Summations
O.J. Simpson
JANUARY 28, 1997
(Excerpts)
In order of appearance:
For the plaintiff: Thomas Lambert
For the plaintiff: Daniel M. Petrocelli
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
DEPARTMENT NO. WEQ HON. HIROSHI FUJISAKI, JUDGE
NO. SC031947
SHARON RUFO, ET AL.,
PLAINTIFFS,
vs.
ORENTHAL JAMES SIMPSON, ET AL.,
Defendants.
APPEARANCES
| FOR THE PLAINTIFFS: | Daniel M. Petrocelli, ESQ., Thomas Lambert, ESQ., Peter Gelblum, ESQ., and Edward Medvene, ESQ., John Quinlan Kelly, ESQ. (Goldman) Michael A. Brewer, ESQ. (Estate of Nicole Brown Simpson) Paul F. Callan, ESQ. (Rufo) |
| FOR THE DEFENDANTS: | Robert C. Baker, ESQ., Melissa Bluestein, ESQ., Philip Baker, ESQ. Daniel Leonard, ESQ. Robert D. Blasier, ESQ. |
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA; TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1997
10:10 AM
DEPARTMENT NO. WEQ
HON. Hiroshi Fujisaki, JUDGE
(Jurors resume their respective seats.)
THE COURT: Morning.
JURORS: Good morning, Your Honor.
MR. LAMBERT: Thank you, Your Honor.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
MR. LAMBERT: Good morning.
JURORS: Good morning.
MR. LAMBERT: I'd like to talk just a few minutes this morning about DNA, the evidence in the case.
As you know, we've shown you DNA evidence through the words and the exhibits of some leading experts in the country, Dr. Robin Cotton, Gary Simms, Dr. Brad Popovich.
Those DNA test results are extremely significant evidence. Extremely significant evidence establishing the guilt of Mr. Simpson.
And what has the defense said about that DNA evidence?
In his closing argument the other day, Mr. Blasier tried to say to you that these DNA test results are not really as significant as they seem. Remember, he told you we oversold the RFLP test. He took out his set of tinker toys and talked to you about how the DNA is a big tall ladder, and how the RFLP test doesn't precisely measure 10,250 steps on that ladder, but it can be called a match if there's only 10,000 steps.
What he didn't tell you, though, was what's in the evidence. That was just his argument.
And remember, what you're supposed to decide is based on what is the evidence in the case. And what's the evidence about the RFLP test?
Well, Dr. Robin Cotton explained to you that this is an extremely well established test, scientifically. And that when they declare a match, they don't do it with just a single probe, they do it when there's multiple probes that all match with the ladders. The same at five different places on the chromosome. When that happens scientifically, it is a match. And that's what Dr. Cotton told you.
And she told you that this same test is used not just by forensic labs, but by medical labs, by medical researchers, by doctors treating patients. They all use this test because it is so reliable.
It's used for people who are going to get organ transplants to determine whether the donor is an appropriate donor.
It's used by people who are getting bone marrow transplants to ensure that they are getting bone marrow that will be safe for them.
Dr. Brad Popovich, who you saw recently, is on the faculty of the Oregon Medical School, and the head of the Oregon Health Sciences Medical Diagnostic DNA Lab. He told you how he uses this same technology day in and day out to make a life or death diagnostic decision. That's how good this technology is, how reliable this technology is.
That's what the evidence in the case shows, and that's what you're to rely upon, the evidence.
But it isn't just the witnesses that we called that have told you that story.
Let's take a look at the witnesses that the defense called and see what they said about the RFLP test.
Remember, they only called one DNA witness in the case, Dr. John Gerdes. That's the only one they called. And we'll be talking about him a little bit later.
Let's just talk about what Dr. Gerdes told us about the RFLP test.
Would you put the first testimony up, please.
This is Dr. Gerdes.
I asked him:
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
Now, Dr. Gerdes, I'd like to make sure that the jury is clear on what you're saying and what you're not saying here today.
First, you're not opining that the RFLP test results obtained by Cellmark and the Department of Justice were in any way the result of contamination, are you, Doctor?
And then he said:
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
On RFLP, there's only one RFLP I might suspect might be cross-contamination, that's Item 52 which is a Bundy blood drop. All the other -- all the rest are valid results.
And I said:
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
Valid results. Only the RFLP test, you concur, is a well recognized, high quality test, isn't it?
A. Yes. Well recognized, high quality test.
So all those test results are good test results that the jury can rely upon? In my opinion, that's true. MR. LAMBERT: That's their expert. Now, let's take a look at what their expert said about the blood on the back gate.
Here he is again. Dr. Gerdes.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questionod by Mr. Lambert.)
You will agree that this nine-probe RFLP match on the rear gate is something that the jury can rely upon as a valid DNA result, correct?
Yes, I do.
And a nine-probe match, that's an extremely important match?
A. It's a significant match.
Q. Very significant -- very significant in identifying Mr. Simpson as the person who left the blood there; isn't that true?
A. Yes.
MR. LAMBERT: That's their expert.
And then I asked him about the blood on the socks. Here's what he said about the blood on the socks.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
The results boards on the socks found at Rockingham you agree, Dr. Gerdes, that those RFLP results obtained by Cellmark and DOJ are not possibly caused by contamination, correct?
That's correct.
And, in fact, this 11-probe and five-probe match, together, between Cellmark and DOJ showing the blood of Nicole Brown Simpson was on those socks, that's an extremely probative RFLP result?
A. Yes, it is.
And the nine-probe match showing Mr. Simpson's blood is also on the socks. That's a very significant result, isn't it, Dr. Gerdes?
It is.
MR. LAMBERT: So that's what their expert said about the RFLP DNA evidence that you've seen.
And, of course, our experts said even more than that because Gary Simms and Robin Cotton supplied you with the frequencies; the commoness or uncommoness of those nine-probe and 11-probe matches.
You remember those frequencies were completely unchallenged by the defense. They didn't call any expert at all on that.
Those frequencies showed that these nine-probe and five-probe matches only occur in one out of billions of people, and one of them is Mr. Simpson.
That proves conclusively that it's his blood on the back gate, it's Nicole's blood on the sock, it's his blood at Bundy.
They tried to distract you with their argument, but without any evidence. Their whole defense is deception, desperation, dishonesty.
They're not giving you evidence, they're just making argument.
Now, let's talk a little bit about this contamination argument you heard both Mr. Blasier and Mr. Baker talk about.
That's another one of their inventions.
They sit down, we're not going to sell this planting theory, the blood drops were seen by the police the moment they arrived at the crime scene. They were collected, the blood drops at Bundy and at Rockingham, before Mr. Simpson gave his reference blood. It couldn't have been planted.
So they say we're going to have to come up with something else. Let's say they're contaminated. Let's make that argument. Let's say they're all contaminated. They're worthless.
What's their evidence?
Once again, they called one witness, John Gerdes. He's the only witness they called in the DNA part of the case. He's their whole case on contamination.
Well, who is John Gerdes? Remember, he told you he works for a DNA Lab in Denver that does medical but not forensic DNA. He admitted that he had himself never used the DQ Alpha test, which is one of the critical tests that we talked about throughout this trial. He never uses it.
He admitted he never uses D1S80 tests; another one of the tests we talked about throughout this trial. He doesn't use it. He admitted he's never collected evidence at a crime scene. He's never tested -- collected at a crime scene. He's not a member of any of the forensic science organizations that people who do this sort of thing are.
But that's who they call. Though they could have called a real forensic DNA expert.
Do you remember during the testimony of Robin Cotton and Dr. Simms, they talked about Dr. Edward Blake?
Well, who is Dr. Edward Blake?
They told you he's a forensic DNA expert, has his own lab that does DNA testing.
He was working for Mr. Simpson during the pretrial and criminal trial, working for Mr. Simpson during the pretrial and trial stages in the criminal trial.
He was present, actually, with Gary Simms when Simms did all of his RFLP and PCR DNA testing. Blake was looking over his shoulder to make sure it was done.
He knows all about this stuff.
Why didn't they call him to testify?
It's because he doesn't have anything good to say for their side. He knows that these are good tests.
How about Dr. Henry Lee? We've been told he's the world's leading criminalist, right? A big expert.
Why didn't they use Dr. Lee on DNA?
He does DNA in his lab.
Well, what has Dr. Lee said on DNA?
MR. BAKER: I'm going to object because Dr. Lee wasn't called for a DNA expert.
MR. LAMBERT: Here is his testimony.
THE COURT: Just a minute, please.
MR. LAMBERT: Quoting his testimony in the case, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Okay. Overruled.
