Without a Doubt - [59]

I knew we had to do something to pull Ito back toward the center-and fast.

I sat Lisa down and we drafted a letter, calmly laying out our position. I promised that I would take the letter in myself and spare her the humiliation of bowing to Ito’s wishes.

Friday morning, October 14, I took a deep breath, put my head down, and marched into court. I handed the letter to Ito’s clerk, Deirdre Robertson. This was going to be ugly.

When Ito took the bench I asked permission to address the court. He granted it curtly.

This is not the time to stand on your dignity, I told myself. Fall on your damned sword.

So, on behalf of the People, I apologized profusely for any slight His Honor might have suffered during Tuesday’s hearings, and I implored him to consider the letter we’d submitted. I begged him not to cripple the People’s case by keeping out evidence when the testing delays were really no one’s fault.

Ito was still petulant. Why, he asked, couldn’t Lisa have answered him civilly and satisfactorily when he’d asked her for explanations? He continued to take out on me all the animosity he felt toward her.

“I don’t know if I can telegraph this… more openly. You’re about to lose,” he warned me.

We all went home that weekend in very low spirits, thoroughly expecting that next week, Ito was going to cut our legs right out from under us.

But then Lance did another of his classic turnarounds. On the following Tuesday morning, when we reconvened on the matter, he announced that he’d found no deliberate attempt on our part to sandbag the defense or the court.

Defense motion denied.

I glanced over at the defense table. Johnnie looked stunned. Barry Scheck looked like somebody had killed his dog. I was nearly weak with relief.

It was only as we were basking in the afterglow of this victory that I let myself reflect on the dynamic that had turned the situation around. Lance Ito had really enjoyed watching me grovel.

I’m sure Gil thought twice before asking me to take a meeting with Don Vinson. He knew that I had very little patience with frivolous interruptions. Ever since this case had started I’d found that people in high places would find any excuse to “meet” with me or Bill. Often these meetings came in the guise of some kind of help or favor they wanted to offer, but what I suspected people really wanted was to pick up insider gossip on the case and pass it along at cocktail parties. Media biggies arranged for Suzanne Childs to bring them by my office in hopes of getting an interview. Under other circumstances I would have gotten a kick out of that. Some requests I could deflect with a polite refusal; others required that I break from my work and chat for a few moments for the sake of diplomacy. Each of these interruptions probably took less than ten minutes. But the minutes added up.

The meeting with Don Vinson was not so easily avoided. Vinson was the founder of Decision Quest, a firm that specialized in jury consulting. After the hung verdict in the Menendez case, Vinson had volunteered his services to our office for the retrial. Gil was touched by the gesture. Apparently, both he and David Conn were impressed by Vinson’s work, and when Vinson offered to consult gratis on the Simpson case, Gil thought we should go for it.

Now, I do not particularly like jury consultants. As far as I’m concerned they are creatures of the defense. They charge a lot, so the only people who can afford them are wealthy defendants in a criminal trial or fat-cat corporations defending against class-action suits. As a matter of principle, I don’t feel that the government should be in the position of market-testing its arguments.

Not long after the preliminary hearings, however, we’d heard that Simpson had retained a topflight jury consultant named Jo-Ellan Dimitrius. Jo-Ellan was a heavy hitter who’d been used successfully by the defendants in both the McMartin Preschool and Rodney King state and federal trials. The line on her was good; she was a decent person and a hard worker who handled everything for her clients, from drawing up a profile of the ideal juror, to writing the ideal juror’s questionnaire, to evaluating responses and rating prospective juror candidates. No doubt about it, the Dream Team had hired themselves a great big gun.

This had Gil very worried. There were a number of tricky currents in this case: race; public attitude toward the LAPD; the defendant’s celebrity. If the defense was out there gathering intelligence to help them navigate these waters, then, Gil’s thinking went, so should we. In this case I agreed. I wanted all the help I could get.

Vinson suggested that Bill and I meet him for lunch at the very conservative, very exclusive California Club in downtown L.A.

I balked.

“If they have ideas for us, let them come in here and hand them over,” I groused to Bill. “I’m in no mood to clink glasses.”

Bill, ever the voice of reason and conciliation, coaxed me out of my lair with the promise that if Vinson didn’t offer anything of substance, I’d be off the hook for future invitations.