I’ve thought a lot, since, about how I would have handled that courtroom if it had been me sitting on the bench. I know for sure I would have limited the scope of cross-examination. If direct went “1, 2, 3,” I wouldn’t let cross go “1, 2, 3… 3½.” I would have allowed no speaking objections. You know, the kind where the attorneys try to elaborate their objections with rhetoric. “Objection, Your Honor. Ms. Clark is trying to mislead the court… .” It’s “Objection”—
period
. I would have ruled from the bench and taken no sidebars on the matter. “You stay there, Mr. Bailey. I’ve ruled!” If a lawyer repeatedly asks improper questions, I’d object on my own: “Don’t do it again, Mr. Cochran. If you do, we’re gonna talk contempt here.” Flout my orders and you get reamed in front of the jury. I’m going to make it hurt, and hurt bad. Pretty soon lawyers get it through their head that it’s not worth their while to pull a fast one. I’d be one of those judges everyone might hate, but I’d treat everyone the same.
At any rate, the Lange cross was incredibly frustrating for me. And even more so for Chris. The frustration, in fact, led him to do something really stupid.
One day after court, Chris dropped by my office and said, almost offhandedly, “I just thought I should let you know that I was talking to Geraldo.”
You what?
“I just told him I’d like the officers to be more aggressive.”
I couldn’t believe it. The whole team had a pact that we wouldn’t speak to the press. It went without saying that a prosecutor shouldn’t be calling a talk-show host to vent.
“Chris,” I said quietly. “Please tell me you didn’t. That’s all we need, for the cops to hear you complaining about them on national TV.”
Chris normally showed much better judgment. This slip had me a little worried. I thought maybe the strain of taking on Johnnie was getting to him. Cochran never missed an opportunity to jerk his chain, and Chris just couldn’t let it slide. He’d managed to keep his temper in check until, during Johnnie’s cross of Tom Lange, Cochran insisted on slipping in innuendos about Faye Resnick.
“Did you learn,” he asked Tom, “whether or not Faye Resnick moved in with Nicole Brown Simpson on Friday, June 3, 1994?”
I objected: this was hearsay. Ito agreed.
But Johnnie kept pushing. “Did you ever ascertain whether or not Miss Nicole Brown Simpson had anyone who lived with her in the month before June 12 other than the children?”
“Yes.”
I objected again. Ito sustained the objection once more, but Johnnie rode right over him.
“Did you find out at some point… that Faye Resnick moved in with Nicole Brown Simpson on or about June 3, 1994—”
“Same objection,” I interjected. “Hearsay.”
This time, for reasons known only to Lance, I was overruled.
“This is what I had heard, yes,” Tom replied.
Johnnie was about to pursue this when Lance took the initiative and called us to a sidebar.
“Is this a disputed fact?” Ito asked me.
I was so furious I could hardly speak. But I managed. “It doesn’t matter whether it is a disputed fact or not,” I said. “We have all kind of slop in the record now that has been thrown in front of this jury through counsel’s method of cross-examination by saying, ‘Have you heard this?’ ‘Do you know about that?’ . . .”
Johnnie certainly knew he was on shaky legal ground. So he tried a diversionary tactic: attacking us personally.
“They obviously haven’t tried any cases in a long time,” he said, referring to Chris and me, “and obviously don’t know how, but
this
is cross-examination.”
Chris blew up.
“
Who
is he talking about, doesn’t know how to try [a] case?” His voice was soft but the undercurrent of fury was palpable.
“Wait, Mr. Darden,” Lance warned. He’d made a rule that only one lawyer per side could speak to an issue.
Chris didn’t pay any attention to him.
“Is he the only lawyer who knows how to try [a] case?”
Lance had heard enough. “I’m going to hold you in contempt,” he said.
“I
should
be held in contempt,” Chris threw back at him. “I have sat here and listened to—”
“Mr. Darden, I’m warning you right now.”
“This
cross-examination
is out of order,” Chris continued.
Ito excused the jury. Then he turned to Chris again.
“Mr. Darden, let me give you a piece of advice. Take about three deep breaths, as I am going to do, and then contemplate what you are going to say next. Do you want to take a recess now for a moment?”
“I don’t require a recess,” Chris replied.