MR. LAMBERT: Question.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. Henry Lee, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
Q. And likewise, Dr. Lee, you're not here to contest that -- you don't challenge the blood findings -- the DNA blood findings of the California Department of Justice when they purport to identify certain blood as being consistent with certain people's blood?
You're correct. I'm not challenging those.
MR. LAMBERT: So, Dr. Lee, isn't challenging the DNA test results. Dr. Blake isn't here.
Instead we see Dr. Gerdes. He's not even a forensic scientist, doesn't even do these kinds of tests.
Why do they call him?
Well, Dr. Gerdes told you why they called him. He had this little sideline. What he does is he testifies for criminal defendants, always on the defense side, always for criminal defendants, and he always says the same thing; he says don't trust the DNA, it might be contaminated. He says it might be contaminated.
That's what they paid him $40,000 to say. There's a risk of contamination. That's all he said.
When you listen to his testimony he didn't say there was actually any contamination. He said that there was a risk of contamination.
Well, remember what Mr. Blasier told you during his argument about witnesses that come in and say things could be?
Let's put Mr. Blasier's argument.
(Transcript displayed on Elmo.)
Here's what Mr. Blasier said when he was talking about experts.
He said that it's not very helpful when experts say that something is possible or could have happened, it gives you almost no information at all, not very precise work.
That's what Mr. Blasier said during his argument about experts. And their expert, Mr. Gerdes, he didn't say could be, he said there's a risk.
But what does the actual evidence in the case show?
Well, we talked to Mr. Gerdes, when he was on the stand, about that -- excuse me, Dr. Gerdes, and you remember that he said that in order for this evidence to be affected by contamination, a couple of things, he admitted, had to have happened.
No. 1, he admitted that all of the contamination, if it ever occurred, had to occur before Colin Yamauchi did those first tests on June 14.
And it's just like the point I made yesterday about the reason for that, which is that once Colin took -- did those DNA tests and got test results showing DNA consistent with Mr. Simpson's DNA, that fixed the whole situation. Thereafter, everybody else that did tests and got exactly the same results were just doing repetitive tests validating the initial test results. So if there's any contamination theories, it had to take place before.
And the second thing he admitted is what contamination does if you ever have it. It doesn't change one person's DNA to another, it simply mixes DNA's together.
So that if you have a swatch, an evidentiary swatch collected at a crime scene, and it has person A's blood on it, and it then gets contaminated with person B's blood, you can have a mixture of two persons, A and B. When you do the dot test they both show up. They can show there's contamination. That's the most common kind of contamination that shows up.
Here, of course, when Colin Yamauchi did all of these tests, all of the test results showed a single contributor to the evidence. All those Bundy blood drops, one person, only one person; Mr. Simpson.
So how could that be contamination?
We say to Gerdes -- we say the only way it could happen is, first, all of the swatches, the real DNA, degraded in all the swatches, and then there was contamination.
He admitted that's extremely improbable, even though you can still find the contamination.
Remember, when they collect each of those evidence swatches, they also collect a control, a substrate control. So by every stain they first pick up a little control, and that control stays with the evidence all the way through the process, and it gets tested with the evidence all the way through the process.
So if any contamination takes place, the control gets contaminated, too. And they test each one of those controls using the PCR system, which Dr. Gerdes admitted can test down to the level of a few molecules.
All you'd have to get if you're contaminated is a few molecules of DNA on the control swatch and it would show up and everybody would know there was contamination.
Would you put up 2265, Steve.
(Exhibit displayed on Elmo.)
MR. LAMBERT: This is one of the things I went through with Dr. Gerdes. This shows us the tests done by Colin Yamauchi on June 14 and June 15. He tested 23 samples the first day, 19 -- why don't you put it at the bottom, Steve -- total of 42 samples. 18 of them were evidence samples, 21 of them were controls, 21 were running through the system just to make sure there was no contamination. That's the whole purpose of those controls.
And what did Dr. Gerdes tell us about those?
All of the controls were clean. No contamination. Zero evidence of contamination. And he admitted that if there was contamination, it should have shown up in the controls, it should have been mixtures.
None of that happened.
You can take that down.
We also played this tape that Andrea Mazzola -- remember that? Dr. Gerdes said, well, maybe she could have gotten blood on the glasses, she could have gotten some on the tweezers.
He admitted if any of that happened, it has to show up in the controls, because if you touch your glasses and then you start touching the evidence, you're also touching the controls, and that's what the purpose of the controls are. That's where you're going to see the contamination.
It never happened.
Why don't we put up pages 140 and 141 of Dr. -- this is from Dr. Gerdes' testimony on this exhibit that I just showed you.
So I say:
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
So I say -- so we have 32 evidence swatches that he processed that day. This is June 14. And 7 control swatches.
In order for your possibility of contamination to have -- to be correct, all the evidence swatches had to be completely degraded, all completely degraded, and all of them would have to be contaminated; isn't that true?
He admits that, yes, you have to have both of those events happening.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. John Gerdes, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
But there couldn't be any contamination on the control swatches because of those -- all those control swatches tested negative for DNA, true?
True.
MR. LAMBERT: He admits it didn't happen. There was risk of contamination, but I looked at it, I couldn't find any. There simply wasn't any contamination in any of these evidence items.
When they finally got around to any specific items of evidence, Dr. Gerdes mentioned two -- only two out of all the evidence in this case. He spent $40,000 worth of the defense's money looking carefully over that evidence. He found two things that he could complain about:
The first one was Item 52. Remember, you've seen the board come up several times with the DQ Alpha strip done by Department of Justice on Item 52. And he said, oh, I can see a faint dot lighting up at 1.3, the 1.3 dot.
Gary Simms explained that to you. He said in the DQ Alpha test at the 1 allele, there's only one base pair difference between each of those one alleles.
Remember, we have 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. Each of those is a separate allele. But the only difference is one base pair. On that big long ladder that we're talking about that the DNA looks like, one step is different, and that changes it from a 1.1 to a 1.2. That's the only difference. It's that small of a difference.
And because of that, when you have a lot of DNA in a particular evidence sample, you can get what's called cross-hybridization, a faint little dot lighting up at one of the other alleles.
So when Mr. Simpson's blood is tested, in Item 52, Mr. Simpson's a 1.1, 1.2, so you get a little faint cross-hybridization at the 1.3.
But the system is built to handle that. There's also something there called a control dot, the C dot. You remember seeing that in some of the pictures.
The way the test works is if the C dot is darker than the faint dot, not a 1.3, then that proves it's cross-hybridization.
That's what Gary Simms said. He's run this test hundreds of times.
John Gerdes tried to say it was contamination. He's never run the test.
And we brought Brad Popovich in here. He does this same test, medically; makes medical decisions on it. He said, oh, yeah, that's cross-hybridization, that's not contamination.
That's the only example out of all of this evidence, $40,000 worth of time, that John Gerdes could come up with, that he could say was possibly contamination. He didn't say it was for sure. He said it might be.
The only evidence item he ever talked about was Item 31. He wasn't calling that cross-contamination. He was saying he disagreed with Gary Simms analysis of that item.
But, of course, Simms is the one that reads those every day in his lab and knows how to read them, not Dr. Gerdes.
Let's see what Henry Lee said about Gary Simms from his testimony in this case.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. Henry Lee, questioned by Mr. Medvene.)
Q. Now, do you know Gary Simms?
Yes.
Q. Do you know him to be a competent, reputable scientist?
A. Oh, yes, excellent scientist.
MR. LAMBERT: That's their expert talking about Gary Simms. So that's who you should be relying upon if you're going to make a decision about somebody who says an appropriate way to read those DQ Alpha strips.
Other than those two things, Dr. Gerdes didn't talk about anything else. And he admitted that all of these controls were completely negative for DNA. No evidence of contamination.
Nothing.
But anyway, we decided we'd go them one better, so we brought in Dr. Brad Popovich.
And Dr. Popovich spent a lot of time carefully reviewing all of this evidence.
Would you put up Dr. Popovich's testimony.
Here's what Dr. Popovich said.
He reviewed lots of materials, personally visited all the labs on more than one occasion. He talked to the analysts that were responsible for performing. He reviewed their bench notes, reviewed the photographs, all of the original documentation, each and every piece of evidence in the case. He looked at trial transcripts. He looked at the conclusions people reached. He looked at the physical layout of the labs, at the personnel qualifications. He was brought in to look at everything that happened in the case, and give a non-biased opinion as to if that was credible evidence.
That's what Brad Popovich did. He spent 300 hours doing it, looking at all the evidence. He looked at it carefully, looked to see if there were any problems at all with the evidence.
