Part 4 Storyville

This programme contains graphic violent scenes

and some strong language

DOG BARKS

We got this call, and I didn't know whose house it was.

I had never been on a call there, but there

had been ten, 11, 12 officers that had been

on various calls over the years.

Simpson is standing on the left side of the driveway, by the shrubs,

holding a baseball bat.

Nicole is sitting on the front part

of a 450SL Mercedes, windshield smashed in,

and she's bawling, heaving, I mean, almost uncontrollably.

He's got this look on his face

like he's going to do battle.

And I say, "Put the bat down."

And he's got this look, this rage look.

I said, "Put the bat down."

He didn't do it the second time.

I took out my baton, and I said, "Put it down now."

And then all of a sudden there was this calm

that came over his face, he dropped it and goes, "Oh, sorry, Officer."

And I went over, and she was still crying.

And I said, "Do you want to make a report?"

And she goes, "No."

I remember saying this because it was...

..I think expressing

my...displeasure

that she was allowing herself to be treated like this.

I said, "It's your life."

All right, let the record reflect that

we have been rejoined by all members of our jury panel.

Mr Darden, you may continue.

Did that search warrant authorise you

to drill a hole in a safe deposit box at Union Bank?

Yes.

-Whose safe deposit box was it?

-Nicole Brown Simpson.

Recognise that item?

Yes, it was in a sealed envelope

that was contained inside the safe deposit box.

The strategy had been to open the case

with a couple weeks of domestic violence evidence.

Did you remove that Polaroid from Nicole Brown's safe deposit box?

Yes, I did.

-Do you know who took that photograph?

-I did.

The swelling over her right eye -

that isn't how she usually looked, is it?

No, it's not.

We're going to present all that evidence

in an effort to knock Simpson

off the iconic pedestal on which he stood.

And you mentioned that pictures began flying off the walls.

How did they come flying off the wall?

OJ was walking up the hall, or up the staircase,

and he started throwing them.

He took them off the wall and started throwing them down.

-Did the defendant say anything?

-He wanted her out of his house,

and he threw her up against the wall, and the eyes got real angry.

It wasn't as if it was OJ any more.

'I was so disappointed.'

I just had no comprehension about it, no knowledge.

What did the defendant say

about your sister's weight while she was pregnant?

He used to call her a fat pig.

It's like finding out your wife's a bad person, you know?

'911 emergency.'

I heard a female screaming.

'Hello?'

I definitely felt for Nicole.

And then I heard someone being hit.

SCREAMS ON TAPE

'You know, I looked at him, "You're a pretty bad person."'

He's capable of outbursts.

SHOUTING ON TAPE

If you have the personality that you can physically abuse women...

'I don't want to stay on the line.

'He's going to beat the shit out of me.'

'..then, to me, you're capable of murdering her.'

She felt that she was in imminent danger,

and so we made it life... I made it life-threatening.

Miss Brown, directing your attention to June 12 1994,

had you and your parents and your sister

planned to go somewhere after the recital was over?

Yes, we did. We were going out to dinner.

OK. And where were you planning to go?

We were going to Mezzaluna restaurant.

The domestic violence testimony was the "why" of it.

-Did you invite the defendant to go to the Mezzaluna?

-No, I did not.

Did you hear anyone else invite the defendant to go to the Mezzaluna?

No, I did not.

Abusers blame their victims for the cycle of violence,

and on that particular night I think it all came to a head for him.

And he went to the recital, and the Mezzaluna

date was made, he was not included,

and then he tries to reach Paula later that night,

at 10.03, calling her twice, when he was in the Bronco.

She was not there.

And I think that was the last straw for him.

He was abandoned by Nicole, he was abandoned by Paula...

..and that's why we're here.

There's a connection with abuse, and could it lead to death? Sure.

But I don't think they proved that.

How many times did you hear her

shout, "He's going to kill me, he's going to kill me"?

Four or five times.

Let me tell you,

I lose respect for any woman that take

an ass-whupping when she don't have to.

Don't stay in the water...

if it's over your head. You'll drown.

They did not get it.

They just didn't care.

They got it. I mean, you know, it's not that complicated.

They didn't care. So...

Our hearts sank.

We thought, "We are really going to have

"a tough time if our jurors don't understand how this is relevant."

-SOBBING:

-The last thing I told her is that I loved her.

Knowing what I believed I knew, I still refused to testify.

But I get a call from Chris Darden. He said,

"Look, I know you don't want

"to testify, but I need you to come down here.

"I've got to ask you a couple of questions. Would you, please?"

I went, "OK."

Chris is sitting there, and he goes,

"Hey, man, how you doing? What's going on?"

30, 45 seconds goes by, someone went,

"Chris, you've got a phone call." He goes, "Oh, Ron, be right back."

And as I'm sitting there... I look in front of me, you know,

where Chris was sitting,

I see this book, and it has a big "Ron and Nicole" on it.

I open it up...

and I see these beautiful pictures of Nicole, with her modelling.

I keep opening it. Nice pictures of Ron.

And all of a sudden, I get to the actual homicide pictures.

Now, I've seen a million homicide pictures.

I've been in I don't know how many homicides

in my 15 years as an LAPD cop.

But all of a sudden you look at some pictures

of somebody you actually know.

Looked at those pictures. It changed me.

It changed me.

Everybody always just beating cops up.

Man, there's a lot of stuff that we see and we suppress.

I'll never forget the first homicide that I saw.

Oh, it was, um...

Excuse me.

It was a 19-year-old girl.

POLICE RADIO CHATTER

'We got a call.

'When I went up there, she was totally nude.

'She had been beaten to a pulp and just discarded in the parking lot.

'I was like, "What kind of guy would do this?"'

She was 19 years old. I couldn't even...I couldn't make out her face,

because it was beaten in so bad. Blonde hair.

And we got a call that the guy turned himself in.

We went and picked him up.

And I sat in the back seat with this guy.

I wanted to kill him.

I mean, all I thought about was this is somebody's

daughter, sister, whatever, that's never coming home.

Well, when I saw Nicole's pictures,

that was the same thing. I felt like that with OJ.

