The Search for Justice (28 page)

I had expected there would be competition between us, and I wasn ’t surprised or unduly alarmed when I started seeing the
signs. Competition is, as I ’ve said, as intrinsic to the nature of defense attorneys as their muscular egos.

In September, I was contacted by the editors of
Vanity Fair
magazine and asked if I would assent to an all-defense-team photograph, including lawyers, support staff, and investigators.
The portrait, to be taken by Annie Leibovitz, would be for the December “Hall of Fame” issue. I agreed, and on the appointed
day, as everyone began to gather at the office, and Leibovitz and her crew of eight or nine people spent the better part of
the morning setting up to shoot in the firm ’s law library, I got a call from Johnnie.

“Bob, I can ’t be in this picture,” he said. “Michael Jackson hates
Vanity Fair,
and he ’s said he doesn ’t want me to have any part of this.”

I was taken completely by surprise. But I knew that Jackson was a valued, longtime client, and Johnnie had to honor his wishes.
I realized that was why Carl Douglas and Shawn Chapman hadn ’t shown up yet, either.

When I apologetically repeated what Johnnie had told me to Annie Leibovitz, she said, “That can ’t be true about Michael Jackson
hating
Vanity Fair
—I ’ve just been contracted to do a cover story on him!”

Whatever the reasons, it seemed that no one on Johnnie ’s staff would be participating.

With the other lawyers, the office staff, and the investigators, there was enough of the Simpson defense team to make a decent
showing. But there wouldn ’t be a single black professional face in the picture. This wouldn ’t represent either the composition
or the spirit of the defense team. In fact, it would signal dissent among us. I saw that I had no choice. Over Lee Bailey
’s strenuous objections, and with great apologies to Annie Leibovitz and her hardworking crew, I canceled the picture.

Everyone who had assembled for the photo session was very disappointed. The lead lawyers had been in the spotlight for months,
and this would have been a chance for those who had received little or no public acknowledgment to be recognized for their
long days and weeks of hard work, and maybe even have some fun.

The following day was miserable for everyone, with tension and a new uncertainty permeating the office. In addition, there
were news reports that Johnnie had given interviews announcing that O.J. would testify on his own behalf. I was upset to hear
this. We hadn ’t even finished picking a jury yet, the evidence wasn ’t all in. It was only September. We were nowhere near
making that decision, or helping O.J. to make it.

That night I scheduled a staff party at a friend ’s home for a private screening of a new Tom Hanks film,
Forrest Gump,
and to celebrate investigator Pat McKenna ’s birthday. It was a long-overdue social break for all of us. Everyone but Cochran
attended.

I was so distracted the whole evening that at one point Jo-Ellan Dimitrius came up to me and said, “What ’s going on with
you, Bob? You ’re in awful shape.” Right then I knew I ’d picked the right jury consultant.

After Jo-Ellan and I had talked for a while, I realized that what was happening between Johnnie and me had to be confronted
and resolved. I headed for the phone and quickly arranged a meeting for the following morning.

Later that night, I ran into Michael Viner of Dove Books. Viner told me that he ’d be publishing a book soon by Nicole ’s
friend Faye Resnick.

“I just wanted you to know there ’s nothing negative in the book about you,” he said.

“Resnick can say whatever she likes about me,” I told Viner. “I ’m not on trial for murder. But my client is. At this point,
anything published having to do with this case raises the serious possibility of compromising his right to a fair trial.”

The next morning I began the meeting with Johnnie and our crew on a firm and somber note. Although Bailey had headed back
to Boston, Gerry Uelmen was on the speakerphone, and Jo-Ellan and her assistants were in the room, as were all the other lawyers
and investigators. I simply restated the facts of my being hired as lead counsel to conduct the defense. All decisions relative
to the case and to our client—and all public statements or interviews about those decisions—had to first go through me. As
to our client ’s testifying, the press didn ’t need to know each step of our decision making. Staking out a position in public,
before all the evidence was in, was unwise. Furthermore, and Johnnie agreed with this, the defense team not only needed to
show an image of solidarity, we actually had to
be
in solidarity with each other. The battle we were waging was daunting enough without faction fighting.

As we talked, the meeting relaxed into something more closely resembling a bull session, with everybody saying what was on
their minds. None of us could ’ve done this alone, we agreed. “It ’s almost impossible just to keep up on the reading,” Johnnie
said.

When we adjourned, I was glad we ’d all had the chance to air our differences, no matter the initial reason. The tension seemed
to have dissolved, and we all appeared to be on the same team again.

Later, I called Annie Leibovitz and once again apologized for wasting her time. She said I could make amends to her and her
editors if she could take my picture, alone, for the magazine ’s Hall of Fame issue. Mindful of O.J. ’s concerns about lawyers
wasting time and money, I checked with him first, and then agreed on the condition that it could be done easily and quickly.
She assured me that it could.

I met with her at the office, late on a Friday afternoon. I had boxed that week and was sporting a black eye. Because it looked
more like dirt on my face than anything heroic, I assumed Leibovitz would want to make it disappear with some kind of makeup.
After taking a look, she decided instead that it
was a good metaphor, and we got down to the no-time-wasted business of a fast photo session. No hair stylist, no makeup, no
jacket, and the office around me looking like a tornado had blown through it. In retrospect, maybe
that
was the metaphor. (We used the picture on the jacket of this book as well—but somebody cleaned up the eye.)