And you remember we went through with Dr. Popovich each one of those DNA results boards and looked to see if there was anything in there at all that shows any contamination? No contamination at all.
Let's put up the last bit of his testimony.
Here's what he said to us.
(Mr. Lambert read from a portion of the transcript of the civil trial testimony of Dr. Brad Popovich, questioned by Mr. Lambert.)
Taking everything into account from your review of all of those evidence samples, are the test results that -- the DNA test results in this case by LAPD, Cellmark and DOJ, accurate?
I believe those results are accurate.
Are they reliable?
I believe they're very reliable.
Are they unaffected by contamination?
I do believe they're unaffected by contamination, yes.
So there you have it.
The DNA test results in this case are accurate, they're reliable, and they're unaffected by contamination.
They're also conclusive proof of what's the truth in this case.
They show conclusively that it's Mr. Simpson's blood on that sidewalk at Bundy.
It's Ron and Nicole's blood in Mr. Simpson's car.
It's Nicole's blood on those socks found in Mr. Simpson's bedroom.
He cannot and has not explained to you how any of those blood evidence items can be found where they are with any innocent explanation.
He had plenty of opportunities up in the stand.
You remember Mr. Petrocelli asked him, do you have any explanation for your blood being in the Bronco, do you have any explanation for Nicole's blood being in the Bronco, any explanation for Ron's blood being in the Bronco?
No.
No explanation. He can't tell you innocently how it got there 'cause there is no innocent explanation.
That's their entire contamination defense.
There's nothing to it.
Don't be misled by these desperate claims of the defendant.
Don't accept the Tinkertoy defense that Mr. Blasier is trying to pass off on you.
This DNA evidence is reliable evidence.
The experts told you so. Even their expert told you so.
And it conclusively proves what Mr. Petrocelli told you: All of the forensic evidence proves in this case, there's a killer in the courtroom.
He did it.
I ask you to so find.
And now Mr. Petrocelli will finish our argument.
MR. PETROCELLI: Thank you, Tom.
Okay. We're going to finish up and get you in that deliberation room.
I want to respond to several of the points Mr. Baker made, try to do it as efficiently as I can.
You know, there's a part in me that just wants to sit down, and a bigger part of you that probably wishes I'd sit down, but, you know, we've come so far, I want to make sure that you have everything you need to make the right decision. I want to make sure that I can answer any question that could possibly be going through your mind.
You know, in this system you don't have the chance right now -- maybe it should be changed, but you can't ask me questions. I'd love for you to ask me some questions right now, you know, anything that might be troubling you, because I know there are answers and I know that the questions can be answered.
But right now you've just got to judge -- as to some of the things Mr. Baker said that I feel I should respond to.
The defense in this case from day one has, as is their aim, to distract you from the truth, to shift your focus away from the facts and the evidence.
And we want your vision to be clear, unclouded, you go in that jury room with clear vision.
If you just use your common sense, I could not ask for anything more. Yet, there isn't anything you -- if there isn't anything you remember that I said in the course of two days other than use your common sense, I'm happy.
If you go in that jury room and just use your God-given common sense, I could not possibly ask for anything more.
Motive -- by the way, this board, Mr. Simpson did not say these things and these are not excerpts from his testimony. So you understand, this is the way that I kind of organized the various things that he is saying in his defense.
The first one: "I would never harm Nicole." Of course this is his way of saying I'd never hit her, I would never hit her, I'd never kill her.
Now, Mr. Baker made two points about this. He said that, number one, legally we had to prove motive, and secondly, we didn't prove motive.
In all due respect to Mr. Baker, he's wrong on both counts.
The law does not require us to prove motive. There's nothing in your jury instructions, ladies and gentlemen, about motive. You're not going to see any mention of motive.
And I want to make sure we don't get confused about some things here.
When we talked about motive, it doesn't mean premeditation, planning, deliberation. We don't have to prove any of those things either. This is not a first degree murder case. That was a criminal case. We don't have to prove that Mr. Simpson planned this. We don't have to prove that he premeditated it. We don't have to prove that he went there and waited. We don't have to prove that it was spur of the moment or heat of passion.
It could be any of those things; whatever the evidence suggests to you.
However, the only thing we have to prove is that he did it. That's it.
Not why he did it, not what motivated him to do it.
It's in his mind, what motivated him to do it. Even though we have a lot of information, we can't delve into the depths of his mind and we can't tell you because he's not telling us and only he knows why he did it ultimately.
So let's be clear on this. We don't have to prove motive.
Did we prove it absolutely?
I'm going to talk about that for a few minutes.
In your jury instructions, what you're going to hear today, you'll see we essentially have to prove two things.
I know it's confusing; there's a lot of legal jargon there, okay.
We have to prove a battery and a wrongful death.
What's a battery? A battery is when someone hits somebody. Okay. That's a battery.
When Mr. Simpson attacked Ron or attacked Nicole, when he actually hit them, stabbed them, that's a battery. That's it. That's all a battery is. It's a fancy name for hitting somebody.
We have to prove that.
And we have to prove that they died, which they obviously did.
So once you decide that Mr. Simpson was the person who did it, that takes care of both the battery and the wrongful death. It's as simple as that.
The only question is whether it's him or not. And if it is him, then he did the battery and he did the wrongful death.
And we have to prove those things, despite what Mr. Baker might have tried to suggest to you, by preponderance of the evidence.
What does that mean?
Simply means is it more likely than not that he's the person.
Does it mean he's absolutely the killer?
Do we have to do that? No.
That he definitely is the killer? No.
That he certainly is the killer? No.
That he's probably . . . that's all, in a civil case, we have to prove.
Now, our evidence went way beyond that. We easily met that standard. But I want you to be clear. In this case, all you have to do is decide is it more probable than not, did he probably do it? That's it.
You will be asked one other question if you decide that he did it, that it was more probable than not that he killed Ron and killed Nicole, you'll be asked one additional question: Whether he did it with malice or oppression.
And again, those are fancy legal words, and they're not to be confused with motive. It has nothing to do with motive.
Did he do it with malice or oppression.
MR. BAKER: I'm --
MR. PETROCELLI: You can check that.
MR. BAKER: This isn't rebuttal. It wasn't gone into.
MR. PETROCELLI: It was too.
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. PETROCELLI: Malice or oppression simply means, get right down to the basics, did he do it on purpose, did he intend to harm these people?
MR. BAKER: That is not the law, Your Honor. The law is given in the jury instructions. He's misleading these people.
MR. PETROCELLI: I did not, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Overruled.
You may continue.
MR. PETROCELLI: Thank you.
In other words, in this case, it's not even really an issue. If you find that Mr. Simpson was the person who stabbed Ron and stabbed Nicole and caused their death, well, then of course he did it on purpose, it wasn't an accident.
Sometimes words like malice or oppression are a big issue if it's an auto accident or a negligence case.
This is not a negligence case. We're not trying to prove Mr. Simpson accidentally killed these people.
You'll be asked to determine if he did it with malice or oppression.
And again, that basically means did he do it on purpose.
And the evidence here is a resounding yes, of course he did.
And just one final technicality here.
When you're asked to answer that last question about malice or oppression, the jury instruction will say that I have to show malice or oppression by clear and convincing evidence, which is a little higher standard of proof than preponderance of the evidence. The evidence has to be clear and convincing as opposed to preponderance.
And again, in this case, the evidence far surpasses that requirement in the law. One blood drop surpasses that requirement in the law.
So the bottom line here, when you get right down to it, you're just going to be asked to decide if he did it or didn't, was it more probable than not.
Now, in terms of motive, motive evidence is simply additional evidence, like a blood drop, that may help us identify who the person is that would do such a thing to two people.
In this case, there is no evidence of any kind of robbery or sexual assault or any other kind of motive.
This wasn't a gunshot. I mean, we'll talk about this in a little bit, but Mr. Baker actually wanted you folks to believe this was a professional hit.
Can you imagine that?
And he said two professional assassins.
That's why I said if you take your common sense, we're satisfied.
Two professional assassins. That's what he wanted you to believe. 30 stab wounds. Two professional assassins.
This was a professional assassin, it would have taken a single bullet in about three seconds. Gone. Not a shred of evidence.
Is a professional assassin, let alone two, going to stab people over and over and over again. You going to leave all the evidence behind?
Does that make any sense to anybody?
Talk about believing in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy.
Give me a break.
Doesn't make any sense.
That's what he wants you to believe, that Nicole and Ron were killed by two professional assassins.
Look, common sense.
These people were killed by a person in a state of rage, enraged to the point where he stabbed over and over and over and over and over again.
There's wounds to the skull, there's wounds to the neck.
This isn't a professional job.
There's wounds all over their body.
