence; she, I thought, might help us use Simpson’s history to show that Nicole’s murder was premeditated, rather than an impulsive act of passion. Lydia would team with Scott Gordon, a deputy whose experience in the Sex Crimes Division had led him on to a personal crusade against spousal abuse. He’d even drafted legislation on the issue.
To shore up the blood work, I wanted Lisa Kahn, the deputy who had given me tutorials in DNA on that no-body case I’d done with Phil. We still didn’t know if Simpson would try a mental defense, but if he did, I wanted to have someone in the wings with medical training—and Brian Kelberg, whom I had briefly considered as a trial partner, would be perfect.
Bill would be there, of course. And I was happy when Gil said that David should attend as well.
On Saturday morning, June 25, about fifteen deputies and brass all met in the conference room next to Gil’s office. Most wore jeans and workshirts, though I’d rejected my usual weekend attire of leggings, Reeboks, and an oversized T-shirt in favor of slacks and a blouse. While the clothes were casual, the atmosphere was tense.
“Go ahead, Marcia,” said Gil, abruptly cutting off small talk. “Brief us on what we have so far.”
I laid it all out, beginning with the centerpiece of our case: blood. That’s what the Simpson case would be about.
Nicole’s blood.
Ron’s blood.
O. J. Simpson’s blood.
Blood would tell the truth. I was convinced it would convict.
“Here’s how it breaks down,” I began, speaking from notes I’d scribbled on a yellow legal pad. “The police lab did DNA testing on the blood drops at Bundy leading away from the victims—and they all come back to Simpson. The bloody shoe prints to the right of those drops are a size twelve—Simpson’s size. The blood on the Rockingham glove seems to be a mixture of Ron’s and Nicole’s blood, and possibly Simpson’s. We’ll send the samples to Cellmark for more sophisticated testing.”
I glanced around the room to make sure I hadn’t lost anybody. Nope.
More results were coming in, I told them. There was a bloody shoe print on the driver’s-side floorboard of the Bronco. We were preserving it for shoe-print comparison before we did the DNA testing. The knit cap found between the victims at Bundy, I told them, was set to be examined for hair and trace evidence, but nothing had been done on it yet.
On the chalkboard mounted behind Gil’s seat, I sketched a diagram of Rockingham.
That’s
where Simpson parked the Bentley, I showed them.
Here’s
where Allan Park pulled his limo up to the gate. And
here’s
the back wall of Kato’s guest house.
They began pelting me with questions:
When exactly did Simpson leave for the airport?
Where did Allan Park first see the black male walking toward the door?
How could Kato not have seen him, too?
I could address some of these questions, but certainly not all of them. When I didn’t have an answer there would be an uncomfortable silence, then more questions, with a slightly more aggressive tone. In fact, even though many of the people in this room were my friends, the questioning at times was not entirely friendly. It wasn’t just that everyone was feeling the pressure. It wasn’t just that the reputation of our office was at stake. Maybe they wanted not only to see where the weak points lay, but to test
me
, to see if Marcia Clark could stand up to a pummeling.
“Give me a
break
,” I whispered to David when I finally got back to my seat.
We had to make a decision. What precise crime would we charge O. J. Simpson with? Three options were open to us: murder one, which required establishing premeditation; murder two, for which we would have to show intent to kill, although the killing could be on rash impulse; or manslaughter, which meant demonstrating an intent to kill mitigated by the heat of passion. The crucial question is whether the evidence shows a clear intent and decision to kill. I felt that it most certainly did. You could not look at those photos of the murder scene and think otherwise.
“I’d like to charge the defendant with two counts of murder in the first degree,” I said.
Not everyone agreed.
“You’re looking at an uphill battle to ask a jury to tag O. J. Simpson with anything,” said Peter Bozanich. Peter was director of Branch and Area. I respected Peter, who was among the best in sizing up the strength of a case.
“You got him, there’s no question about that,” he said, in a resigned, almost philosophical tone, “but the guy’s a hero, and people aren’t going to want to drop the hammer on him.”
