“I say we don’t call him,” I blurted. I looked around the table for reaction. Gil, as usual, was hard to read. Dan Murphy, one of the D.A.‘s top assistants, was leaning back in his chair, eyes turned to the ceiling, hand to cheek. Frank Sundstedt was slumped into his chair, hands folded together against his chest-his characteristic contemplative pose.
“Trial’s a long way away,” Frank said finally. “By the time you start picking a jury, this story won’t even be a blip on the screen. If we do turn up the knife, Camacho’s testimony will be important. I think we ought to preserve it, just in case he takes a powder.”
Frank had a point. If a witness testifies at a preliminary hearing, that testimony is usually admissible at trial even if the witness has absconded. That would be useful if by some chance we found the knife. Gil agreed: we’d put Camacho on. I understood their reasoning, but I doubted it would be worth the nasty hits we were going to take for putting on such a damaged witness. More specifically-the hits I was going to take. It was one thing to agree in principle around a conference table. But somebody has to stand up there with a straight face and present this opportunist as a witness for the People.
Our whole team worked like maniacs preparing for the prelims. I had no time to worry about how big the case was getting; it was all I could do to gather and organize all the material. After all, we had a week to do a job that normally we’d have had three months to complete. The day before the prelims were set to start was especially hectic. Shapiro filed his motion to suppress the evidence seized at Rockingham before Phil tried to get a warrant. We’d expected this, but just not so soon. So we got a judge to postpone testimony on the motion until we had some time to prepare. Then we went back upstairs to work.
We stayed until after nine on the eve of the prelims. I was sure that most of the press would have retreated to their respective hotel bars by then. Instead, as Suzanne, Bill, and I walked out the back of the CCB, we saw that the parking lot was more crowded than a tailgate party on homecoming weekend. For the past week, it had been jammed with vans, satellite dishes, and lunch wagons. ABC, NBC, CBS had all erected scaffolds that resembled medieval assault engines. The correspondents themselves, however, displayed the more modern enthusiasm of fans vamping behind the bleachers before the big game.
Suzanne wasn’t surprised: for the past few days her office had been handling hundreds of calls every hour, from every corner of the world. Just about all the callers, of course, wanted interviews.
Out of nowhere, a reporter with a video cameraman behind him shoved a mike in our faces.
“How do you feel tonight? Are you ready for court tomorrow? he asked.
Bill tossed off an innocuous one-liner as we hustled out of range.
I’d begun to realize that no matter what happened in court, the sheer amplitude of media coverage would distort these proceedings like never before. It made me feel out of control, angry and helpless.
I tried not to dwell on those things the next morning as I scrambled to get Matt ready for school and organize my thoughts at the same time. Just do what you always do, I told myself. I would repeat that many times to myself in the next year.
I arrived on time that morning. I believe I was even early. Bill and I had witnesses stashed all over the eighteenth floor and we ducked in and out of offices, touching base with them, reassuring them. Our last stop was the room used for press conferences. When Bill opened the door, I found myself face-to-face with a roomful of strangers. They were tense, their faces expectant. The victims’ families.
Usually, I meet with the next of kin almost immediately after I get a case. I go out to their homes or they come in to the office to meet me. Wherever they feel more comfortable. It’s important to make that connection right from the start. The unusual circumstances of this case had caused me to proceed more cautiously. For most of the first week after the murders, the case was not officially mine. It was a bad idea, I thought, to make contact and set about establishing rapport with these deeply hurt people when there was a chance that I might not be assigned to the case for keeps. The District Attorney’s office should convey to a victim’s family the feeling of strength and certainty. And that could not happen if they were being passed around from deputy to deputy.
The cops had interviewed them, of course. Gil had spoken to them to convey his sympathy. They had been commended to the care of our “victims’ coordinator,” whose job it is to accompany them to court and answer their questions. I had had brief phone conversations with the Browns and the Goldmans several days earlier, but only to introduce myself. I was hoping they would forgive the awkwardness of meeting under these circumstances.
On one side of the room were the Browns, awesomely handsome and erect. Lou and Juditha, flanked by Denise, Dominique, and Tanya. The suspect was their son-in-law, their brother-in-law. Exactly what stance they were taking toward him was still unclear to me. I found them very hard to read.
On the other side of the room stood the Goldmans. Ron’s father, Fred; his stepmother, Patti; and, of course, Kim, a reed-thin girl whose pretty features were red and swollen from crying. Looking at her made me recall the pang I’d felt upon seeing her brother’s face for the first time, in the coroner’s photos.
“What’s going to happen now?” asked Patti Goldman. She was a petite woman with large, lovely green eyes. Fred stood with his arm draped around her protectively.
“We’ll have some motions to begin with, nothing major,” I said. “The defense has filed a motion to suppress evidence, but that will be heard later during the hearing.”
“Suppress the evidence!” Denise Brown snapped. “What do you mean?”
I could understand why this idea offended her. She would later express her concerns to reporters in even stronger terms. “If he’s innocent,” she would ask, “why does he want to suppress evidence?”
“It’s a motion we see a lot,” I explained. “The defense claims the police got evidence illegally, and they’ve asked the judge to throw it out. We’re prepared for that and I don’t think there’s any chance that the judge will grant it.”
We talked a little more about the sorts of things that the defense was likely to do. No matter how hurtful it might seem, I told them, they shouldn’t take it personally.
Easy for me to say.
At 9:10 A.M. on June 30, 1994, Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell bade us good morning and looked over her courtroom. It was packed-the hottest ticket in Hollywood. Only ten seats were available to the general public, and the media folk had to scramble to secure one of the twenty-five seats set aside for them. But no one had to miss a thing: the best seat in the house was reserved for the cameras.
I’d never appeared before Judge Kennedy-Powell before, but I’d actually worked with her in the eighties when she was deputy D.A. I knew her as a hardworking, conscientious prosecutor who took her job very seriously. She looked at ease on the bench. But we couldn’t get down to business. Someone was missing.
“Well, I guess the defendant is not out yet,” Judge Kennedy-Powell observed.
“This is the quietest courtroom I’ve ever been in, Your Honor,” Shapiro quipped, trying to fill the dead time.
“I don’t know how long that will remain, but we’ll see,” Kennedy-Powell smiled.
At last, the door opened. The courtroom went silent. O. J. Simpson strode in, impeccably dressed, looking surprisingly fit. What an impressive transformation from the bedraggled, confused defendant who had appeared for his arraignment. His new role was the O.J. You Know and Love, Falsely Accused. And no Shakespearean actor would play this one better.
Judge Kennedy-Powell asked the record to reflect the defendant’s presence and asked counsel to present themselves.