This is somebody just flailing away in a state of blind rage at that point in time. Whatever drove him there, who knows. But he was in that state of mind at that moment.
Did we prove motive? We didn't have to, but we did anyway 'cause we wanted you to know the whole story.
There was only one person the evidence in this case showed had any problem, any hostility, any antagonism, any enmity, any animosity toward Nicole, and that was O.J. Simpson.
Is it just a coincidence that near the very end of her life these two were at war with one another? Is that just a coincidence?
And then she's just found dead?
Did they bring in any evidence showing that someone else had a motive?
I'm not going to go through all of the evidence about the events leading up to her death because I've done it already and I don't want to -- I don't want to overstay my welcome, if I'm indeed still welcome.
But you know what proves the point here. Mr. Simpson lied to you about everything that happened near the end of Nicole's live, and that proves the point. He lied. He lied about everything. And when you lie, you lie for a reason. Innocent men don't lie. Guilty men lie.
He even had the audacity, with Nicole's battered and bruised face right here, right, what, three feet from him (indicating to witness stand and Elmo): "I never hit her."
He wanted you to believe he never hit her.
We brought witnesses -- now, these things occur in the privacy of one's home, regrettably. Occasionally somebody else saw something when he lost his temper, which he cannot control, and he hit her, and a couple of people saw it and they came to court, and he accused them all of lying, of committing the crime of perjury.
And then he even tried to sell you that he didn't touch her.
He was just, you know, wrestling, whatever he made up, to lie about it.
Why is he lying?
You know why he's lying.
Why didn't he just say, you know what, Mr. Petrocelli, I did hit her, I did hit her, I battered my wife that night.
You know why he didn't tell you?
Because he knows how damning that is. He knows that if you believe he's the kind of man who could hit his wife in anger, who could lash out and strike her, then you can understand that he did the same thing on the evening of June 12, except this time he had a knife in his hand.
And that's why he desperately wants to deny to the end that he ever hit her, 'cause he knows how incriminating that is, and that's the reason he lied.
No other reason.
He says he takes full responsibility. Yet he lies with a straight face.
You saw Nicole's writings about her feelings, her state of mind.
What did he say?
They're all a pack of lies.
Those are his words, not mine.
And you know, one of the things I had -- I hadn't read to you before, I was going through my notes about what was happening with Mr. Simpson near the end, he tried to pretend that he rejected Nicole and he wasn't upset about it, he had moved on with this new relationship, and again, he wants to --
MR. BAKER: I'm going to object. This isn't rebuttal.
MR. PETROCELLI: Excuse me.
Your Honor, he went into motive over four hours.
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. PETROCELLI: He wants to try to convince you that he wasn't feeling rejected, he was the one who rejected Nicole.
Now, why did he want to convince you of that?
Because if he's the rejected one, then maybe he has a motive to retaliate.
You know this: People, sadly, have been getting killed in relationships since day one. Revenge, love, hatred, jealousy, these are the oldest motives known to mankind. This isn't anything new.
His good friend, Jackie Cooper, this is a guy who doesn't have a reason in the world to lie, it's his friend.
Can you put that on the Elmo.
(Transcript is displayed on Elmo.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Memorial Day weekend, two weeks before Nicole's death, Ms. Barbieri left Mr. Simpson because he told her he still loved Nicole.
What did he say to you, "he" referring to Mr. Simpson?
"He said that she -- she had broken up with him, she had broken up with him, and it was different this time, that it was final, that she had -- he told me that she really meant it this time."
Keep going. (Elmo is adjusted.)
"I think he was sad, I think that he was upset and in distress."
That's his friend that he's known for a long time who testified on the stand. This fellow, Mr. Cooper, has known Mr. Cowlings for many, many years. They're all very close friends. And this man was not going to lie. I put him on the stand. I subpoenaed him. I brought him here. And he wasn't going to lie.
He told the truth.
Of course Mr. Simpson now accuses him of being a perjurer because he didn't play ball with him like Skip Taft and the others.
I've gone through the IRS letter.
There's no reason in the world to send that letter unless you are retaliating because you are angry. That is the only reason in the world you send that letter.
And then, of course, to add to all of his misery with this failed relationship -- and remember, Nicole left him, then she brings him back, then she doesn't want him, then she wants him, and he feels he's on the end of a yo-yo string and this woman is driving him crazy, and he broke a woman's heart to go back with her, and now she won't make a commitment.
Remember how he said, I was so happy with Paula the year before, I had an idyllic life. That was his word, idyllic. And yet, he had an idyllic life with this other woman, and what did he do? He left her for Nicole, to get a commitment from Nicole, and a year later, when it was time for Nicole to move back in, when Mr. Simpson said okay, we're going to do it now, you're going to move in, we're going to get remarried, he called Judy Brown up and said, I think it's going to work. What did Nicole say? I'm sorry, I don't want to do it, I can't do it, I can't go through this again.
That's what she said.
And he couldn't accept it, 'cause this man gets what he wants.
And then he immediately called this other woman back, Paula.
Paula sees the handwriting on the wall. This guy's not over Nicole. I'm not going to go through this pain again. So she leaves him.
And then on this critical night of June 12, why is Mr. Simpson lying to you about what he did in the two hours before Nicole's murder?
Is that not the most critical time period of this whole case, the last two or three hours, from 7 to 10, on the evening of June 10 -- or June 12, excuse me, on that Sunday evening?
Those are the vital hours.
And he sat there and said, I never picked up Paula's message letting me go.
And I had to show him a computer record to show that he did, and I had to show him his own therapist's notes that showed that he did, and he then said, well, they're all lying. The therapist is wrong. The computer records are wrong.
And then finally Mr. Baker gets up here, and I was astounded by what Mr. Baker said.
He said, quote: "Did he pick up the message that she had broken up with him after that? I don't know. It's not a significant thing."
What do you mean, you don't know?
He said he didn't pick it up.
Mr. Simpson said, I didn't pick it up.
Mr. Baker says, I don't know.
Who are we to believe here?
It's not a significant thing. It's not a significant thing. It's so significant to him that he'll lie and lie and lie in the face of computer records and notes.
Not even Mr. Baker can stand up here and say he did not pick that message up. He can't say that to you. He says, I don't know.
Now he says I don't know.
In opening statement, he said, Mr. Simpson didn't pick the message up.
What does that tell you?
He lied about his demeanor at the recital.
His friend, not mine, not Nicole's, Ron Fischman:
"In all the years that you knew O.J. Simpson, he never appeared the way he appeared at that recital to you, true?"
"That's true."
Mr. Simpson, at that recital, was shunned for the first time in his life. He was shunned. Nicole wanted no part of him. She took the kids. They went to a family celebration for his children and he was not invited and he was shunned. He was left there, alone at a curb, while everybody drove away.
You can imagine what that did to him.
We don't know what calls went on later that night. We don't know the precise trigger that set him off. We don't have to know. I mentioned that over and over again. We don't have to know. The law doesn't require us to know. We can never know.
Only Nicole knows and only he knows.
What we do know is that by the time he got over to Bundy, something had set him off, all of this turmoil and conflict that was building up, and he snapped.
And, you know, he says I'd never kill the mother of my children.
Well, again, mothers of children get killed all the time by normal people, people who look like you and me and like Mr. Simpson.
They don't dress and come a certain way. They don't look like serial killers.
Men beat mothers of children up. Men kill mothers of children.
I'm going to turn to a different subject. I'm going to talk a little bit about Mr. Simpson's alibi number two.
He says he was home when the murders occurred.
This is a big lie, of course. He was not home when the murders occurred.
And of course, that alone, tells us he did it.
If you lie about where you are when the murders occurred, you did it. That's a pretty basic rule, I think.
Why do we know he was not home?
I've given you all that evidence and I don't want to go through it in detail. I'm just going to mention a couple things to you.
Allan Park, a guy who got 40 bucks to go pick up Mr. Simpson, and for 40 bucks he's been dragged into court I can't tell you how many times. He got there at 10:23. There's no car. And he went to look again at 10:39 and there's no car and he went and he called Mr. Simpson at 10:40, 10:43, 10:50, 10:52. No answer. No answer. No answer. No answer. No Bronco.
What more do you need?
Mr. Simpson's not home; his Bronco's not there.
You know, I got a kick when Mr. Baker, yesterday or the other day, said that this Bronco was a white elephant. He called it a white elephant. He said, why would Mr. Simpson go commit a murder in a white elephant.
You know what Mr. Simpson's other choices were: A Bentley and a Ferrari --
(Laughter in the audience.)
MR. PETROCELLI: -- a Testa Rosa Ferrari, a red one, no less, a fire-engine red.