In late September, Tracie Savage, a reporter with Channel 4—KNBC, the local NBC affiliate—reported that DNA tests performed
on O.J. ’s socks found at Rockingham identified the blood as Nicole ’s.

When I heard Savage ’s report, I almost smacked the side of my head with my hand, the way you do when you come out of a swimming
pool with water in your ears and a ringing in your head. If this information was true, I thought angrily, it had gone directly
from the police to a television reporter, completely bypassing the lawyers, the judge, and the discovery process. If it wasn
’t true, it was misinformation from an inside source and manipulation of a reporter.

The next morning there was a heated chambers conference with Judge Ito, who acknowledged, “If I was in your shoes, Bob, they
’d have to peel me off the ceiling.”

Marcia Clark assured us that the socks had not yet been sent to Cellmark for DNA testing. Only standard serology tests had
been done at the L.A.P.D. lab, and only she and assistant district attorney Lisa Kahn knew the results, which thus far excluded
O.J. and possibly included Nicole.

I told Judge Ito that I strongly suspected that Tracie Savage ’s information came from the Scientific Investigations Division
(SID) of the police department. He agreed to schedule an immediate hearing and brought in Michelle Kestler from the L.A.P.D.
crime lab (whose husband was a police detective) and Donna Jones, the deputy city attorney (who is married to a police captain).
Kestler, who adamantly denied being the source of the leaks, said that the socks would be sent out for DNA
testing on Monday, September 26, which coincidentally was the first scheduled date of jury selection.

Although I wanted the attorney general ’s office to investigate, Ito felt that response was too harsh. Instead, he instructed
Donna Jones to begin an internal affairs investigation. The following night, KNBC ’s Tracie Savage not only stuck by her story
on the air but embellished it: Both types of DNA testing had been performed on the blood on the socks, she reported, and the
blood was unquestionably Nicole ’s.

Judge Ito was livid. Publicly chastising Savage for inaccurate and false reporting, he threatened to keep the news media out
of the courtroom entirely. Again, this wasn ’t the remedy I sought. I wanted to know where the false information was coming
from and stop it, arguing that it was maliciously interfering with O.J. ’s right to a fair trial. The leaks always seemed
to come after we ’d had a good day in court with favorable rulings.

When Ito continued to take off on the media ’s irresponsible behavior, I said, “You know, this may not be a media problem
at all. In fact, the media may be relying on what they believe to be good sources.” I made it clear on the record that I didn
’t believe the leaks were coming from the district attorney ’s office, and I knew they weren ’t coming from us. I didn ’t
say outright that the L.A.P.D. was conducting a deliberate misinformation campaign to taint the jury pool, but I did continue
to insist that there be an official investigation. Ito said that he ’d take it under advisement. And he let us know that he
was still reconsidering the whole idea of the media in the courtroom—television cameras in general and Channel 4 in particular.
One ultimate result of the furor over the news leaks was that Judge Ito issued an order that all test results go directly
and only to him.

A few days later, I spoke with an old friend who had met with the news director at KNBC. The employees of the station absolutely
stood by their story, which they insisted came from a source inside the police department.

“I guess they ’d rather stick with their story—and call the judge and the district attorney liars while they ’re at it,” I
said.

“Evidently so,” said my friend. “They ’re acting like their job is to make the news, not report it.”

I could see that this kind of thing frustrated O.J. to no end. The degree to which wrong information was repeated, or confidential
information was leaked, simply confounded him. As the jury selection and pretrial hearings progressed, he became more knowledgeable
about the legal issues and more active in decision making. Watching him, I understood how it was that he had come so far from
his difficult beginnings. He would be the first to argue that he wasn ’t a scholar, but he had an acute and curious mind,
and an obvious vital interest in how his case was being conducted.

Yet O.J. was also keenly aware of what was happening in the “outside world,” especially with his friends. He grew quite agitated
and sad when Bobby Chandler, an old Buffalo teammate and one of O.J. ’s dearest friends, was diagnosed with inoperable lung
cancer at the end of September.

Throughout the early days of going in and out of O.J. ’s office at Kardashian ’s, I would often run into Bobby Chandler. He
was a spectacular man, a gifted All-American with great style and humor who had become a lawyer, practiced for a short time,
and then pursued a broadcasting career. He understood the law; but more important to all of us, because he visited the jail
almost religiously, he understood O.J.

Not yet fifty—and looking much younger—Chandler seemed the least likely candidate to be diagnosed with a terminal illness.
He never smoked or drank, he worked out regularly, and he seemed a source of boundless positive energy. O.J. told me that
four of their Buffalo teammates had died of cancer, and there had been some speculation about toxic material adjacent to a
practice field. In spite of his diagnosis, Chandler was about to undergo an arduous chemotherapy regimen in hopes of arresting
the progress of the disease, if not its ultimate outcome. O.J. was distraught with worry for his friend, who had been so stalwart.

“He ’s been so great to me,” he said. “Now he needs me, and there ’s nothing I can do for him from in here.”

As we continued to argue the pretrial evidentiary motions, we focused on a second Rockingham search warrant that had been
issued three weeks after the murders. The warrant had turned up two home video cassettes with notes on each, written by Nicole.
“O.J., it ’s probably too late, but I thought you ’d want to have these,” she had written. The videos were taken during O.J.
and Nicole ’s wedding, and the births of Sydney and Justin.