“. . . I have cited you. Do you have any response?”
“I would like counsel, Your Honor.” Meaning: I need a lawyer.
Ito told him he could have it. I figured I’d better step in here.
“I would like to be heard in Mr. Darden’s behalf,” I said. Lance asked if that meant I was representing him, and I said it did.
“What we are all concerned about here, Your Honor,” I explained, “is that there is a method of cross-examination that is being conducted by Mr. Cochran that has—”
But Lance cut me off. “That’s not what I’m interested in, Mrs. Clark.” Ito was fixated on one thing: bringing Chris to heel with an apology. “When I invite counsel to take three deep breaths and think carefully about what they are going to say to the court next,” he said, “that’s an opportunity to say ‘Gee, I’m sorry. I lost my head there. I apologize to the court. I apologize to counsel.’ When you get that response, then we move on. Do you want to fight with the court some more? You are welcome to do so.”
He declared a ten-minute recess and told us to think things over.
Back at counsel table, Chris and I huddled. One look at him and I knew that taking deep breaths and apologizing was the furthest thing from his mind. Chris needed real representation now. I told him I could have the office call county counsel. “In the meantime,” I said, “shall I act as your attorney?”
He thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Just don’t get me arrested,” he said.
When Ito reconvened the court, I asked for a continuance, so Chris could get a county lawyer and a fair hearing.
Denied.
“This is civil contempt, Counsel. It has to be adjudicated immediately, unless you want to make it a criminal contempt and have a jury trial…” he informed me.
“Can we use the same jury, Your Honor?” I quipped lamely.
Lance was not amused. “I’ve offered you now three times an opportunity to end this right now.”
I had to think fast. If I let Ito believe I had advised Chris to apologize and he had refused, Chris would be in the hot seat alone. I could not do that to my partner. The only other way I saw was to take the heat myself.
You want to play, Lance? Let’s play
.
Very calmly—at least I was hoping it looked calm—I began removing my jewelry. First a gold bangle bracelet, which I slid down my wrist and laid unobtrusively on the table. Then my Citizen watch. I flashed momentarily on that night so many years ago when I was collared by the narc in the Ban-Lon shirt. Well, here it was: my belated bust. On national television.
I was just as scared now as I had been then. Would we be spending the night in a holding cell? I wondered. The deputies would certainly find accommodations away from the general population. Wouldn’t they? I’d need to make arrangements at home. But I couldn’t say where I was. “
Mommy’s in jail”?
I felt that sickening anxiety brought on by a fall from grace.
Lance knew very well what I was doing, and I’m sure he was panicking as he realized this was no bluff. Still, we were acting like a bunch of cranky children. How far would this go?
From somewhere out in the audience someone called out, “Jesus Christ!”
It was Gerry Spence, the Wyoming defense attorney whose frontier-philosopher routine had made him a regular on the talk-show circuit.
“Now
there’s
a candidate for contempt,” I muttered under my breath.
Lance found himself in a game of chicken, and I think he knew he’d blink before I would. He began to ease his foot off the accelerator. “Miss Clark,” he said, “all levity aside, I’ve offered you now three times an opportunity to end this right now. This is very simple. And perhaps if Mr. Darden had the opportunity to review the transcript that I have before me, he would see the wisdom of that.”
Seeing the transcript would not only help us assess our chances if we challenged the contempt order, but, much more important, it might give us a half-respectable way out of this mess.
“Why don’t we review the transcript, Your Honor?” I agreed.
We went to sidebar. Bailey joined us there. “Apologize, Chris,” he advised him sincerely. “It’s not worth your bar ticket.”
I had to agree. I was looking over the transcript and I didn’t like our chances. We had taken this far enough.
“It ain’t worth it, G,” I told him.
I think by this time Chris’s anger had cooled. He seemed grateful for a way out.
“It appears that the court is correct, that perhaps my comments may have been or are somewhat inappropriate,” he told Ito. “I apologize to the court. I meant no disrespect… .”
When Ito returned the apology, I was relieved, but also a little disgusted. After all, it was Johnnie who’d behaved outrageously. But it was Chris who’d had to fall on his sword.
On my way home that night, I paged Chris from my car phone. A few minutes later he called me back.
“Clark, what do you want?” he yelled. I could hear the noise of the freeway behind him. He was on his car phone, too.