Peter was right. I knew it. Hell, we all did. But I felt that as a matter of principle, we should ignore O. J. Simpson’s celebrity in our decision to charge. A defendant, regardless of personal popularity, should be held responsible for his acts.
Brian Kelberg felt that second-degree murder was the more legally correct choice. “I basically see this as a rage-type killing,” he said. “I think he did not go there planning to kill her.”
“But what about the fact that he brought the knife, the gloves, and the ski cap?” I countered. “Not to mention the fact that he conveniently had a flight to catch immediately afterward.”
“I think he went there intending to scare her,” Brian insisted. “And when he saw Ron Goldman walk up, he became angry and things got out of hand.”
That didn’t feel right to me. Simpson had packed a knife with a blade at least five inches long, along with cashmere-lined winter gloves and a ski cap—in the middle of June. This went beyond intent to scare. It was a plan to commit murder. It may well have been that the food run Simpson had taken with Kato was part of the planning, too. It seemed out of character for him to dash out for fast food with a houseguest
cum
lackey.
“Remember,” I told my colleagues, recalling what Kato had said about that night, “Simpson had never done that before. The whole thing has the feeling of an alibi setup.”
Gil looked to his two other top assistants, Frank Sundstedt and Sandy Buttitta, who hadn’t weighed in yet.
Frank was a big teddy bear of a guy with curly blond hair and a mustache. He was someone I’d grown to like and respect during my days in management. He really cared about the deputies and agonized like an overly concerned father over decisions affecting their welfare.
“First—at least, that’s what it looks like to me,” he replied.
Then everybody turned to Sandy. She was a strong, no-nonsense professional, the first woman to be appointed chief deputy. At that point, I’d had very little interaction with her, and had no idea what she’d say.
“I think it’s first-degree,” she said.
Gil’s silence was affirmation: we had a decision.
The case of Ron Goldman was a bit different. Nicole was obviously the intended target. Goldman, it appeared, was a visitor who happened onto the scene at the wrong moment. His death could have been classified as either first- or second-degree murder. But I was pushing for first-degree. “Remember,” I said, “the number and nature of his wounds alone show premeditation.” Everyone in the room understood what I meant: under the law, premeditation cannot be measured in time. It’s there or it’s not, even if it occurs mere seconds before the crime. The fact that Ron’s killer did not dispatch him with a single blow, but a series of them, to me showed deliberate intent.
“Also,” I continued, “it’s reasonable to assume that Ron’s murder was not the rash impulse of a jealous ex-husband, but the calculated elimination of a witness to Nicole’s murder.” That, of course, would also justify a charge of murder one.
No one objected. Most significant, Gil Garcetti once more tacitly agreed. There was a brief silence as we all recognized that the first momentous decision in this case had been made. We would charge Orenthal James Simpson with two counts of murder one.
Next item on the agenda: strategy for the prelims. The big question concerned how much evidence to put on. Normally, a preliminary hearing is a bare-bones production. The prosecutor submits just enough evidence for a judge to find probable cause that a suspect should be bound over for trial. If you go beyond that, you’re unnecessarily allowing the defense early access to your case and your strategy; the conventional wisdom says that you should make them work for it through discovery motions. But this case was anything but normal.
In effect, the defense already had access to our case: they were entitled to receive the grand jury transcripts. They’d be able to prepare themselves for most of the witnesses we intended to call. So now that we’d lost the advantage of a bare-bones strategy, I argued, we should present a relatively complete case—that way, we’d not only make sure that the public realized the strength of our case, but the municipal judge would feel more confident binding Simpson over for trial.
“Our evidence is strong,” I told my colleagues. “I think we should just lay it out there for the world to see.”
This meant that we would call the dog-bark and time-line witnesses for sure. And, of course, the blood witnesses.
Oh, God. That meant Dennis Fung.
“We’ll need to do some remedial work with the criminalists,” I mumbled, shuddering slightly at the prospect of watching Fung shuffle through his reports in front of millions of viewers. Still, he had collected the evidence. I’d have to spend some serious prep time to whip him into shape before the prelim. But there was no choice but to put him on.