Only an animal would do something like this

to the mother of your kids.

Chris came back,

and when he sat down, I said, "I'm testifying."

He said, "What?" I said, "I'm testifying."

The People call Ron Shipp to the stand. Ron?

-To the stand, Mr Shipp.

-Raise your right hand, please.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony

you're about give will be the truth, the whole truth

and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

-Yes, I do.

-Please be seated.

'Traitor.

'Judas.'

Ronald Shipp.

R-O-N-A-L-D...

Becky called him Judas.

And what did the defendant say?

He kind of jokingly just said, "You know,

"you know, to be honest, Shipp" - that's what he called me, Shipp -

he said, "I've had some dreams of killing her."

This is my one moment to help put somebody

who's responsible for Nicole and Ron's murder,

put them in prison.

Do you and the defendant remain friends today?

Well, I still love the guy, but...

I don't know, I mean, this is a weird situation.

I'm sitting here...

-You say you still love him.

-Sure.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Did he tell the truth?

-Yeah.

'But anybody's that's credible, what do you have to do?'

Nothing further.

'You have to destroy them.'

You drink a lot, don't you?

I used to.

You've had a drinking problem, haven't you?

In the past I have.

They painted him out to be

an alcoholic, a womaniser.

Isn't it true, sir, that you were with a friend

-other than your wife?

-Yes, I was.

She was blonde, was she not?

-..who was a friend of my wife's, that's correct.

-I see.

And when you were at his home,

in the dark, with the blonde

who wasn't your wife, who's here in court,

you did ask that he bring you a bottle of wine, didn't you?

That's correct.

They destroyed him.

You're not really this man's friend, are you, sir?

Well, I guess you can say I was like everybody else,

one of his servants.

I did police stuff for him all the time. I ran licence plates.

You weren't the kind of friend that he would share

some private secret with, were you, sir?

Nothing except for the 1989...beating,

where he needed me.

When they started lying and they came

up with all these different things...

Isn't it true, sir, that you have told Mr Simpson's friend that

if Mr Simpson weren't around, you might have a shot

at Nicole Brown Simpson yourself?

No, I did not.

'He looked at me with that OJ Simpson smile.'

And, oh, I felt that hate come back. I felt it come back.

Mr Douglas, I hope you get your facts straight.

-Hold on, hold on.

-You're attacking me.

-Hold on, Mr Shipp.

This is sad, OJ, this is really sad.

Your Honour, I move to strike that.

'I was like, "This guy deserves to rot in hell."'

I do remember that I was told, you know,

after I did make that decision to testify, "You're not alone."

And I saw a list. They said, "These are the ones

"that are going to be testifying."

But after they got through with me,

everybody got amnesia.

I will not have the blood of Nicole on Ron Shipp.

I can sleep at night,

unlike a lot of others.

Mr Shipp...

I think that was the first person that

it became evident that everybody's expendable...

that if the Titanic sank, OJ was going to take

a life vest for himself but he's going to probably

take yours, too, just in case.

He was a fighter, he was a hustler, he was a competitor.

To survive, to get to where he was, he had to be good, and he was.

'I was struck by how engaged he was.'

..that when we were in court that day...

..you'll recall... Usually I'm sitting next to him when we

talk about that, you know what I mean?

In a lot of cases, the defendant is really sort of incidental.

You really have the sense that it's legal team versus legal team,

whereas I did have the sense that he was

a significant player within his own team.

OJ was brilliant in terms of how things played.

You say that the conversation with Mr Simpson was eating you up.

-Is that your statement?

-That's correct.

And did you hope to exorcise this pain from your body?

'He would give me more than a few tongue lashings

'to make sure that I would communicate

'in a way that would convey

'the image that he thought would be best.'

I remember I had some spittle on my mouth.

And he said, "Wipe your mouth! Wipe the spit off your mouth!"

He took me to the woodshed.

But I was 39 years old,

working on behalf of OJ Simpson and on television.

I'm living the life of all my colleagues would dream.

So, if I had to eat a little cheese

while being on TV, that was a small price for me to pay.

What was remarkable about him was his ability to turn on the charisma.

Like that. In a moment, he could smile.

He knew when the camera was on him in that courtroom,

and he would have a really benign expression.

And when the camera moved away from him, the face fell.

Everything that happened in that courtroom was by design -

who sat where, what colours they wore, what ties they wore.

Some days, it would be very irritating

to see the games the defence was playing

when they would put on those ties, that Kente cloth.

Stop it.

He's communicating to the jury.

I know Johnnie well enough. I know how he works.

Now the prosecution, Miss Clark. They're insulting you.

They are insulting the intelligence and the credibility of this jury

when they implied that we are in some way

trying to manipulate a predominantly black jury

by my wearing this African tribal tie.

LAUGHTER

That's an insult to this jury, and I am personally offended,

not only on my behalf, but also on the behalf

of my esteemed colleagues.

Mr Shapiro...

Mr Bailey...

..and Mr Scheck.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about cameras in the courtroom.

The camera is going to be out to about here.

It was supposed to be something that would

really elevate the country's understanding

of the American legal system.

Having the cameras in the courtroom

allows everyone to see how a trial really proceeds,

so then they see the actual evidence as it's being

brought out, and that's a good thing.

But that's not what happened.

There was no internet. There was no MSNBC. There was no Fox.

There was one cable news network,

and CNN covered the case gavel to gavel.

This case was everywhere.

The Simpson trial, by any standard, is a very, very big news story.

-In this country, the OJ Simpson...

-At the OJ Simpson trial today....

There are some big decisions to report in the OJ...

More on the OJ Simpson story tonight on Nightline

and tomorrow night on 20/20.

I think before OJ, what was the biggest story?

The Lindbergh kidnapping.

I can't think of one bigger than OJ where celebrity drove the story.

On the 3 Network Newscast,

the Simpson story has been given more time

in two months than any other topic this year.

There is a ravenous public appetite for this,

and the fact of the matter is it is one whale of a good story.

OJ's celebrity status clearly made it a big-time story.

But I think the fact that you had the interracial

angle there kind of juiced it and I think it had

a little extra pizzazz.