MR. BAKER: There's no evidence -- this is not rebuttal.
MR. PETROCELLI: And he had a Bentley. And Mr. Simpson went in that white elephant to Bundy, and he was seen when he went in that white elephant -- Mr. Baker said someone would have seen him. He was seen. He was seen by Mr. Heidstra. The car was seen.
Now, if this is such a white elephant, as Mr. Baker called it, the Bronco is the white elephant, how could Mr. Park, with his nose three feet from the white elephant, miss it?
Why don't you put up the slide, Steve. Put up the picture.
(Mr. Foster complies.)
MR. PETROCELLI: You got it. There it is.
Remember, Allan Park drove up the first time slowly, to look for the curb, and there was no white elephant, he said.
Then, the second time, after he smoked his cigarette, he came back to see -- maybe I should go in this gate -- I don't want to make any mistakes. This is an important guy -- came back, and he looked at the curb again, with his face right -- facing this curb, maybe as far as -- as far as I am.
Probably this far. (Indicating.)
And there's no car there.
Show the other one of the white elephant.
(Mr. Foster complies, displays photograph of white Ford Bronco.)
MR. PETROCELLI: He's going to miss the white elephant?
Mr. Simpson is not answering the phone. He makes up this cockamamy story: Well, the shower, the dog -- I'm not going to go over it all again -- and Park destroys Mr. Simpson's alibi. It's as simple as that. Mr. Simpson was not home when the murders occurred. He's not home. He did it.
That's the last piece of evidence that tells us he's not home, and that's this 10:03 phone call.
I have -- I've demonstrated to you that the 10:03 phone call was made from the Bronco, not because I say so, because Mr. Simpson has gotten trapped in so many lies, that it's finally the cell-phone records emerged to convict him on this lie. He told the police that he made a call that night driving to Paula's, on page 138.
All you have to do is look at it. It's right here: As I was going over there, I called her a couple of times and she wasn't there.
He's in the Bronco. And the cell phone records tell us that that call is made at 10:03. That's the end of the story on that.
And to close the loop, he even tells the police a couple of times that, right before he left to go to the airport, he took his phone out of the Bronco because it was still in the Bronco at 11:00, from when he came back from the murders.
And he told Michael Baden, his expert, on June 17 --
Do we have that testimony?
-- that he was -- right before he was leaving, he was rummaging to get the phone -- he didn't say accessories and he didn't say battery charger; he said car phone. He went to his Bronco to get the car phone right when he left at 11:00, because it was in the car from the murders, and he wanted to take it with him.
Now, do you have it, Steve? If you don't, I'll move on.
Here you go.
(Transcript displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Looking for his car phone. This is Mr. Simpson's expert, not ours.
And just to finish this point, when I brought all this out on cross-examination of Mr. Simpson, Mr. Baker asked Mr. Simpson a month later, when Mr. Simpson took the stand under Mr. Baker's questioning, said what about this situation?
And Mr. Simpson says, oh I was talking about Saturday night, not Sunday.
Saturday night, not Sunday.
So he tried to now say well, I meant Saturday night when I said I was calling Paula, not Sunday.
Once again, trapped in lies.
The police statement says that when he was driving over to Paula's house, Paula was not home. Paula was not home. So we're not talking about Saturday night; we're talking about Sunday night.
See, he didn't read this statement carefully enough, because Saturday night, Paula was home and they went out together. But Sunday night, she was not home.
So you see what happens when you lie? You get caught.
You get caught.
And I'll read from page 9:
(Reading:)
I called Paula as I was going to her house, and Paula wasn't home.
Paula wasn't home. As the trial progressed and he got trapped, he kept trying to come back with more lies. He got trapped again. I mean, it's almost -- well, it is silly.
Now, the second part of this argument they make is okay. Even if I wasn't home -- even if I wasn't home, I didn't have the time to commit the murders.
And then we hear Mr. Baker: If you don't have the time, you can't commit the crime.
You heard that little -- little poem, I guess, if you want to call it that.
But what is he saying? What is he saying?
Mr. Simpson is saying he was home. If you don't believe Mr. Simpson was home, that's the end of the story.
MR. BAKER: Your Honor, I object. I never argued he wasn't home; and that's improper argument.
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. PETROCELLI: Mr. Simpson swore he was home the entire time.
Now Mr. Baker says, I never argued he was home. I don't know what he's saying.
Mr. Simpson testified he was home the entire time: 9:35, came back from McDonald's, and didn't leave again until he left for the airport.
If Mr. Simpson is not home, why are we talking about time?
If Mr. Simpson wasn't home, then he did it. He obviously had the time to do it.
That argument, this whole time-line thing is a ruse. It doesn't make any sense as a way to try to --
MR. BAKER: Your Honor, I want to approach. This is misleading. And I never argued that he wasn't home. And I object.
MR. PETROCELLI: Your honor --
THE COURT: Overruled.
You may argue the evidence. MR. PETROCELLI: Thank you.
MR. BAKER: Well, then, don't argue what I allegedly said; argue the evidence for a change.
MR. PETROCELLI: Now, do you understand that point here?
It's a ruse if Mr. Simpson isn't home.
He did it, because Mr. Simpson swears on a stack of bibles that he's home. That's all you need to find, that he's not home. That's the end of story.
Let me take the next step. Let's say Mr. Simpson now wants to change his testimony and say, okay, you got me; you got me. I wasn't home, but I didn't do this. I was just driving around. I didn't do this.
Now we get to this issue of length of struggle. You know how much time it took.
What Mr. Simpson and his lawyers are trying to prove, it couldn't have been me because these murders, if they occurred around 10:30, had to take so long and be so involved, that I couldn't possibly have done it and gotten back to my property by 10:55.
Now, you remember 10:55 is the time we know, from Mr. Park's cell-phone records, that he finally sees O.J. Simpson going into his house. And that alone incriminates Mr. Simpson. Why is he outside, going in his house, when he says he's supposed to be home?
Okay. He sees him going in the house at 10:55. Mr. Kaelin heard him bump into the wall at 10:51.
And we know that's Mr. Simpson because there's no other explanation for those noises.
So those are the times we're working on.
10:55, he's seen. 10:51, he's heard.
And Mr. Baker said, well, Mr. Kaelin said it was 10:40.
That's not true. Mr. Kaelin has been very consistent from day one, from day one, from the moment he was first interviewed by O.J. Simpson's lawyer, Robert Shapiro. He's been very clear that these thumps, these noises, or thumps, as he called them, they occurred between approximately 10:40 and 10:50. And he never looked at any watch or anything.
And then, when we finally have the benefit of Mr. Park's cell-phone records, we're able to figure out almost exactly when those sounds occurred. Because Mr. Kaelin said when he heard the sounds, he was frightened by them. He talked two more minutes; he got off the phone and went around to look, and Mr. Park saw him at 10:54. By his cell phone -- see, the cell phones are the timekeeper. The cell-phone records are finally the timekeeper on this.
Mr. Park saw him 10:54. And about 30 seconds, actually -- and Mr. Kaelin had just gotten off the phone two or three minutes before, so that's 10:51 -- so that's when those noises occurred.
Now, Mr. Simpson is back at his property at 10:51. How long does it take to get back there?
Well, he knows the fastest way. We put on this fellow, Mr. Petee, not even driving as fast as one could, driving at a reasonably fast speed, but not excessively fast, he said he made it in four minutes, going south on Bundy to the first block and pulling over again.
(Indicating to board entitled Map of Bundy area.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Let's see if I can get my bearings here.
Going this way (indicating) and cutting up and going up Gretna Green. Mr. Heidstra said this is the quickest way to go north because there's fewer lights and stoplights than Bundy. He says if you want to go in that direction, you take Gretna Green.
So Mr. Heidstra sees the car turning. This -- that's the way that Mr. Petee timed it -- and he got going this way (indicating) up to Rockingham in four minutes.
Mr. Simpson probably got there faster that night.
So that's like -- four minutes from 10:51, that's 10:47. Okay. So Mr. Simpson's got to be out of there by 10:47, out of Bundy.
Now, what did Mr. Heidstra say about his observation? Mr. Baker tried to argue that Mr. Heidstra was talking about 10:50 when he saw that car leave.
Remember, Mr. Heidstra said he was standing on this corner under a tree. It was right here (indicating). He was looking down -- there's a streetlight here (indicating) -- and he saw a car coming and make this right, right over here (indicating).
And it was -- he doesn't say "Blazer," by the way; that's Mr. Baker's word. He said it looked like a Bronco.
Okay. White. Made a right.
And what time did he say he saw that?
