The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson (50 page)

Darden’s speech was about evenly divided between text and subtext. In part, he simply meant what he said; “nigger” is a uniquely offensive epithet, and Darden thought Ito should exercise caution before he allowed anyone to utter it in court. But Darden’s words
also reflected his frustration at how the defense had seized the racial high ground in the trial from the beginning. The strategy Shapiro advocated from practically the day Simpson was arrested—which Cochran embellished even beyond the original conception—called for placing race at the center of the defense. That strategy started with Fuhrman and went on to include the focus on race in jury selection, the defense obsession with police misconduct, and the trashing of Nicole. As a prosecutor who had devoted his career to ferreting out genuine police racism, Darden seethed to see O.J. Simpson—who had done precisely nothing for his fellow African-Americans over the course of his lifetime—capitalizing on his race. In his frustration, Darden started to ramble.

“Mr. Cochran and the defense, they have a purpose in going into that area, and the purpose is to inflame the passions of the jury and to ask them to pick sides not on the basis of the evidence in this case. And the evidence in this case against this defendant is overwhelming,” he went on. “I don’t have to educate the Court on this point, but we have a right to a fair trial just like the defendant has. We are not running around or talking about or seeking to introduce to the jury the notion that this defendant has a fetish for blond-haired white women. That would be inappropriate. That would inflame the passions of the jury. It would be outrageous.”

It was Darden at this point who was outrageous, in floating the white-women obsession for the benefit of the television cameras. After nearly twenty minutes of stream-of-consciousness babbling, Darden finally sat down.

Johnnie Cochran had planned to leave court early that day, but he remained to respond to Darden’s monologue on the “n-word.” Cochran walked slowly to the podium. Bigger, older, stronger, wiser, Cochran dominated Darden in both physical and intellectual terms. “I have a funeral to attend today, [and] there are few things in life more important than attending the funeral … where you have been asked to speak, but I would be remiss were I not at this time to take this opportunity to respond to my good friend Mr. Chris Darden.”

“Good friend”—that was a tip-off to the assault to come.

“His remarks this morning are perhaps the most incredible remarks I’ve heard in a court of law in the thirty-two years I have
been practicing law. His remarks are demeaning to African-Americans as a group. And so I want, before I go to this funeral, to apologize to African-Americans across this country. Not every African-American feels that way. It is demeaning to our jurors to say that African-Americans who have lived under oppression for 200-plus years in this country cannot work within the mainstream, cannot hear these offensive words.… I am ashamed that Mr. Darden would allow himself to become an apologist for this man [Fuhrman].”

Darden was beside himself. He stood up and walked in a tiny circle behind his chair, as if he were weighing whether to walk out. Finally, he sat down and swiveled his chair away from the podium in symbolic, if rather childish, protest.

By overstating his own case about the “n-word” so dramatically, Darden had opened the door for Cochran’s righteous indignation. “All across America today, believe me, black people are offended at this very moment,” Cochran went on, “and so I have to say this was uncalled for, it is unwarranted, and most unfortunate for somebody that I have a lot of respect for—and perhaps he has become too emotional about this.” Which Darden certainly had.

When Cochran finally finished this peroration, he pushed to an even greater theatrical height, emotionally embracing Simpson and all the other lawyers at the defense table. Leaving at last for the funeral, he had time only to whisper a brief word to Darden—the classic rebuke: “Nigger,
please
…”

Darden never really recovered his composure. In repartee among the lawyers at the sidebar, he often revealed an astonishing lack of professionalism. One day early in the trial, Darden suggested that Ito should make an instruction clearer to a witness, then added, “I’m not criticizing you, Judge. You’re my bud.” A shocked Cochran interrupted: “It’s not a question of him being your
bud
. I move to strike that.” Sometimes Darden’s humor misfired. On another occasion at the sidebar, he protested that Cochran “has stepped on my shined Ferragamos. You know, I think he should have to buy me another pair of Ferragamos.” The ever tolerant Ito answered, “Come on, guys.” More seriously, Darden wore his emotions on his
sleeve in front of the jury, alternately mugging and scowling to telegraph his reactions to the testimony. Sometimes he jangled his keys in irritation. Whatever the message Darden intended to send with these gestures, the jury only picked up on his nervousness and immaturity.

Of course, the jury had been excused when Darden had his showdown with Ito on February 23, during Lange’s cross-examination. After a third invitation to apologize—and several more agonizing moments of silence—Darden broke down and offered the most grudging words of conciliation.

“Your Honor,” he said. “Thank you for the opportunity to review the transcript of the sidebar. It appears that the Court is correct, that perhaps my comments may have been or are somewhat inappropriate. I apologize to the Court. I meant no disrespect.”

Ito, in contrast, was far more gracious than Darden had any right to expect. “Mr. Darden,” the judge said, “I accept your apology. I apologize to you for my reaction as well. You and I have known each other for a number of years, and I know that your response was out of character, and I’ll note it as such.”

Ito then invited the jury back to the courtroom, and Cochran resumed his cross-examination of Detective Lange. It didn’t last long, however, because a new and even more bizarre crisis erupted. The star of Johnnie Cochran’s opening statement—Rosa Lopez, the maid in the house next door to O.J.’s—was threatening to return to her native El Salvador.