Here is a black man, in America, who is accused of killing a white woman.

Black hero killing white woman.

Black men killing white women, now that happens.

Nobody cares.

But black American hero killing white woman

was a giant thing.

It was branded as the trial of the century,

and my mother said, "If OJ had killed Marguerite,

"this would not be the trial of the century

"and his black ass would be in jail."

The Simpson case never felt like a real murder case.

It felt like a media circus.

I would walk out the door, and there would be

the press standing right there with microphones

and cameras, and I'm wearing a white dress,

and the press is holding microphones in my face

and saying, "What's the significance of the white dress?"

You know, it was clean.

'There was a certain amount of denial I was living in

'in terms of how much attention I would get at any given point.'

As you can see, Clark is smack dab in the middle of a national debate,

and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the OJ Simpson trial.

Here's more on the story from Judy Muller.

I really hated it.

The coverage of it became, you know, real infotainment.

OJ girlfriend in Playboy. OJ girlfriend before Grand Jury.

OJ Defence Tip Hotline unplugged.

OJ houseboy's girlfriend holds news conference.

The OJ stories are everywhere. So is the ET coverage.

Our job is to tell people what happened today

and what was important.

We have lost sight of giving people the news

in terms of its significance.

We're giving it to them in terms of what we think simply

is the most titillating and the most ratings-grabbing.

You think he'd be there for you the way you were there for him?

The celibacy thing I don't know about.

There was so much hand-wringing at TV networks

and at the New York Times.

One editor at the Times was quoted as saying,

"Now I find myself reading the Enquirer

"every week and chasing leads out of it."

I think we have to ask at what point

do what should be journalistic decisions

become marketing decisions.

I think a lot of the elitism went out of the mainstream

media at that point.

And they're like, "Well, if this is what people want,

"this is what we're going to give them."

Tonight, the woman who calls herself

Nicole Brown Simpson's best friend, Faye Resnick.

If Nicole was caught talking to the gas station attendant,

he would make it seem as if she was having an affair with him.

The cameras in the courtroom, I think,

gave too much notoriety to the witnesses.

-I heard a thumping noise.

-How many thumps did you hear?

Three.

If someone points him out and says, "There's Kato Kaelin,"

I'll say, "Oh, yeah," and I'll gawk like everybody else.

The same can be said for all the attendants in the courtroom.

Judge Ito!

I mean, I remember one day I saw Marcia and she said

Larry King was in chambers with Judge Ito.

Did you talk about him possibly appearing on your show?

They made everyone celebrities.

I understood money and attorneys,

reputation and celebrity. And who am I?

I'm a nobody.

I am nobody.

I began to get some insight into Fuhrman...

..and I said, "There's the jugular vein.

"All we have to do is cut that

"and there's nothing left of consequence."

'He was going to be their fall guy. We all knew it.'

They were going to go after him any way they could.

We heard from a guy that Fuhrman wanted a job in South Africa.

He wanted to be in a force where you could

shoot niggers and not get accused of anything.

Another witness said Fuhrman had pulled her over,

and when he did, a Corvette went by with a black

guy driving and a nice-looking white girl.

And Fuhrman spewed out a line of epithets

about how unconstitutional it was,

for this guy to be running around with a white woman.

These stories were hair-raising.

These allegations get more outrageous by the minute.

And I'm stricken again by the preposterousness

of the claims of the defence.

The People respectfully submit to the court

that what we have here is not a defence, it's a smear campaign.

We made him a central part,

consistent with the themes that he's the bogeyman.

Who is Mark Fuhrman, and what was he like?

I got a bunch of calls from black police officers

who said, "Fuhrman is absolutely not a racist."

His former commanding officer, who happens

to be black, told me that he was one of those

people who made the most remarkable

turnaround and became such an exceptional

detective and was really a good guy.

Joining us now is the former chief

of the Los Angeles Police Department, Daryl Gates.

We knew that the police department would take

a very defensive posture.

I think the record supports the fact that Mark was a good police officer,

that he was a nice young man.

"He was not a racist, he was this and that,"

the better he played to us.

You cannot take the words of a defence team as the gospel

in the city of Los Angeles.

There was one glove found at the crime scene.

Its match was found at his house,

bearing the blood and hair and fibre from Ron and Nicole.

How does it get more incriminating than that?

And that's why the defence knew they had to knock out that glove.

I had to go.

One way or another.

A truck hitting me. They would have done

whatever it took to get rid of me.

None of them thought that I planted that glove.

But they wanted the question to loom.

I am convinced that glove was placed there.

We call that framing a guilty man.

I mean, look, cops plant guns. Why do you think they plant guns?

They don't plant a gun on somebody who they

perceive as innocent, they plant guns on somebody

who they think is a dirt bag, and they had maybe

a questionable shooting, so they needed to place

the other gun in order to justify their shootings.

Mark Fuhrman picked the glove up at the scene,

put it in a baggie, and carried it with him

until he had a chance, with no witnesses, to plant it.

Do you realise how ignorant he sounds?

You have a man that's a famous attorney,

that has made up everything without a shred

of evidence, and then you have people

hook, line and sinker go, "Yeah."

I do not for one second believe

there was any sort of conspiracy here.

15 people were at the scene before Fuhrman got there

and viewed the left-handed glove.

The right glove was found behind the bungalow

when he ran into the air conditioner and dropped it.

Fuhrman would have been willing to sacrifice

his career and be convicted of a felony

when he didn't know who did it.

And on top of it, there's absolutely no motivation

for anyone to want to do this.

OJ had sinned...

having a consort, let alone a wife,

of white race.

It was a capital offence in Fuhrman's mind.

So that would justify to him whatever he did.

And he had come to OJ's house when Nicole complained to police,

as she often did, that OJ was going to beat her up.

When Fuhrman got there, they sent him home.

No complaint.

I think Mark Fuhrman dwelled on it and was inspired by it.

The People call Detective Mark Fuhrman.

Detective Fuhrman, can you tell us how you feel about testifying today?

Nervous.

Reluctant.

Can you tell us why?

Since June 13th, it seems that I've seen a lot of the evidence

ignored and a lot of personal issues come to the forefront.

