The Search for Justice (37 page)

Soon after the Bailey fallout, I was at home, on a conference call with Johnnie and Bill Pavelic. Bill was outlining the pointby-point
chronology of everything Bailey had done, in the weeks before I was in Hawaii, and in the days since, including the leaks
to the press about conversations only the lawyers could ’ve been privy to. I was adamant that Bailey be removed from this
case, from anything having to do with O.J. and the upcoming trial.

“Don ’t you understand, Johnnie?” I said angrily. “This isn ’t a disagreement over tactics, or style. This isn ’t some kind
of personality conflict Bailey and I are having about how to conduct a defense. The man betrayed me—and the entire defense
team, and O.J., too—on every conceivable level. And he undercut the public perception of the defense of this case in the process.
The jury ’s not sequestered; they ’re hearing this garbage. This isn ’t me being wounded by a couple of nasty press clippings!
This man lied, he cannot be trusted!”

“I didn ’t know you felt so strongly about this, Bob,” Johnnie said on the other end of the line. “I thought this was something
you ’d get over, for the good of the client.”

“Good of the client?” I said. “It ’s the client that I ’m talking about here, don ’t you get it? Bailey took confidential
information, and it sure looks like he or his people went to the press with it. Bad enough that I ’ve been insulted and betrayed
by someone I ’ve trusted with my own son, for God ’s sake. O.J. ’s been betrayed too. For fame, for ego!”

My home office is just off the master bedroom, and Linell could easily hear my end of the conversation grow more and more
heated. Finally she could take it no more and came around the corner. “What ’s Cochran ’s problem?” she asked, not bothering
to keep her voice down.

“Here,” I said, handing her the phone. “You talk to him.”

Linell had met Johnnie before he was involved in O.J. ’s case, at fundraisers or law functions. He had always been cordial
to her, and pleasant, as she had been to him. Now, however, that was about to change.

“Johnnie, this is Linell Shapiro,” she said angrily. “I have to tell you, I ’ve been listening to Bob ’s end of this conversation
tonight, and I don ’t understand this. After what Lee Bailey did, why is there even a question in your mind about this? The
man stabbed Bob in the back, and O.J., too. He was responsible for confidential stories about the case being leaked everywhere.
This isn ’t about two men having a professional disagreement. This is about someone who ’s evil, who can ’t be trusted—by
us or you or anybody else, but especially by O.J. Simpson!”

She didn ’t know Pavelic was still on the line. Later, he told me Johnnie ’s end of the conversation.

“Now, now, Mrs. Shapiro, I understand how upset you must be by all of this but it ’s important to put it behind us now. We
’re going to go on as a team, for the good of our client.”

“How can this be good for O.J.?” my wife asked.
“None
of this is good for O.J. Come on, Johnnie, who do you think you ’re talking to? I ’ve been a defense attorney ’s wife for
twenty-five years, I know what the rules are. Don ’t you understand what ’s happened? Lee can ’t be trusted—why do you want
someone working for your client who can ’t be trusted?”

From the look on her face and the sound of her voice, it was clear that Cochran was having none of it. She put her hand over
the mouthpiece. “He keeps calling me ‘Mrs. Shapiro, ’ “ she said to me. “He ’s really being patronizing, like I ’m a child.”

“No, I
won ’t
calm down,” she snapped at him. “Johnnie, Bob brought everyone together, he brought you into this case. If you can ’t understand
what this has done to our family, why don ’t you at least see how bad it is for the case?”

I knew she would get no further than I had.

“Well, Johnnie, as far as I ’m concerned, if Bailey stays, then Bob goes. It ’s just that simple!” And she handed the phone
back to me.

“Bob, I know this isn ’t pleasant, and I really didn ’t understand that you and your wife felt so strongly about it,” Cochran
said. “But we have to work together, all of us, for the client. This isn ’t about you, or Bailey. It ’s about the client.”

“That ’s the
point
, Johnnie,” I said. “It
is
about the client. And this is bad for him.”

“I don ’t want you to leave the case,” Johnnie said.

“That ’s not your call to make,” I said evenly. “O.J. Simpson hired me as his attorney. No one else changes that. Most especially
Lee Bailey doesn ’t change that.”

“I understand what you ’re saying,” Johnnie said. “We will do what ’s best for our client.”

When I hung up the phone, I turned around to find Linell standing in the doorway looking at me. “I don ’t believe Johnnie
’s attitude, why he doesn ’t see how serious this is. How could he think Bailey staying is good for O.J.?” Then she paused.
“Bob, what are you going to do now?” she asked.

“I have no choice. I am committed to defending my client,” I said to her. “You just told Cochran you know the rules. Well,
one of those rules is that a lawyer cannot quit a criminal case once he ’s the attorney of record unless the client consents—and
this client doesn ’t. I asked him at the jail if he wanted me out, and he was adamant that he did not. I ’m staying, no matter
how I feel about Bailey.”

Almost a year later, Bill Pavelic told Linell he ’d been a silent witness to that phone conversation. “I told Bob you reminded
me of a lioness protecting her family,” he said. “You really let Cochran have it. I respected you enormously for that.”