16. “I CAN’T BE HERE,
YOUR HONOR”

I
n her opening statement, Marcia Clark had surprised Johnnie Cochran by declaring so emphatically that the murders had occurred at precisely 10:15
P.M.
Talking with his colleagues on the defense team, Cochran learned from investigator Bill Pavelic that he had a witness who said she saw Simpson’s Bronco outside his house at 10:15
P.M.
That was Rosa Lopez, the maid at 348 North Rockingham, next door to O.J.’s house. Responding to Clark in his own opening statement, Cochran leaned heavily on Lopez’s expected testimony, though he himself had never spoken to Lopez. Cochran made the point repeatedly that if the murder took place at 10:15 and the Bronco was still at Rockingham at 10:15, O.J. could not have done it.

No one was more surprised to hear this than Rosa Lopez. From her base with the Salinger family just south of Simpson’s estate, the fifty-seven-year-old maid followed the case closely on television, and even told several friends and family members in Los Angeles of her memories of the night in question. What Lopez told them, however, was that she had seen the Bronco at around
10:00
P.M.
, not 10:15. When Cochran said her name in his opening on January 25, reporters quickly learned where she lived and began staking out her home. That was nerve-racking enough for Lopez, but it was the disparity between her memories and Cochran’s characterization of them that caused her real dread. As she well knew, a 10:00 sighting was neutral at best and incriminating at worst for O.J., because the murder scene was only a five-minute drive from
his house. Lopez had told several other maids in the neighborhood that she remembered seeing the Bronco at 10:00. Word began circulating in the neighborhood that Rosa was lying or had been paid off or was otherwise in thrall to the defense camp. Lopez had also told her daughter, who lived in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, about seeing O.J.’s car at 10:00. The reporters, the rumors, the scolding looks from her friends and family—they all combined to turn her misery to panic.

The defense lawyers learned of Lopez’s dismay and, as they did so often when confronted with a delicate task, turned to investigator Pat McKenna. Outgoing and friendly, McKenna was the obvious choice to mollify Lopez and keep her from fleeing before she could testify. He did what he could. McKenna and Cochran arranged for Lopez to have her own lawyer. Unappeased, Lopez quit her job with the Salingers on February 10 and went into hiding with her daughter in Los Feliz. The press found her there, and she called McKenna to help her escape. The next day, McKenna picked her up and led a fleet of local television vans on a brief eighty-mile-per-hour chase through the streets of Los Angeles until he lost them. Still, Lopez fretted. A few days later she disappeared altogether. She spent the night of Wednesday, February 22, in her car, and then drove aimlessly until she wound up in New Mexico. From there she called her lawyer, who, on Cochran’s behalf, begged her to return. She agreed to fly back to L.A.—but only, she said, for a single day. She would come to court on Friday, February 24, but she vowed to leave for her native El Salvador the following morning. After nearly thirty years in the United States, she had decided to leave—tomorrow.

Lopez’s flight from New Mexico landed in Los Angeles at 1:30
A.M.
on February 24, and when she appeared in court at 9:00 that morning, she looked haggard and bewildered. Seated in the back row of the courtroom, waiting to be called to the witness stand, she wore a purple velour jumpsuit and a dazed expression.

Born and raised in rural El Salvador, Rosa Lopez led a life of extraordinary hardship until she came to the United States. One of ten children, she dropped out of school at age nine to help her parents harvest their small crop of corn, beans, and rice. She married young and had seven children, but only four survived childbirth. Two more
died in the course of her country’s long civil war: a fifteen-year-old daughter, who was kidnapped and killed, and a son, a government pilot whose helicopter was shot down by guerrillas. The two survivors came with her to Los Angeles, where she had worked as a maid for about thirty years. Rosa Lopez brought a survivor’s instincts to the witness stand in the Simpson case, as well as a considerable reservoir of street smarts.

When Ito called Lopez to the witness stand, she revealed a quirky stage presence. Ito had called in a Spanish interpreter, but Lopez obviously understood all the English that was spoken around her. The purpose of the hearing this day was to allow Ito to decide whether he was going to interrupt the prosecution’s case and allow Lopez to testify. Was she actually going to leave for El Salvador the following day, and, if so, was she important enough for the defense to be allowed to call her as a witness out of the usual order?

“Why were you living in another state over the course of the last several days?” Cochran asked Lopez during direct examination, which lasted only about ten minutes.

“Because the reporters won’t leave me alone. I’m tired of looking at them. They have been harassing me.” Lopez’s style was cryptic, dismissive, and oddly grand.

Lopez said she had reservations to fly to San Salvador on Saturday, and hoped to be on her way.

Rising to cross-examine, Darden first made sure of one point that Cochran had already covered. Lopez had said she had a reservation but no ticket for the February 25 flight to San Salvador on Taca airlines.

“You just made the reservation, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You made that today?”

“Yes.”

“Prior to coming to court this morning?”

“Yes.”

At that moment, Cheri Lewis, a prosecutor who was sitting next to Darden at their table, rose to go to the telephone in the courtroom. What she was doing was obvious: checking to see if Lopez really had made the reservation. Moments later, Darden had his answer.

“Miss Lopez,” he said, “we just called the airline. They don’t show a reservation for you. Can you explain to the Court why it is that you just told us you have a reservation?”