'If I don't put him on, I basically can't

'put the glove into evidence.'

And if I don't do that, it looks like an admission

that it was planted.

So I had no choice.

What did you do next?

I asked Mr Kaelin if anything unusual happened last night.

He said he heard a crash or a thump on his wall.

He thought there was going to be an earthquake, and his pictures shook.

'He looks confident, he's tall, he's nice-looking, has nice hair.'

He came off as a nice guy to the jury.

I walked out of the driveway, and I started walking

in the direction going back towards Kaelin's room.

'They had no reason to doubt him.'

I continued walking down the path

and saw what now I identified as a possible glove.

If he were telling the truth, that would condemn OJ.

Thank you, sir, I have nothing further.

Early, early, early on,

Fuhrman had been a witness

that Lee staked out and he wanted to take.

I thought it required to dismantle this guy,

as he should be dismantled,

the work of somebody with a lot of cross-examination experience.

I was the only one on the defence team that fit that bill.

He's one of my heroes. F Lee Bailey.

Mr Bailey, what do you think

Sam Sheppard's chances are of going free?

Sam is free, and he's going to stay

that way and the odds are astronomical.

F Lee Bailey was one of

the great criminal advocates of his time, for sure.

He pioneered a lot of, you know, great techniques

as a criminal defence lawyer.

As far as I'm concerned right now, Lee Bailey

is the doctor, he's the surgeon,

and I do what he tells me.

'He was obviously a man of great ability.'

Detective Fuhrman, you went out there

in the alley, where you've never been before.

-Yes, I went that pathway.

-You walked there by yourself, correct?

-Yes.

-You had three detectives, who were armed,

in the house and didn't tell any of them

where you were going, correct?

That's correct.

'The purpose of a cross-examination is to peel

'back the witness's outer skin

'and let the jury see what's underneath.'

If it's a saint, you're going to get buried,

but if it's a Fuhrman, you'll be making money

every minute of the day.

Didn't it seem strange to you that after seven and a half hours

that glove still showed moist, sticky blood, Detective Fuhrman?

No, I knew nothing at that time when it was deposited or left there.

That's seven and a half hours.

That's enough for blood to dry, isn't it?

Under certain conditions, yes, I'm sure it would be.

Unless it's encased in plastic

or rubber and evaporation is stopped.

Wouldn't you agree?

No.

I thought Mark Fuhrman told the truth about what happened.

But F Lee Bailey, in his brief star turn,

knew how to pin him down.

Detective Fuhrman, when you said

earlier that you were concerned about matters

that you viewed as irrelevant,

that was about certain language that some find offensive.

Yes.

OK.

I tried to put my best demeanour forward

and as professional as I could, but it was pure survival mode.

Do you use the word "nigger" in describing people?

No, sir.

Have you used that word in the past ten years?

Not that I recall, no.

You mean if you called someone a nigger, you have forgotten it?

I'm not sure I can answer that the way you phrased it, sir.

I had a dozen witnesses that would bury him as a racist,

so I wanted him to lie.

You have difficulty understanding the question.

-I'll rephrase it.

-Yes.

I want you to assume that perhaps at some time,

since 1985 or '6, you addressed a member

of the African American race as a nigger.

Is it possible that you have forgotten that act on your part?

No, it's not possible.

No, I didn't. Yes, I did. Which one's right?

One you're lying, one you're a racist.

I whacked him with it really hard. In the face.

And you say on your oath that you have not addressed

any black person as a nigger or spoken about black

people as niggers in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman?

That's what I'm saying, sir.

So anyone who comes to this court and quotes you as using that word

in dealing with African Americans

would be a liar, would they not, Detective Fuhrman?

-Yes, they would.

-All of them. Correct?

-All of them.

I didn't use that word to people

face-to-face - suspect, police.

Had I ever used the word?

Well, obviously, yes.

That's all I have, Your Honour.

-All right, thank you very much. You're excused, sir.

-Thank you.

Once Judge Ito allowed race into this trial,

there was no escaping anything for me.

'I had a visceral reaction to Fuhrman's testimony.'

It just didn't seem credible.

Another cop, white cop.

Prejudice, bias.

Watch out.

The way you work around something like that

is to deal with the physical, objective evidence that we had.

This was a case about blood.

That was the heart of the case.

Simpson had cuts on his left hand, particularly on the middle knuckle.

-How did you get the injury on your hand?

-I don't know.

To the left-hand side of the bloody

shoe prints, walking away, there were five blood drops found.

Those blood drops were tested

through different DNA analyses and by different labs,

and it came back to Simpson.

Quite simply, that was Simpson's blood.

Inside the Bronco we have Nicole's blood,

we have Ron's blood smeared inside there, and we have OJ's blood.

2.1 miles away from the Bundy crime scene,

we've got blood drops in the driveway,

blood drops inside the house.

The best thing about scientific evidence

is that it's objective, it doesn't have biases

or prejudices. That's why we concentrated so much on DNA.

We went to two labs. First time ever that's been done.

We gave them sample after sample.

We gave the opportunity to prove that it wasn't OJ Simpson.

I could have been the biggest hero, perhaps

in Los Angeles, if not the country, if I could

have walked into court a week after he'd

been arrested, and said, "Guess what. It's not OJ Simpson."

But all the DNA evidence points to Mr Simpson

as being the person who committed those horrible crimes.

I think a lot of people stayed supportive up until the DNA.

I was 99.9% sure he was the killer right then.

As the results were coming in, Mr Simpson was saying,

"Look, you know, I can't explain it, but it's not true."

There were six lawyers in court,

sometimes seven, nine behind the scenes.

There were two lawyers, Barry and Johnnie.

Barry did the science and Johnnie did everything else.

And even Barry did everything else.

He had a single-minded focus and purpose,

and he emerged over the course of the trial

as second chair in the case.

-Good morning, Mr Fung. How are you, sir?

-Morning.

My favourite lawyer was Barry Scheck.

He was the most colourful. I thought he was brilliant.

Why don't we talk about the envelope for a minute?

