Not if Simpson can help it. He was so angered by the infighting that he felt compelled to put a stop to it, Newsweek learned. In a move that underscored the very active role that he is playing in his case, Simpson told his multimillion-dollar defenders that they had better set aside their differences and keep their focus on the game – just as he had when he and some of his football teammates didn’t get along. To drive home his point, according to one defense source, he told his lawyers at one point recently, “It’s my f—ing life that’s on the line.”
The lawyers – beneath the puffed-up egos and starched shirts – are capable of doing their jobs even if they don’t all like one another. The team’s appellate specialist, Alan Dershowitz, who has done most of his work out of his Cambridge, Mass., offices, diplomatically declined to talk about rifts, but he did say that “we hope that personalities will be kept out of this.”
As the trial opens, the personality to watch will be Johnnie Cochran. He is expected to present the crucial opening argument for the defense and then take the lead in the courtroom for the duration of the trial. The shift to trial mode is plainly on display at Cochran’s law offices in L.A.’s Mid-Wilshire District. At the end of each court day, the lawyers gather there. Down one hallway, six large file cabinets of Simpson case documents stand in the new “war room,” which was located in Shapiro’s sleeker Century City office suite until earlier this month.
All along, the defense plan called for moving Cochran, 57, to the forefront when the case went to trial. Still, Shapiro has been stung by his own downsizing; he was particularly wounded by a humiliating assessment of his work in a New York newspaper column filled with damning information from inside the defense team. Over the course of seven months, he became a household name. But Cochran is a more experienced trial lawyer. He manages to be smooth, yet not slick. “He has a capacity to go after a witness on cross-examination with such grace and charm that you want to believe what he’s saying,” says UCLA law professor Peter Arenella.
Cochran is black, and race is part of this case. It had been expected to be a subtle factor. But that changed last week after the remarkable exchange between Cochran and a young black prosecutor over the use of the word “nigger” in a future cross-examination. Cochran took the role of the proud, aggrieved black man, able to withstand racial slurs and confident that his community would as well. Eight of the jurors are African-Americans.
Cochran won his first legal victory for his friend O.J. even before he came officially aboard the defense team. In his role of community healer and legal don, Cochran helped engineer a summit meeting last July between D.A. Gil Garcetti (who once worked for Cochran in the prosecutor’s office when Cochran held the third-ranking job) and local African-American leaders. The subject: the Simpson case, the death penalty and whether society imposes it disproportionately on blacks. Three days later Cochran joined Simpson’s defense team; Garcetti later announced that his office would not seek the death penalty for Simpson.
Cochran expects to work closely with Bailey and Dershowitz. Bailey, who dusted off his cross-examination skills last week during the spousal-abuse hearings, will back up Cochran during the trial. Dershowitz will stay in Cambridge. Supported by his own team of aides and law students, he says he plans to follow the trial on a high-tech, split-screen TV. Because Dershowitz’s role is most important if a jury finds Simpson guilty, O.J. calls him his “God forbid lawyer” – as in God forbid I’m convicted. A fax hookup with the L.A. courtroom will allow Dershowitz to speed briefs and motions to his colleagues at the defense table.
Cochran and his colleagues go into this contest with one big advantage: they don’t have to win, just tie. A hung jury is almost as good as an acquittal and only requires convincing one juror. All Cochran has to do is not lose.