He didn't say 10:50. That's what Mr. Baker was trying to get you to believe, to make it impossible for the person to be Mr. Simpson.
Well, I just want to show you what Mr. Heidstra said. Rather than to take my word for it, quote:
"It must have been around 10:40, 10:40, 10:45, in between, no more than 10:45, for sure would be a little before."
This guy has not got a watch and looking at his watch; he's estimating times: No later than that. And we know it was earlier than 10:45 and was was closer to 10:40 when that car was seen, from his other observations, which I'll go over.
But even if it is 10:45, Mr. Simpson easily did make it back in time to bump into a wall at 10:51.
And understand something: When Mr. Simpson left Bundy, this guy was in a hurry. He left all the evidence behind.
He left the hat; he left the glove; he left his blood. He didn't clean up.
Just another thing about this: Is a professional assassin going to leave all that evidence behind?
Is a guy who's in the business of killing people, does he leave all these, his blood?
Does he leave his hat?
Does he leave his glove?
Does he leave all the evidence on the glove?
This person got out of there and was in a hurry. And he didn't have to make any stops; he didn't have to stop anywhere in between to bury a murder weapon. He had a bag with him that's never been seen before.
He gets on his property, either through the Rockingham gate or goes over the fence. He drops his stuff in a bag. He drops the glove, and he goes inside. That's all. He didn't have to do anything in between.
He had time, later on, to dispose of evidence. He didn't have to dispose of the evidence between Bundy and Rockingham. He went from Bundy right to Rockingham and right upstairs, so he wouldn't miss that limousine.
That's what he did. There were no stops in between.
Mr. Heidstra said that he heard this dog, agitated dog, and he knew it was an Akita; and he knew it was Nicole's Akita; and he knew it was not an angry growl, as though the dog were angry at a stranger. It wasn't that kind of growl, because he's very familiar with dogs, and the dog was agitated.
Mr. Heidstra is coming down here (indicating) when he gets to about this (indicating) point where the alleyway is, 10:30 to 10:35, and he hears this continuous, incredibly loud and nonstop dog barking. He then decides not to go in front of the condo because's he got two older dogs and he didn't want them to be frightened, so he reversed his direction and he went across here. (Indicating.)
And he said by the time he got to here (indicating), it was five minutes when he first heard the sounds. Now we're at 10:35 to 10:40.
And he said that he heard the sounds in the middle of this alleyway (indicating). So you have to cut that time in half.
So he's hearing -- remember, he said as he walked across, he stopped in the middle, opposite Nicole's condo, and heard: "Hey, hey, hey."
We think that was Ron's voice he heard.
And then Mr. Baker said there was no other voices heard -- there were no other voices heard.
Well, that's not true.
Mr. Heidstra said he then heard this other voice, a deeper voice, which he couldn't make out. Mr. Heidstra heard two voices: A younger male and a deeper male voice.
"Hey, hey, hey," followed by this deeper voice.
And he said that he heard that halfway between his trip across the alley, so he heard that as early as 10:32.
There's obviously plenty of time involved here.
We know he did it, so he had to have the time.
And then, the last part of their argument here is, well, even if it occurred around 10:30 or 10:32, it had to be a really long struggle. This was two gladiators going at each other for 15 minutes.
Well, again, I'm going to trust that you use your common sense.
First of all, Mr. Baker said he thought that Nicole Brown Simpson was killed first, and then Ron Goldman was attacked and killed.
Now, if you believe they're story that -- they want you to accept their story that two professional assassins go up to Bundy, they kill Nicole.
Michael Baden, their expert, says Nicole was killed in about 10, 15 seconds, in no time.
Werner Spitz says the same thing: She was killed when her throat was cut. She died instantaneously.
And then he wants you to believe -- and again, this is their theory, now -- then he wants to you believe that two assassins, or professional hit men, then engaged Ron Goldman, who was defenseless and caught by surprise, and had no weapon, and then they fought him for two or three minutes. And now, he's collapsed on the ground.
Now this is Baden's theory, by the way. Baden's theory used to be, as he told the folks on the Geraldo Riviera Show, that Ron was fighting for five or ten minutes. Then, when he came to court, he had to back down and concede that wasn't accurate any longer, and now the fight is only two or three minutes, he said.
He obviously had read Dr. Spitz's testimony.
And that was that was all he had to do, was read Dr. Spitz's testimony.
Now he's down to two or three minutes.
Now, Ron Goldman is collapsed on the ground, two or three minutes. Nicole took less than a minute. So he's got about a two- or three-minute fight, according to their own people.
But that doesn't work for them, because they need to have the killers stay there a really long time so that you'll think it couldn't have been Mr. Simpson. So what do they do?
They say, well, the killers then went off and did something and came back five or ten minutes later and inflicted the last wound on Mr. Goldman.
And I guess during that five or ten minutes that they were gone, wherever they went, they didn't pick up any evidence. They didn't pick up the glove; they didn't pick up the hat; they didn't clean up the blood. They didn't do anything.
Does that make any sense at all?
And the other thing they throw at you to distract you from Mr. Simpson is, they say, oh, there was two killers, not one killer.
Two killers.
You know why they say there was two killers? Because they find -- what they think is, this one footprint out on the sidewalk, which their own expert, Dr. Henry Lee said, he couldn't tell if that was put there that night or any other night.
That's their big evidence of a second killer, that there's one footprint out on the sidewalk someplace.
You know how many people, when this crime scene was processed, how many times did you hear Mr. Baker talk about the 25, 30 officers and others who were at this crime scene?
Do you know how many people walked in blood in this crime scene when this crime scene was processed?
Coroner's assistants, patrol officers, detectives, criminalists, maybe even media.
And he points to these little mysterious drops of blood. They liked to talked about those seven drops of blood. He said that's the direction the dog was going. What's that all about? Maybe the dog dropped that blood. Remember, the dog had blood on it. When the dog was found at 10:55, it had blood on it under its belly.
Maybe the dog, who was stomping in blood, that's what all that blood up and down that path is; that's that dog. You can see the footprints. It's up and down. Maybe that dog dripped some blood off.
They want you to look at a few things and say, you know, look, that means Mr. Simpson didn't do it. There's seven drops of blood there. There's a footprint here.
Where is the second killer's footprints in the crime scene if there's two guys?
How come there's only one set of Bruno Magli shoe prints throughout the whole crime scene, right where the bodies are?
How come there's only the Bruno Magli shoe prints between Nicole's body and Ron's body?
Where are all the other person's footprints?
What? Was he flying?
Where are his footprints?
They're not there because there is no other person.
Just use your common sense.
Just use your common sense.
Let me move on.
Mr. Simpson says he's innocent because he didn't act like a guilty man after the murders.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this.
Mr. Simpson wasn't really trying to show everybody that he had just committed a murder, was he?
Shakespeare wrote, "One may smile and smile and be a villain."
Mr. Simpson agrees with Shakespeare.
Do you have that quote from Mr. Simpson about his ability to conduct himself when he's under enormous stress?
(Document displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: (Reading:)
Q. You are perfectly able, even when you are feeling very low and devastated, for that matter, to act normal in public and give autographs? A. Yes.
I think that's another answer to all these witnesses they brought in here, on the airplane that saw him for, like, ten seconds, and said oh, he was, you know, smiling, O.J.
Well, of course he was.
Smiling and smiling and being a villain.
Now, this is another interesting thing that they mentioned: They say none of these witnesses saw a cut.
This is why you have to really be on your toes when you listen to these defense arguments. They say none of these witnesses saw cuts, so he wasn't cut. So therefore, he's innocent.
Well, Mr. Baker told us yesterday that Mr. Simpson was bleeding all over Rockingham before he left for the airport, and that's why the blood's there; that's how the blood got in the Bronco and the blood got on the driveway and the blood -- glossed blood that was found in the house, because Mr. Simpson must have bled there.
Of course, Mr. Simpson says, I did not bleed. So we have a conflict between those two.
But if Mr. Baker is right and he suspects Mr. Simpson was bleeding that night, all over Rockingham, how come none of the witnesses that he brought in saw the cut or cuts?
How come they didn't see the cuts?
Mr. Baker told us -- he told us about the blood. The blood came from cuts, came from someplace.
There's no immaculate cut here; there's a real cut.
Where did it come from?
Obviously, from his hand.
Do you think Mr. Simpson was going on the airplane saying, hey, Howard, how you doing? See my cuts?
(Laughter in the audience.)
MR. PETROCELLI: You think he might have been putting his hands in his pocket? Maybe.
How come we don't have those blue jeans that he wore on the plane coming home?
There's a fellow that sat next to him that said he had on blue jeans, the same blue jeans he went to Chicago in. Then he arrives at Rockingham in a completely different change of clothing.