“Hey, is that any way to talk to your attorney?” I joked.
“Well, my attorney sold me down the river, remember? Have I told you you’re fired?”
“Well, you can’t fire me—I quit! Besides, you haven’t paid me. That’s the last time I take on a criminal defendant without a retainer.”
“Pay you?
Pay you?
I’ll pay you, Clark. You’ll find a bag of ‘Snack Ems’ on your chair in the morning. Consider yourself overpaid.”
By now we were both convulsed with laughter. Then Chris sobered up and in a sweet, almost childlike way asked, “Did you really mean that?”
“Mean what?”
“Taking off your jewelry and all that?”
“Of course I did,” I told him. “You know I got your back, G.”
Johnnie was still hammering away at Tom Lange when the defense team dropped another bombshell on us. Rosa Lopez, the mystery alibi witness to whom Johnnie had alluded several times in his opening statement, was about to flee the country. He had to get her into court. Now!
The first we’d heard of this shadowy figure was a two-page statement the defense had given us only minutes before Johnnie’s opening. Lopez’s statement was, to be sure, short on details. She was a Salvadoran maid who worked for Simpson’s neighbors. Rosa claimed to have been out walking her employers’ dog at around ten, and reported seeing Simpson’s Bronco parked by the curb at 10:15. Since that was about the time the dog started barking at Bundy, her story, if true, would blow a big hole in our case.
But was her story true? We strongly suspected that it was not. First tip-off: Lopez had not offered this information to police, who canvassed the neighborhood immediately after the murders. Then we did a little digging into Lopez and discovered that she had been friendly with Simpson’s Israeli housekeeper, Michelle.
Michelle was, by all accounts, fanatically loyal to the defendant. And she’d had a rocky history with Nicole. When the cops were called to the Simpson house the night of the New Year’s Eve argument, it was Michelle who’d tried at first to persuade them to go away. Then she’d actually come out to the police cruiser, where Nicole had taken refuge, and tried to pull her back into the house.
Later on, Michelle had locked horns with Nicole in an incident involving the kids. Sydney and Justin had tracked dirt into the house. Michelle scolded them, and that provoked an argument with Nicole—who slapped her. So there was no question as to where Michelle’s loyalties lay.
According to the story the defense was handing out, Rosa had told Michelle about seeing the Bronco at the curb, and Michelle insisted that she get in touch with Simpson’s attorneys. Think about this for a moment. Lopez’s statement comes in suspiciously late. It includes exactly
one
firm detail—which just happens to be a key exoneration point for the defendant. The witness is friendly with the defendant’s devoted maid. This had all the earmarks of a defense plant.
Lopez’s testimony wasn’t scheduled to come up until the defense put on its case; we thought we’d have several months to do some more checking on her. Now, her supposed threat to leave the country spiked that plan: Johnnie wanted to call her in to preserve her testimony.
We saw the timing as one more low trick. The defense suspected that Rosa was a serious flake and they were afraid of how she would play as a witness. Rather than take a chance with her during their casein-chief—and giving us the opportunity to investigate her and prepare our cross—they wanted to do a dress rehearsal in what is called a conditional exam, which is done outside the presence of the jury. If Lopez didn’t come across well here, she’d be buried in the middle of our case. If she was persuasive, however, they could bring her back later. And if she fled in the meantime, they could enter her earlier testimony into the record. For the defense it was a no-lose proposition.
For us, it was lose all around. Interjecting Rosa into the middle of the People’s case would not only break our momentum, but get the jury thinking about alibis. We had to stop it.
Lance ruled that we would examine Lopez out of the jury’s presence, so he could decide whether she truly posed a flight risk. That Friday, she took the stand. She was a sunken, peculiar little woman, wearing what appeared to be a purple velour jogging suit. She didn’t look particularly happy to be there. She’d come with an attorney.
Where
, I thought,
does a down-at-the-heels character like this one get the bucks to hire a lawyer?
Under Johnnie’s questioning, Lopez contended that because of her involvement in the case, she had lost her job and had to move out—and was about to return to her homeland. “The reporters wouldn’t leave me alone,” Lopez told the court in Spanish, through an interpreter. “I’m tired of looking at them. They have been harassing me.”