There was a key piece of evidence,

which was the envelope that Ronald Goldman was bringing back to Nicole,

and there was some foot impressions in blood on the envelope.

Mr Fung, when you are collecting an item

which could contain fingerprints,

you would not touch that item with your bare hand, would you?

I would try not to.

Well, you say you try not to. It would be wrong to do that,

-wouldn't it?

-Yes.

We had looked at hours and hours and hours

of news footage of Mr Fung and Miss Mazzola

picking up items of evidence at the crime scene.

Did you touch that envelope with your bare hands

while collecting it, Mr Fung?

No.

Sure of that?

Yes.

I'd like to show you this piece of videotape, Mr Fung.

There. There.

How about that, Mr Fung?

-Is that a question, Mr Scheck?

-Yes. How about that picture, Mr Fung?

Does that refresh your recollection

that you took the envelope from Andrea Mazzola with your bare hand?

It could be anything.

They called it a Perry Mason moment. It was just a good impeachment

of the witness, but in some ways it really

encapsulated the problem that they'd used

terrible methods in terms of gathering

this evidence and potentially cross-contaminating

it and destroying it, it was very precious crime scene evidence.

I found that the specimen handling procedures

were done in such a manner that there's

a tremendous risk of the potential of cross contamination.

Something we'd never do unless you absolutely have to is cover a body,

because of contamination.

A sheet was over the body. You recall seeing that?

I believe it was a blanket, yes.

Do you know where that blanket came from?

I believe the inside of the house.

And can you tell us, Detective, who took this

blanket out and put it over the body? Who did that?

I did.

We have to make some decisions to protect the evidence.

Cameras were looking right down

on the crime scene, all the evidence, the bodies.

As a general principle, as a criminalist,

you try at all costs to avoid taking an object

that could have lots of hairs and fibres on it

and putting it right into the middle of a crime scene, don't you?

-That's correct.

-That's a terrible mistake

from the point of view of a criminalist, isn't it?

Yes.

Over the past few days, the defence has chipped

away at the growing presumption of OJ Simpson's guilt.

The way evidence was collected, processed, stored

gave rise to reasonable question as to whether

something wrong could have happened.

You did not change gloves

between the collection of each sample, did you?

Not that I can recall, no.

Dennis Fung was a definite weak link.

This kid, he tries, OK? They ripped him up terribly.

On July 3rd, you saw blood on the gate

that you collected.

Yes.

Let's look back at the picture of the gate on June 13th.

Where is it, Mr Fung?

I can't see it in the pic... photograph.

'We don't know what happened to that blood.'

All I know is while I was listening,

they were saying they took a picture where

there was no blood on the back gate

and then, a month later, there was some blood.

Why it didn't get picked up, why it didn't

get collected, difficult to explain.

In the fog of war, people on the scene

and all the activity going on around it,

things get missed.

It is my opinion that...that the bloodstain contained EDTA.

EDTA is a preservative that was added

to the blood samples taken from Simpson

and the victims, and if EDTA is present

on the evidence, the defence says the blood may have been planted.

In your blood right now there is a low level

of EDTA, because it's in everything you eat,

it's in your laundry detergent, it's everywhere.

You're going to find EDTA no matter what you do.

But the defence is trying to insinuate that

somebody took the blood that had been drawn

from Simpson's arm and took that test tube

and sprinkled it all over the crime scene.

And it's ridiculous.

When you took OJ's blood sample,

you were at a place called Parker Center?

-Yes, sir.

-What type of security did you use for that blood vial?

I placed it in a manila envelope,

maintained control of it and hand- delivered it to the criminalist.

Where was the criminalist?

At Rockingham.

You're bringing the suspect's blood

back to a crime scene where we're collecting blood?

Really?

How many times have you taken blood

from Parker Center out to a crime scene?

I don't know. This may have been the first time. I don't know.

I can't recall right now any other times that I've done that.

If you're a juror who has grown up in Los Angeles

and spent your life hearing that the LAPD

is capable of doing anything to a black person

and you hear that, you've just been handed some doubt.

When did we start carrying blood in our pocket?

When did our SID lab stop wearing gloves?

When did we not book stuff in a timely fashion?

That... There's no rationale for that.

We had, I think, a pretty good demonstrative of a black box.

'The idea was that certain crime-scene evidence

'came in and the black box was the LAPD

'and the way they handled the evidence,

'and on the other side were all the results

'from Cellmark, the FBI, the DNA laboratories.

'It was pretty simple when you broke it down.'

Garbage in, garbage out.

I mean, you cannot go back and say,

"Well, maybe they planted evidence on the glove,

"maybe on the back gate. Oh, there's blood missing. Big deal."

How can that be a big deal?

Scheck was very disingenuous.

I mean, EDTA, missing blood, coincidence?

Corroboration.

Something is terribly wrong.

It was absolute nonsense.

-INTERVIEWER:

-You believe that that blood was planted by the LAPD?

You know, it's not my job to believe or not believe.

Could the police officers in Los Angeles

have planted evidence against Mr Simpson

in this case to improve their chances of winning?

You know, there was certainly good evidence

to support that hypothesis.

-MARCIA CLARK:

-Barry Scheck really was an expert.

Can you remember the whole business

about development length and the notion of controls failing?

He knew that so much of what he was trying to show

with these witnesses was just garbage.

Mr Yamauchi opened up the reference tube

in the morning and spilled out the blood.

It was unethical.

He argued things he knew were not true,

he knew could not be true.

The most likely and probable inference

is the one that is not for the timid or the faint of heart.

Somebody played with this evidence!

And there's no doubt about it.

Just so I'm clear,

you believe that all the blood evidence in the case...

You know, you're asking me this question, do I believe...

Think, you know, is not...

the... Because you're...

The... As you know from meticulously researching

this case, and this has been written about,

we presented, you know, sound arguments

and evidence to explain each piece of this evidence

and how it got there.

You know, I'm not omniscient.

Do you think you did what you needed to do?

I did the best I could.

'It's the best defence money can buy, and that's very expensive -

'for OJ Simpson, an estimated 50,000 a day.'

OJ had money to spend

and a willingness to spend it on his own defence.