So from the time he got off the plane to go to Rockingham on Monday to meet with the police, he had changed his clothing and ditched the blue jeans, probably because they were stained with blood, probably because he had been keeping his finger in his pocket a good part of the flight.
And then again, without going over the details, can an innocent man possibly have ten to eleven injuries on his hand and not know it? To this day.
And ask yourselves when you go in that jury room -- each one of you have to ask yourselves this question:
How did O.J. Simpson get all of those injuries on his hand?
Does any one of you know the answer?
I don't.
I don't know the answer.
We're two and a half years later. There's no answer.
He said, well, one of them, he thinks he got cut in Chicago, but he can't tell us how he cut it, broke a glass somehow, doesn't know how. And he has no explanation for all the other injuries on his hand.
And Mr. Baker stood up here and said to you that O.J. Simpson didn't have one bruise on his body.
You have the picture of 6/14?
He did not have one bruise on his body. What about his left hand covered with abrasions and cuts?
What do you call those?
(Photograph displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Looks to me like injuries.
You want to go to the -- this -- this -- this -- just flip through a couple of them. Go ahead.
(Photographs displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: You want a close-up on that?
You tell me you don't know how these are caused.
How about this?
(Counsel placed hand on Elmo screen with counsel's fingernails placed over photograph of cut on finger.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Look at all this, this here (indicating). These are the marks of a killer.
(Indicating to photograph depicting finger with a cut and a ruler.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Okay. That's enough.
An innocent man doesn't put a gun to his head, 47 years old, four children, two small, their having just lost their mother -- an innocent man doesn't do that. It's beyond common sense. It's beyond our experience. Innocent men don't take their lives and orphan their children, who just lost their mother. It doesn't happen.
And why would O.J. Simpson, as close -- the closest he came to telling the truth -- why would he say to Tom Lange, when Mr. Lange said to him, quote: "Nobody's going to get hurt, O.J. Nobody is going to get hurt" -- And this is on that Bronco cell phone, when Tom Lange is begging him to put the gun away and come home -- Nobody's going to get hurt.
What does Mr. Simpson say? Quote: "I'm the only one that deserves it." End of quote.
We've already spoken at length -- you want to put that up?
(Document displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: These are Mr. Simpson words, not mine.
Okay, Steve, take it down.
(Mr. Foster complies.)
MR. PETROCELLI: We've already spoken about his argument that, well, all the evidence is corrupt, and everybody was out to get me, and his argument that, throw away all the evidence because it all points to me.
And, you know, the tragedy here is that two human lives are lost, and another tragedy that Mr. Simpson gets up here, with his high-powered defense team, and accuses police officers of everything in the book, everything in the book, about the most heinous things: Set-ups, conspiracy, frame-ups.
People on the force -- Phil Vannatter, on the force for 27 years, had an unblemished record. Now they want you to think he's some kind of criminal, all these police officers are criminals, people that protect us, they're criminals.
They're criminals, they're perjurers, and criminals.
And the irony of it -- the irony of it, ladies and gentlemen, is that these criminals and these perjurers took care of this guy big time. They all took care of him. They all looked the other way when he beat his wife. And for that, we should fault the police for that. They took care of this guy.
As late as eight months before Nicole was murdered, when she was frightened -- and you heard that tape and you heard the fear in her trembling voice -- and then I heard Mr. Simpson say she wasn't frightened.
I will debate it forever.
That's what he said about that tape.
His lawyer, of course, stood up and said, I think she was frightened.
What did -- what did the police say to him eight months before Nicole's murder?
Can you put up the Lally quote?
Sergeant Lerner -- Excuse me.
(Document displayed on the Elmo screen.)
MR. PETROCELLI: This is what was really going on between the Los Angeles Police Department and O.J. Simpson (indicating).
Can you bring it back up so I can get the whole thing.
Right there.
"Because of your celebrity status, we are going to keep this as small as possible."
That describes the relationship of the Los Angeles Police Department towards O.J. Simpson. He never had a negative experience with anyone in law enforcement, none. They treated him like gold. He's the last person in the world they would try to frame, the last person.
Now, we're almost done. We've got two more things to talk about.
Can you bring out the photos.
We're getting done by noon, for sure.
(Board depicting E. J. Flammer and Harry Scull photographs is displayed.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Those photos -- I give Mr. Leonard a lot of credit: He had a thankless job. He had a thankless job to try to come up here and say something about these pictures that put the lie to O.J. Simpson in the biggest way.
These shoes put the lie to O.J. Simpson because he can't say the shoe prints were planted; he can't talk about LAPD; he can't talk about anything in law enforcement.
He's got nothing to say.
When there was only one photo, he said gee, maybe I could find a guy and pay him enough to -- remember what Mr. Leonard said? What is the expression he used? Money makes the globe spin.
It did, all right. That's what got Mr. Groden to spin right into the courtroom.
And the guy that was -- you know, I don't mean to be disrespectful to him, but he's not a photo expert. He was hawking videos and he was a driver for a tour -- the Kennedy the assassination -- of a deceased president. That's what his job was. That's a job. Okay. Don't come up here and put yourself on that witness stand and say you're an expert in something you don't know anything about.
But he did for $12,000 minimum, $2,000 a day. He had already gotten $8,000 by the time he got on the stand, another $2,000 for that day. He was back a second time. Another $2,000 for that day. That's at least 12 grand. And for 12 grand, Mr. Groden -- he followed the script.
He tried to come up with some argument why that picture isn't real.
And we had to bring in a real expert, a real expert, the foremost expert on altered photographs in the United States of America, no less, Gerald Richards.
And he had to, in almost comical fashion, he had to just say, you know, even a first-year college student would know this isn't a sign of alteration. This is a scratch; this is overexposure. No, when you measure a negative, you don't go to Kinko's and blow it up on a xerox machine; you take this measuring device and you measure it.
It's the guy they put on the stand.
But Mr. Simpson thought, you know, just put him out there; maybe they'll like him; I only got one photo to worry about.
And the other shoe dropped, and 30 more photos came in.
And Mr. Leonard says, you know -- what did he say? Too late and too much cost. Came too late, cost too much.
Mr. Kelly said in the nick of time and priceless.
Well, the photos came in time for you to see the truth. So forget the catchy slogans. The photos came in time for you to see the truth, ladies and gentlemen.
The truth that he lied to you about wearing the murder shoes.
And they never put on Mr. Groden to say that these 30 pictures were fake. I guess his asking price was even out of their reach, because he didn't come back for money. Maybe he would have for enough, but Mr. Groden would have had a problem, you see, because he not only had to do, you know, that one; he would now have to do 30 of them.
When he tried to lie to you, to say it was raining that day; that's another reason why that picture is a fraud; it was raining that day.
I didn't hear Mr. Leonard asking anymore questions about rain. I didn't hear him talking to you in his argument about rain. I think they were embarrassed about that.
Nothing about rain is there, is there?
And then we do our job. We bring in the people who say yeah, these are Bruno Maglis, same class as that shoe. Same clothes.
And understand something here; here's what O.J. Simpson is asking to you believe: (Counsel covers shoes in photographs with notebook) Why that's real, that's real, that's real, that's real, that's real.
(Counsel covers everything on photographs except shoes with notebook.) That's a fraud, that's a fraud, that's a fraud.
You want to talk about irony?
This photo was published eight months earlier in a Buffalo Bills Report, commemorating him (counsel indicates to Mr. Simpson).
Mr. Leonard -- and you know I give him A for effort -- he says, well, Mr. Richards didn't look at the print that appears in there.
What he didn't tell you, of course -- I'm sure it's in your notes -- is that Mr. Richards looked at the negative. He looked at this negative, negative 7A, and that negative is unaltered. Negative 7A is unaltered. That's the negative that was used to print that photo showing O.J. Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes, Lorenzo Silga sole.
And you know, sometimes there's a doubting Thomas in the group, and they want to ask a lot of good questions, and they say, you know, on this one, we can see the sole, but on this one, you can't.
Good question.
If a guy was going to alter photographs, maybe he would alter a photograph so you could see the sole, wouldn't he?
The fact that you don't see his sole is the best proof that it's not altered.
But Mr. Bodziak came back and explained well, the photographer might not have done this. But you do see the sole in all these photographs?
Because this upper part of the sole is one unit with the underneath of the sole, and it curves all the way over and hugs the inside of the fabric. It's one unit. And he testified it's a Silga sole; doesn't even have to see it.
But in any event, that's not the point, because Mr. Simpson says, his lawyers say those are Bruno Maglis. They don't dispute that.
