Without a Doubt - [55]

From the moment he logged on as attorney of record, Johnnie was causing mischief. Word filtered back to me that he was telling reporters that Fuhrman should be grilled on his racial attitudes. “Give me one black on that jury,” he was reported to have said. He didn’t need to finish the thought. Clearly, Johnnie figured that even one African American would be enough to hang a jury.

Not long afterward, Johnnie announced-in open court-that there was a witness who purportedly would clear Simpson and provide an “important lead” on the “real killers.” Johnnie said this evidence was totally inconsistent with the theory of a lone assailant. And is entirely inconsistent with the fact that Mr. Simpson is that assailant.” He suggested that the LAPD had given this witness short shrift. As it happened, the “witness” to whom he was referring had already been checked out by the police. Frank Chiuchiolo, a self-described prowler who had called in shortly after the murders, said that he’d seen a pair of heavyset white men running from the rear alley at Bundy. Before the police could even dispatch detectives to the guy’s house, up north in a town called-I just loved this-Happy Camp, the media had sniffed him out and exposed him as a chronic liar and publicity seeker. This goon-the Happy Camper, we called him-had also surfaced in the Polly Klaas abduction-murder case, where he’d also tried to give the cops phony information. And yet here was Johnnie using this shaky lead, proclaiming that the cops and the D.A.‘s office had overlooked crucial evidence in their “rush to judgment”!

You might think that pulling a stunt like this would erode a lawyer’s credibility. But Johnnie Cochran would make these far-fetched or unsupported allegations time and time again, and the media never really held him accountable. Johnnie realized that journalists, by and large, have the attention span of gnats; the important thing was grabbing the headline. In the mad rush of events, he wagered that no one would follow up. And he won the bet, nearly every time.

Something more powerful than principle was operating here. Attorneys who should have known better were being drawn to this case like moths to a floodlight. By the time Simpson was bound over for trial, F. Lee Bailey was being cited as a possible addition to the defendant’s all-star team.

Shortly after joining the team in late June, Bailey gave an interview to NBC’s Today show in which he made ridiculous assertions about what the prosecution could and could not prove. He quoted misinformation inadvertently passed to the defense by Juditha Brown-that Nicole had spoken to her mother at eleven P.M. Bailey proclaimed triumphantly that this proved Simpson could not have committed the murders and that the case would soon be thrown out. It was a foolish, sloppy mistake. We’d already gotten phone records that showed that the call had been made at 9:45 P.M., not eleven, which gave Simpson plenty of time to kill two people and make the five-minute drive back to Rockingham. I don’t know what possessed Bailey to shoot his mouth off like that. I just think the guy could not resist an impulse to grab the limelight.

Neither, apparently, could others.

Early on, probably during the first or second week of the case, I’d seen Alan Dershowitz do one of his talking-head numbers on national TV. It seemed to me, at least, that he was convinced of Simpson’s guilt. To PBS talk-show host Charlie Rose, he professed indignation at the “excuses” defendants use nowadays to absolve themselves of guilt. He cited “cop-outs” such as the “battered-woman syndrome” and the “abused-child syndrome.” He predicted that the defense in the Simpson case would most likely mount a mental defense. “The Juice Excuse,” he would call it. Then, the next thing I hear, he’s being touted as one of O. J. Simpson’s “legal strategists.”

Do these guys think no one is listening?

People still ask me whether the sight of those big guns rolling onto the field intimidated me. “Didn’t you dread coming to court every day to face these guys down?” they say. The answer is no. Whenever we heard the press referring to this crew as the Dream Team, Bill and I just rolled our eyes. The idea that these were special forces carefully recruited by Commander Shapiro, a sort of Dirty Dozen of the bar, was ludicrous.

Because what you had, basically, were a set of incompatibly grandiose egos-lead horses who by definition could never pull easily in the same harness. As early as the week of the arraignment, Shapiro was already looking worried that Johnnie would muscle him out of the limelight. It didn’t take a psychic to predict procedural chaos if this bunch were not held in check by a strong judge. What we needed was someone who would be temperate but decisive. Someone who would be consistent. Someone who knew enough law and had enough confidence to rule from the bench. We needed the ump of all umps. A square-jawed, rock-ribbed referee with huevos of steel.

Instead, we got Lance Ito.

The announcement was almost anticlimactic after Simpson’s “absolutely, one hundred percent not guilty” performance. When Judge Mills announced, “I’m assigning the case to Judge Lance Ito,” I cast a quick glance at Bill. He seemed as taken aback as I was.