I never worried that I’d do my job so well that an innocent man would go to jail. There were too many checks against such abuses. The grand jury wouldn’t return an indictment. A judge would throw out the case. And even if those system checks went haywire, there was a fail-safe: my own conscience. I could never throw myself into the pitched battle of a major criminal trial unless I believed in my head, heart, and soul that the defendant was guilty. When the Simpson case fell into my lap, I had been on the job for fourteen years. I had prosecuted literally thousands of defendants. I could feel a clench in my gut when I realized we had the right man.
By the time O. J. Simpson finally surrendered at his home the night of June 17, 1994, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was the one. That familiar twist in my stomach confirmed it. Even before the blood, we had a strong case. But the blood clinched it. His blood was on Nicole’s walk. Nicole’s blood and that of Ron Goldman were on the glove from Rockingham. My God, the trail of blood literally led to Simpson’s bedroom. From where I was sitting, it was dead-bang.
Somebody, probably Suzanne, had given me the tape of Robert Kardashian reading Simpson’s so-called suicide letter, a travesty I’d managed to catch for only a few seconds when it was broadcast live. I took it home and, on the Saturday after the chase, I ejected a Disney tape from the VCR in my living room, parked myself on the couch, and watched the whole sorry performance.
“Please don’t feel sorry for me… I’ve had a great life, made great friends. Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person.”
He sent his “love and thanks” to all his friends. He started ticking off golfing buddies. Golfing buddies!
Are you fucking kidding? Your children are left motherless and all you can talk about is yourself, the media, and your golfing buddies?
The only pain he could feel was his own. That kind of total preoccupation with self is the mark of a sociopath. I’d seen it before. These guys commit unspeakable acts and yet somehow things get twisted around in their heads so that they are the victims. Simpson’s behavior hardly surprised me.
The question being kicked around our office by the end of the week was whether or not Shapiro would try some kind of mental defense. Would he try to claim a temporary insanity that absolved Simpson of responsibility-switching the penalty from life in prison to an indeterminate spell in a mental hospital? Gil was convinced that Simpson would do this by asserting some Menendez-type plea; at the very least he would argue it was a crime of passion. Over the weekend, on This Week with David Brinkley, Gil said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point we go from ‘I didn’t do it’ to ‘I did it, but I’m not responsible.’ ” (It made me a little nervous that Gil was speaking so frankly to the media, but I trusted his judgment; I also understood that the defense, with its own outrageous pandering to the media, was forcing Gil onto the hustings.) David and I also thought there was a pretty good chance of a mental defense. I was actually hoping Simpson would try it. I had cut the legs out from under Robert Bardo, and I knew the drill-even a sociopath knows the difference between right and wrong.
Over the weekend, Simpson had been placed in the high-security wing of the Men’s Central Jail, under a suicide watch. Reporters were scratching and clawing for information about him. And Shapiro cheerfully obliged them by slinging them maudlin slops. Sunday was Father’s Day and Simpson, he said, had started to weep at the thought of not spending this day with his children. The press lapped that drivel right up. It was incredible. Here you had two people slaughtered like animals and yet the media coverage was actually creating sympathy for the suspect.
That weekend, I was working at home, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my laptop cradled between my knees. The phone rang. It was Shapiro.
“Hey, Bob, when’s the real lawyer coming in?” I needled him. On the surface it was good-natured, but after the chase-a debacle for which he bore no small responsibility-I really wasn’t joking. I figured that he’d be stepping aside to let a high-octane criminal attorney take over.
“I’m staying with this case, Marcia,” he said, seeming to ignore the taunt. “I’m in it to the end.”
“Stop it, you’re killing me,” I said. Now I got totally serious. “Come on, who’s the real lawyer going to be?”
“I mean it: I’m staying with the case.”
“Well, we’re filing the complaint on Monday. Are you going to ask for a continuance?”
He said they probably would. This was standard procedure. Defense attorneys usually try to postpone the plea to give them a chance to review the evidence and see whether there’s room for negotiation. And so I expected that when we all went down to Municipal Court, the hearing would last only long enough for the judge to set a new date for arraignment. From there, we would head straight back to the real show-the grand jury.
The next morning, David and I had taken our places at the counsel table when the bailiffs brought Simpson out of the holding cell. I didn’t have to look up to know he’d entered the courtroom. Spectators rustled in their seats. The reporters snapped to, straining forward to see the sheriff’s deputies and, finally, the prisoner enter the court. I raised my head and got my first glimpse of O. J. Simpson.
He looked like he’d been sleeping on the street. He wore a dark suit that seemed to sag on his body. In accordance with rules of the suicide watch, he wore no belt or shoelaces. His features were slack, his manner distracted. I suspected he was tranked. He looked half-angry, half-scared, utterly deflated. In the coming months I would watch an alert, carefully coached O. J. Simpson put on an affable, confident face for the jury and the world to see. And I would remember the way he looked this first morning. A common thug, collared.
Shapiro stood close to him, patting his shoulder, whispering in his ear, fawning. Seemed to me he wanted to be close enough to his client to make sure he was in the photos. The municipal judge, Patti Jo McKay, took the bench and we all sat down. When she asked Simpson if he was ready to enter his plea, I opened my calendar, ready to pick a new arraignment date. And to my shock, I heard Shapiro answer, “Yes, Your Honor, Mr. Simpson is ready to enter his plea.”
No continuance. The son of a bitch.
Had Shapiro deliberately misled me? Fortunately, an arraignment is a routine procedure that most prosecutors can do in their sleep. I looked down at the complaint:
Count 1: Orenthal James Simpson willfully, unlawfully and with malice aforethought murdered Nicole Brown Simpson on or about June 12, 1994, in Los Angeles County…
Count 2: Orenthal James Simpson willfully, unlawfully and with malice aforethought murdered Ronald Goldman on or about June 12, 1994, in Los Angeles County…
Everything was standard, except for one thing. David and I had carefully worded a clause invoking “special circumstances.” As I’ve explained, this means that the crime was particularly heinous-in this case a double murder. Invoking the clause allowed us to consider the death penalty.
“Orenthal James Simpson, is that your true name, sir?” I asked him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He mumbled “Yes.”
“To the charges stated in Counts One and Two of the complaint, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”
Simpson’s reply of “Not guilty” was jumbled. In fact, it was barely coherent.
Then Bob Shapiro did something that shocked me-something that prefigured the Grand Guignol that this case was destined to become.