Remember the position that they've now cornered themselves into? They say these are Bruno Magli shoes, and they say the killer wore them. And all they have left is for you to believe that every single one of these photos, despite what you see, you don't see -- that's where they are on this.
And you know they complained about the fact that they came so late. Why did they come so late?
You know, not everybody is following this case as intensely as some of the people in this town. I mean, we asked both photographers -- you have their testimony --
Why don't you put that up.
(Mr. Foster complies.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Both of them said they didn't follow the criminal case. This is Mr. Flammer. He's a young kid who followed the criminal trial, the Simpson criminal trial, not very closely.
Mr. Scull, did you follow the trial very closely?
No.
The criminal trial, I mean.
No.
Okay. So they didn't follow this thing very closely.
These photos are real. They don't come too late; they come just in time.
I told you before, ladies and gentlemen, you have -- if you believe the photos are real, and when you're looking at -- looking at the person who killed Ron and Nicole, those photos are real. You're looking at the person who killed Ron and Nicole.
And you know what?
They complained about the pictures coming late.
You know why these pictures ultimately showed up?
Because Mr. Simpson testified in this case, in January of 1996, with great bravado, "I would never wear those ugly-ass shoes."
And he said that with confidence, because for two years, he lived -- he lived with the -- with the confidence that no shoe pictures would emerge.
You know the glove pictures had come up. No shoe pictures had come up. So he felt pretty secure; nobody was going to come up with these photos.
So he told me, under oath, in his deposition, "I'd never wear those ugly-ass shoes." And, you know, the media picks up on all these things. And all of a sudden, that got widely reported. And boom, people start looking through their basements for photographs. That's what you see, the photographs.
And then he gets on the witness stand here and says, when the Scull photograph emerged, well, that's a fraud. And that got widely reported. And then someone looks again and finds more photographs.
He's done in by his own lies; that's why these things came out. When they did, he made a big issue of trying to say he never wore those shoes, and then all these pictures are frauds.
And people started rummaging through the basements. These are freelance photographers; their job is to take pictures that -- they take hundreds and thousands of them. They don't even develop them. They sell them.
Now, I'd like you to close your eyes to these pictures because the photographers are trying to sell them.
Why shouldn't they sell them?
You took a picture, and three years later you found out that someone wanted to pay you a lot of money for it, would you give it to somebody else to make money, or would you make money yourself, when you're in the business of selling photographs?
Because someone is going to sell a photograph for money after it's become valuable, that means that he's not wearing those shoes? Does that follow? I don't think so.
Can you bring in the other board.
(Mr. Foster complies.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Simpson and his lawyers cornered themselves into this tiny little corner, this tiny little corner. They've trapped themselves into this corner. And the only way they can get you to close your eyes to the truth is to believe that those photos are fake. And they're all real.
(Board entitled, Either Simpson is Lying or all of These Witnesses and Documents are Lying, Mistaken or Faked, displayed.)
MR. PETROCELLI: Now, Mr. Simpson, of necessity, has to say that all these people are not telling the truth, are lying, or are mistaken.
When I originally -- I did this list before I heard Mr. Baker's argument and Mr. Blasier's and Mr. Leonard's arguments. And frankly, I left a lot of names off. After listening to them, I should have put on all the FBI agents, because he says they're all biased on it, out to get Mr. Simpson. So I've got to put Bill Bodziak's name and Gerry Richards' name and Doug Deedrick's name on there.
And then they accuse us of arm-twisting all the witnesses.
You know, we all call that fondly, the Doubletree Defense.
I guess we have the ability to pick up the phone and call people up, say hey, you know, we don't know each other, but I'd like you to testify in this case. Meet me at the Doubletree Hotel; meet me in my room, and I'm going to try to get you to commit perjury, a felony, risk your life, maybe go to jail for many, many years, just to help me out.
Maybe I should -- my name should go up there as a criminal: I'm suborning perjury. That's against the law. That's what they say we're doing. I would go to jail for many years, suborning perjury. All my partners, too. Put their names up there, too.
We're all begging people to commit perjury.
I guess we may even have to put Mr. Baker's name up there, because Mr. Simpson says he has a different opinion than Mr. Baker on some very important facts. I guess Mr. Baker's wrong, too.
I don't know.
Did I leave anybody off?
It's undeniable that's what O.J. Simpson is trying to do; he's tying to deny the undeniable. He blames everyone.
We heard Mr. Baker -- we heard Mr. Baker say that, you know, Mr. Simpson is the victim in all of this, not two precious human beings that are dead. Now Mr. Simpson's the victim.
He's the victim.
He said vote for Mr. Simpson. The media are out to get him.
First of all, did he call any members of the media to the witness stand to say they were out to get him?
Did he put on any evidence of that?
Did the media put his blood there?
Did the media put his gloves there, his shoe prints?
Did the media put him in those photos?
Another attempt to move you away from the truth and anything that will work: I've got to get this jury to not focus on the evidence; I've got to move them. Blames the media. Says, if you hold Mr. Simpson not responsible, the gravy train will stop.
Let me translate.
If you ignore all the evidence and hold Mr. Simpson not responsible, his gravy train rolls on and on and on and on.
It does not make any difference, ladies and gentlemen. The final analysis, how many names I put up on that board, it doesn't make a difference to him how many blood drops there are. It doesn't make a difference to him how much evidence of abuse we give you.
It doesn't make any difference to him how many witnesses we bring in here.
And it doesn't make a difference to him how many of his lies we expose.
None of this matters to him because this man has no sense of responsibility. And now we come full circle, when we started this argument a couple of days ago.
Why are we here? We are here to seek some measure of justice so that somebody -- someone finally will fix responsibility for two innocent people who lost their lives.
Mr. Baker says, we're not here to talk about responsibility; we're here to talk about money.
And I was amazed yesterday to hear him say Ron Goldman, he wouldn't have a restaurant now, he'd be lucky to have a credit card.
Let me explain something, just in case you're confused.
We're not seeking any damages for Ron Goldman's earnings. We're not seeking any damages for how successful his restaurant would have been. We make no such claim in this case. Whether Ron Goldman had a successful restaurant or not has nothing to do with this case.
We ask that you determine who his killer is, and we ask that you award damages for this man's loss. And his life will never be the same. And Mr. Baker got up here -- in one of the lowest moments of this trial, he mocked this young man who lies in his grave.
Now, I want you to think about this: If O.J. Simpson were innocent, truly innocent, would he let his lawyer mock this young man? This young man tried to save the life of the mother of his children. He is a hero to O.J. Simpson.
Only a guilty man has his lawyers stand up there and disparage this person and disparage his loss and cheapen his loss.
And Mr. Baker has the nerve to tell you it only cost $200 to file a lawsuit. Can you imagine that?
He is right. It cost $200 to file a lawsuit.
Is that what he thinks this is about? It's not about Mr. Simpson's blood or his gloves or hat and shoes and all the other evidence?
It's not about any of that? It's about the fact that Mr. Goldman has $200 to file a lawsuit?
And in their zeal to get your verdict, have they become so insensitive to the greatest of human tragedies, the loss of life, that they want to speak about these two dead people in terms of $200?
My stomach turned when I heard that.
You know, Mr. Simpson, here's $200. You want it? Give me back my client's son.
(Mr. Petrocelli holds out money to Mr. Simpson.)
MR. BAKER: Give it up.
MR. PETROCELLI: They want this verdict that bad, take it. Give my client back his son, and we will march out of here in a heartbeat.
Enough is enough. The time has come to put this to rest.
Two people lost their lives. They deserve their due.
They deserve their final peace. Their lives matter; their lives counted.
And that man (pointing to Mr. Simpson) who took their lives should be held accountable.
MR. BAKER: That's not the law, Your Honor. That's not why we're here.
MR. PETROCELLI: It is you --
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. PETROCELLI: It is you, ladies and gentlemen, and only you, and only will be you, who have the duty to decide once and for all whether there will be responsibilities for the lives of these two human beings. This is it.
And it is a duty that will be with you not just while you're in that deliberation room, long after we leave this courtroom, for the rest of your lives.
The great American lawyer, Daniel Webster, over 150 years ago, addressed a jury just like this one in a case involving murder.
Just like this one.
And he spoke of your duty, and he said: Absence of duty pursues us forever. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness, for our misery.
And, ladies and gentlemen, your sense of duty performed or duty violated will be with you forever.
And I have no doubt that you will perform your duty. I have no doubt that you will do justice.
Thank you.
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, we'll resume at 1:30.
Don't talk about the case. Don't form or express any opinions.
(At 11:51 a.m., a recess was taken until 1:30 p.m. of the same day.)