This was the first for me. Sui generis. One of a kind.

He'd been in jail two or three days, tops.

The first thing he wanted to do is to make sure

that we started marketing and merchandising

and generating a lot of money.

Because OJ was not convicted of any crime

and autographs was his normal business...

..he was allowed to still sign autographs in jail.

Rather than taking a jersey into the jail

to be signed, he would take a number in,

like this, he would sign the number, and then the number would be put

onto a jersey like this.

Rather than being able to take in a whole football,

he would take in a panel.

He would sign the panel, then the panel would be

sent in to the company, then you'd have a football.

I'm not sure what drove the market, but it was driven.

It was nonstop.

There were times he'd sit there and go through 2,500 cards

and then say, "OK, so 2,500 cards times 25."

He'd run the math.

And he said, "Not bad."

When he sat in jail, we did three million dollars in autographs.

It just went and went and went.

There was no end.

Photos of he and Johnnie Cochran that he and Johnnie signed -

that's probably the only item that I did and I looked back and thought,

"Man, this sucks. I can't believe we did this."

The Goldmans were screaming,

but you're innocent until convicted.

What was found on the glove at Rockingham?

Simpson's blood, Nicole's blood and Ron's blood.

That glove is now tied in to three people

that can only intersect when they're bleeding.

That might be a timeframe that might be a little

difficult to put together unless you are

killing two people and cutting yourself.

Whoever wore that glove killed those people?

Yes.

I'd like to show you a pair of gloves.

Showing you People's 164A.

That is an Aris leather light glove

that was an exclusive glove for Bloomingdale's.

And what is the size?

Size is extra large.

Is that a Bloomingdale's credit card sales receipt?

-Yes.

-And is there a signature on the credit card receipt?

-Yes.

-Can you read that signature to us?

Nicole Brown.

It was later in the afternoon, and

the person who they had giving the testimony regarding the glove...

Wait, may I try this on?

'..you could see where it was leading up to.'

So, this is an extra large glove?

Yes.

Extra large is kind of small?

No, but they stretch.

'Obviously, it was too big.

'At 24 years old, I could see this is a trick.'

Don't fall for it.

'We can see that that glove is big on his hand.

'You don't have to do anything.'

That afternoon I got a call from Marcia,

basically affirming the game plan, "We're not

"trying the glove on, right?"

There's too much of a gamble here. It's shrunk,

he's probably been working out his hand.

Absolutely not.

I went over to him and said, "Chris,

"you know you're a good ship, but you've got the balls

"of a stud fieldmouse.

"That glove won't fit OJ, and if you don't

"show the jury that, be it the fact, I will."

Chris says, "I want to do it."

And I told him in no uncertain terms why we should not be doing this,

and he said, "If we don't, they will."

And I said, "Then let them. And we can show why it was

"a bullshit experiment, it would never work.

"Between the shrinkage and the latex,

"it's never going to fit him the same way. Don't do this.

"Don't do this."

It was the biggest fight Chris and I ever had.

Darden, I think, felt, "You know, I've been pushed

"around in this courtroom enough,

"I've been made to feel small."

You could see the disaster coming.

There's a camera to our right watching everything.

Johnnie comes back from side bar and says,

"OK, guys, they're going to ask OJ to try on the gloves.

"I don't want anyone to react."

We've been rejoined by all the members of our jury panel.

Mr Darden, do you have any further questions of Mr Rubin?

Just a few, Your Honour.

Your Honour, at this time, the People would ask

that Mr Simpson step forward and try on the glove

recovered at Bundy as well as the glove recovered at Rockingham.

He can do that seated there?

'You could hear a pin drop.'

OJ was initially seated, putting on the first glove.

I'm handing Mr Simpson the left glove from Rockingham.

And right when it was clear it did not fit,

OJ goes into Naked Gun mode.

He stands up and shows his hand, and that's when he's now, "OK."

The guy's an actor, for God's sakes.

He's playing to 50 million people.

Mr Simpson?

All right, records reflect that Mr Simpson has both gloves.

What was he going to do?

Make a good-faith effort with plastic over his hands?

All right, will you show that to the jury, Mr Simpson, and the bench?

'The whole thing was so wildly ill-conceived,

'so totally inappropriate, so doomed to failure.'

The idea that Chris Darden would do this!

Mr Darden, would you wrap it up, please?

I looked at him like, "I can't believe you did it.

"You let him play you.

"You are the weaker one.

"And you didn't have to be."

You just take the gloves,

you take both attorneys and the deputy, and the suspect

and you go into chambers. And you do it on the record in chambers.

You don't do it with latex underneath.

My grandson couldn't have gotten

into those gloves with latex underneath.

Did you observe the manner in which Mr Simpson put the gloves on today?

-Yes, I did.

-You've seen people put gloves on in the past.

Yes, I have.

Did he put the gloves on in a manner consistent with what other...?

-Objection, Your Honour.

-Sustained. The jury observed

what happened.

It made the prosecution look silly.

Anything unusual about the way Mr Simpson put the gloves on,

-based on your experience?

-Objection, Your Honour.

-Sustained.

I felt sorry for him, because he looked weak.

I have nothing further.

This was THE definition of the trial lawyer's mistake.

Don't ask a question to which you don't know the answer.

He didn't know whether that glove fit.

Chris honestly felt that he would have

a dramatic courtroom moment by demonstrating the gloves fit.

It was an intuitive move on his part,

and it was a mistake.

Had OJ never put that glove on, I would have assumed that it fit.

I saw how big it was.

'And that's when I just knew that, you know, why is this guy here?

'He's ruining this case.'

Outside of Perry Mason, what could be more dramatic

than OJ Simpson showing the jury that the killer's gloves don't fit?

Prosecutorial attempts at damage control

might not be able to undermine the power of that image.

The funny thing about the glove, he didn't want to put them on.

I said, "Look, if you're worried about the gloves

"fitting or not fitting, just don't take your arthritis

"medicine, no big deal."

And he said, "Mike, my hands would hurt like hell."

And I said, "Why would they hurt like hell?"

And he - and you could just see the light

click, you know, just - ah, hands would get swollen,

couldn't bend his knuckles.