Bailey stayed. Johnnie Cochran got the self-awarded Nobel Peace Prize for smoothing at least the appearance of troubled waters.
Lee and I basically shook hands and went to our corners. There was no kissing and making up. Although he never admitted a
thing and has repeatedly denied the charges of leaking, I never forgave him—and don ’t to this day. There were more leaks,
more loose lips, and more tension to come. Why Johnnie and O.J. kept him on the team is a question for them to answer. All
I knew was that six months before I had made a commitment to a client, and unless and until he decided otherwise, it was a
commitment I meant to honor. We had a trial coming.

O
n January 9, Judge Ito announced to the jurors that they would definitely be sequestered. “This is something we all tried
to avoid,” he told them, “but it ’s become necessary.” They would be staying in a very good hotel, he assured them, and they
would be allowed family visits on Wednesdays and weekends. Additional arrangements would be made for their comfort and entertainment
during the duration of the trial.

Oddly, this was the first experience with a sequestered jury for the prosecution, the defense, and the presiding judge. While
the prosecution had wanted sequestration all along, the defense had taken longer to come around. During jury selection we
’d seen and heard the results of the intense press coverage; our concern now was to keep them from hearing the evidentiary
motions on domestic-violence evidence and the arguments over what would be admissible on Fuhrman. There was certainly no way
to keep either of those issues off the television or out of the papers.

Before the holiday break, it had been my unpleasant duty to tell Dean Gerald Uelmen that after the hearings on the domestic-abuse
evidence he would no longer be needed in court by the defense team. “We want a new look,” Johnnie had said.
Often during the motion hearings, Uelmen would be criticized for not being forceful enough, for not being strong.

I would try to explain to O.J. that these were complicated legal arguments, argued primarily for the record. “The jury ’s
not here for this, and Gerry isn ’t putting on a show. Ito ’s the only audience that counts here, and he respects this attorney.”
But a decision had been made. Uelmen would prepare the domestic-abuse motions but not present them in court. Maybe Bailey
would do it, Johnnie said.

Uelmen was angry. “I ’ll be damned if I ’ll be a ghostwriter for Lee Bailey,” he said. I agreed and took a firm stance that
Gerry should argue these motions. Judge Ito respected him and called him “Dean” until Marcia Clark objected.

Johnnie then played the politician, persuading Gerry to reconsider. In mid-January, Judge Ito heard arguments concerning domestic
abuse, and Uelmen appeared for the defense.

Like with most evidence of “prior bad acts,” incidents of prior abuse are only rarely admissible in criminal trials because
they can carry such a prejudicial weight to a jury. A defendant is only on trial for the particular crime he ’s been charged
with, not for his history, no matter how unacceptable society believes that history to be. Thus Uelmen ’s motion to the court
was to exclude everything the prosecution had asked for. “Where is there any similarity between a bedroom argument in which
both parties had been drinking and the argument escalates into a slapping incident—and the slashing of two people ’s throats
on a sidewalk?” he argued.

The prosecution had requested that evidence of fifty-nine separate incidents be admissible, and at one point deputy district
attorney Cheri Lewis said the prosecution had added witnesses after reading Faye Resnick ’s book. Uelmen reacted strongly
to that statement. “I find it very alarming that the Bible for the investigation of this case has been a sleazy tabloid book,”
he said. “My first reaction after reading it was that I wanted to take a shower.”

Ultimately, Judge Ito allowed a number of instances into
evidence, including two 911 calls from 1993, a 1985 incident in which the police reported that O.J. broke a car windshield
with a baseball bat, and the statements of two neighbors who had called the police to report seeing O.J. standing outside
the Bundy apartment and walking back and forth on the sidewalk. When I later cross-examined those neighbors, I felt that we
established it was O.J. ’s color, not his demeanor, that had alarmed them sufficiently to call the police.

Ito excluded the material that he deemed “hearsay” evidence—in particular Nicole ’s own writings and what she had reportedly
said to her friends—since she could not be cross-examined on these.

After arguing the domestic-abuse motion, Gerry Uelmen returned to teaching, although he graciously consented to come back
to the Simpson defense team as needed. From the very beginning of this case, he had been an unsung hero, working in the background,
logging in untold hours of research, and taking the majority of the motion work on his shoulders, with the brilliant collaboration
of Dershowitz and Sara Caplan. The motions that we won on domestic-abuse evidence were brilliantly written and argued by the
Dean. In fact, every motion presented in the case, except for those pertaining to DNA, was researched and written by Uelmen,
Dershowitz, and Caplan. When Uelmen left the daily battles of the defense team, he did so with the affection and great respect
of those who appreciated what a vital part he had played on O.J. ’s behalf.

On January 8, Little, Brown publishers announced that O.J. ’s book,
I Want to Tell You
, written with Larry Schiller, would be published in the next couple of weeks, with an initial printing of five hundred thousand.
The book was composed mostly of the letters O.J. had received and his responses to them, along with some short autobiographical
sketches.