So, he didn't take arthritis medicine for, like, two weeks.

-Do you think that made a difference?

-Well, he couldn't bend his hands.

You tell me.

One day, a friend of OJ's, Alan Austin, came up to me,

and he said, "Answer a question for me.

"What would Mark Fuhrman have to know

"before he placed the glove there?"

Well...I don't know.

He said, "He would have to know

"that Orenthal James Simpson, a six-foot-two-and-a-half

"black guy living in a white world, had no alibi.

"He was in no woman's bed,

"he was in no restaurant,

"he was on no airplane, he had no alibi.

"So how could Mark Fuhrman place that glove if he didn't know that?"

And I said, "Are you telling me he's guilty?"

And Alan just nodded.

And the tears were streaming down my face.

And, suddenly, I felt cuckolded,

because, I'm telling you, if OJ had put

his face up to the glass to me and said,

"Something happened, and I just snapped, and I went crazy,"

I would've defended and forgiven him.

When he put his face next to the glass

and said, "I swear to God I didn't do this,"

and then it suddenly looked like he did,

I got angry, I felt wounded, I felt betrayed.

I know it sounds naive, I know it sounds stupid.

It just didn't occur to me that he could do THAT.

-TAPE:

-'Dr Golden dictating autopsy case

'94-05136, autopsy on Nicole Brown Simpson.'

Having studied the crime scene...

..I believe that Nicole had come out of the house expecting Ron Goldman.

She encountered OJ, then she was quickly subdued.

There was evidence of blunt force trauma

near the crown of her head, possibly consistent,

per the testimony of the coroner, with having

been struck with the butt end of the knife.

'Scalp bruised, right parietal.'

I believe she went down.

Four stab wounds, three deep, one shallow

were inflicted upon the left side of her neck.

Her head was on the first step above the lower

pavement level, where the rest of her body was.

I believe that Ron Goldman came upon the scene

after Nicole had been subdued.

As Ron came upon Nicole, as he moved forward

to the fallen Nicole, OJ grabbed Ron from behind

and probably had the knife at his throat.

Simpson's left hand was perhaps around Ron's chest,

and, in the course of a short exchange, which could

have included some sort of taunting, Simpson poked Ron in the right cheek

five times and then drew the knife blade twice across his throat.

I suspect Ron, in an effort to free himself

from Simpson's grasp, went to the hand

that was controlling him, Simpson's left hand,

grabbed it, pulled it and probably in the process

wrenched the glove from Simpson's hand,

hence the left-hand glove being found in the foliage.

And then Ron turned with his back

inside the security bars at the foot of the stairs.

It was in effect a killing cage.

Ron had bars to his left, bars behind him,

tree to his right, stairwell coming down,

and he had a very strong, powerful figure

with a very sharp knife slashing at him.

Ron suffered defence wounds

to both of his hands, deep defensive wounds,

so he's clearly trying to parry the knife.

He suffered a number of stab wounds

as he's twisting and turning in the scene.

At one point Simpson catches Ron, with a...

it was kind of a sweeping, stabbing motion to Ron's left flank.

And the knife blade penetrates Ron's abdomen

and almost completely severs his abdominal artery.

You've got about a minute to live because of the massive bleed-out.

Blood is filling Ron's abdominal cavity,

blood is pouring out of the wound to Ron's left flank,

soaking the left pants leg of Ron.

And, ultimately, after a matter of some seconds,

hard to determine how many, I believe

Ron simply sank to the ground in a seated position

with his back against the upright bars.

As we know from the evidence, there was movement between the two bodies.

I suspect Simpson went back to Nicole's body,

lifted her head by grabbing her blonde head hair

and causing the massive incise wound across her neck...

..in the process severing just about everything in her neck

and putting a quarter-inch nick in her C3 vertebrae.

'This is a fatal sharp force injury.'

Simpson moves back to Ron Goldman,

grabs his shirt, so it would be above Ron's

right shoulder, transferring blood, head hairs,

from Nicole to Ron's shirt, twists Ron's body to the side,

and we know there were four deep

intersecting knife wounds to the left side of Ron's neck.

In my opinion, overkill with regard to Ron,

overkill with regard to Nicole.

Simpson at this point stepped back, stepped in the blood that's pumping

from Nicole, and in what appears to be a very

even stride, goes up the steps and out of the crime scene,

towards the back of the house,

towards the alley, where the Bronco had to have been parked.

DOG BARKS

Listen...

I just flat out, categorically

deny the fact that he could do that.

Period.

I came up from court one day

and Bill said, "I've got some bad news." More? Again?

He said, "There are some tapes."

What if it could be proved that Detective Mark Fuhrman

lied on the witness stand when he denied ever using the word "nigger"?

Oh, no.

Both sides want to get their hands on the 12 hours of taped interviews

Fuhrman gave screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny

as background for her fictional script on LA police.

On the tapes, Fuhrman used racial epithets and talked

of framing people.

What the fuck, dude?

We were not aware of the tapes.

-Should he have told you about them?

-We were not aware of the tapes.

It was pennies from heaven. We'd been given a gift.

Miss Drummond?

Listening to that, I just felt like somebody

opened up a drainpipe and just rolled it over my body.

Things that were said resonated

with things I had heard for 30 years or more

about the way that cops think...

..and act.

When you hear those things...

..some of the characters in that screenplay

I wrapped around some of the people that I knew

on LAPD and other departments.

I can remember where I heard them,

I can remember some who said them,

and then there's a little...

..exaggeration in it.

Fuhrman may say he was just fictionalising...

..but his words rang true.

Does that mean that he planted a glove? No, it doesn't.

It doesn't even necessarily mean that he's an authentic racist.

But it means he's prepared to act like one.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

And there's nothing that you can take back,

there's not, like, a, "Oh, gee, gosh, I'm sorry."

We came to this court seven months ago expecting a fair trial.

My son had a right to it,

we as a family had a right to it,

Nicole and her family had a right to it.

Instead, we get this crap spewed in front of the cameras for two hours.

For what purpose? I'd love to know what the judge had in mind.

This is now the Fuhrman trial. It's not the trial of OJ Simpson,

who is accused of murdering my son and Nicole.

-CHANTING:

-We want justice! We want justice!

In all their ugliness, the tapes have now

been made public, but Judge Lance Ito

has yet to decide if the jury will hear what others already have.

The tapes shall be released.

We want them now.

We want justice now.

The judge was on the fence as to whether or not

he was going to let certain stuff come in.

That required people speaking out to say,

"This is not something you should be hiding from the jury."

We know that if you can railroad OJ Simpson

with his millions of dollars and his dream team

of legal experts, we know what you can do

to the average African American and other

decent citizens in this country.

It was bigger than OJ Simpson.

Something larger than him is at stake.

-CHANTING:

-Release the tapes! Release the tapes!

OJ Simpson became a symbol of that decade,

of that time, of that response to

"Has the mentality of America changed

"in the civil rights struggle...

"..or is it business as usual?"

CHANTING

For me, as a progressive Christian, a Democrat,

I'm going, like, "When are we going to go back to the evidence?"

You would find yourself in a room of ministers and community leaders,

and the conversation inevitably would go back to OJ

and how OJ was being mistreated.

Justice be done in the courtroom, we pray, yes!

We are talking about justice!

'Instead of getting in and saying, "Free OJ,"'

as if he was a political prisoner,

it, for me, was, "Let me just get quiet.

"Let me sit there and say nothing."

-CHANTING:

-Free OJ! Free OJ!

I really do believe privately a lot of African American

leaders felt the same.

If this case gets covered up under the rug,

you will never trust the criminal justice system again.

-INTERVIEWER:

-You turned OJ Simpson into a civil rights cause.

Do you at all regret that?

Absolutely not.

OJ Simpson was a vessel.

He was merely a tool that allowed

something to come out and be exposed.

So you were using OJ Simpson for your own cause?

I was using OJ Simpson for OUR cause. For black people's cause.

There was a realness to the people who were responding to

the Fuhrman tapes outside the courtroom.

What was going on inside the courtroom

was manipulation to the extreme.

This is a blockbuster. This is a bombshell.

This is perhaps the biggest thing

that's happened in any case in this country

in this decade, and they know it. They've got to face up to it!

No-one planted any evidence at any time.

There has been no false statement made about where

that evidence was found, the analysis of the evidence

or its results.

And the defence wants to squirm away from that fact

by playing the race card.

This isn't about any race card. This is about credibility card.

This is about perjury.

The whole case got forgotten.

It was all about Fuhrman now, it was all about racial injustice.

Occasionally, these cartoonists come up with something that's edifying.

It's a little child, speaking to his mother,

watching television, who says,

"What's the forbidden N word they keep talking about, Mommy?"

She said, "Nicole."

OJ Simpson's defence team, stunned by Judge Ito's ruling last night

that only two excerpts of the inflammatory

Fuhrman tapes, filled with racial slurs,

may be presented to the jury.

We think this jury is much smarter

than this judge gives them credit for.

What he let in was enough.

Then we have two excerpts, Your Honour,

we would like to play at this point, if we could.

It's a slap.

It's a slap every time you hear it.

"We have no niggers where I grew up." Do you recall him saying that?

Yes.

To hear anybody speak on race like that is not OK with me.

When Officer Fuhrman used the word "nigger,"

it was not light-hearted, it was something that

he would use in normal conversation.

Devastating. I believe those tapes never should have been allowed in.

What is the nexus between the tapes and the murder?

What does it have to do with the evidence?

What proof is there that any evidence was planted?

Well, it definitely became believable that he was capable.

And I didn't have trust in him any more.

'He was using it in a demeaning, derogatory fashion.'

-INTERVIEWER:

-You're saying what's on those tapes

is not reflective of your attitudes or your experiences?

I don't know how you feel or see me, but I can tell you this -

you would be shocked if you saw me in the field.

I was so fair...

..beyond...beyond all scope of what you had to be.

Fighting?

I didn't use Tasers.

I didn't use sticks.

When I fought a suspect, I fought straight up.

I was fair on the street.

There was a time that I was pretty violent.

But that was...

..long before I was in the police department.

All right, Mr Uelmen, I take it at this point

-you wish to recall Detective Fuhrman?

-Yes, Your Honour.

'I didn't want to look at him. He made me sick.

'You have been a liar throughout.'

And the only reason I know that you didn't

plant the evidence is because you couldn't have.

Otherwise, I'm with them.

Detective Fuhrman, was the testimony

that you gave at the preliminary hearing

in this case completely truthful?

I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.

'And one of the most shocking moments was when he took the Fifth.'

You don't see police officers take the Fifth.

Have you ever falsified a police report?

I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.

Any kind of questioning is going to help to convict

him one way or another, so he had to take the Fifth

to avoid incriminating himself.

A lot of people don't understand about the Fifth.

If you answer one question, you answer them all.

I can't let the defence attorney just run with me.

'I had to plead the Fifth.'

Is it your intention to assert your

Fifth Amendment privilege with respect to all

questions that I ask you?

Yes.

-Could I have a moment?

-Certainly.

That's the main question. I mean, he didn't ask the main question.

'"Did you plant the glove?"'

That was the most important one.

It didn't matter. He wasn't going to answer.

-Allow me one other question, Your Honour.

-What was that, Mr Uelmen?

Detective Fuhrman, did you plant

or manufacture any evidence in this case?

"Hell, no, I don't plant evidence." That's your response.

And you get incensed.

"LAPD cops don't plant evidence. I made a damn fool of myself by using

"a racial epithet. I never should have done that."

You lay it out, because you've got nothing else to lose.

I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.

He didn't do that. Why in hell wouldn't you do that?

'For you, it's a documentary. For me, it's the end of my life.'

Now I'm going to tell you a story.

In 1989...

I was married, I had a house,

had a daughter that was born in '91,

a son that was born in '93.

Had this group of friends,

unbelievable friends.

Every one of them was different than me, though.

They all came from intact families,

fathers, houses they still go back to, rooms that they still had,

but they welcomed me into this group. I thought I had it made.

I finally was really happy for the first time in my life.