The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson (74 page)

Robertson then proceeded to read the second verdict, that in the murder of Ronald Lyle Goldman. At the second utterance of the words “not guilty,” Kim Goldman let out a trembling howl. She grabbed her hair, then buried her head in her father’s shoulder.

I was sitting right behind Kim, in the second row. Numb with shock, I stared at Simpson and had a single thought: He’s going home. There is no red tape after an acquittal. The handcuffs come off, and you’re on your way.

As Robertson finished the formalities and Ito polled the jury, asking them all whether this was their verdict, noise from the audience grew louder. Everyone in all of the families was crying—for joy, for sorrow, at their release from this extraordinary tension.

“The defendant, having been acquitted of both charges,” Ito said evenly, “is ordered … released forthwith. All right. We’ll stand in recess.”

The jurors filed out in their usual silence. From his seat, number six, juror Lon Cryer had the longest walk to the door. He kept his head down most of the way, then turned to the defense table and raised his fist in a black power salute. Then he, too, left the courtroom.

Most of the jurors dissolved into tears when they arrived back in the deliberation room. They hugged and wept and clung to one another for support. After a few minutes, a pair of deputies came to escort them up to the lounge on the eleventh floor, where they had done most of their waiting over the course of the trial. There the tears mostly stopped, and the jurors sat in shell-shocked silence on the couches and easy chairs. Finally, Carrie Bess said something to no one in particular:

“We’ve got to protect our own.”

EPILOGUE:
“NOW I CAN TELL YOU”

L
arry Schiller, literary entrepreneur, had laid careful plans to cash in quickly on an acquittal. Within an hour of the verdict, Simpson was driven in a white van from downtown to his home in Brentwood. He was accompanied by Robert Kardashian, Schiller, and Schiller’s camera.

Schiller and his girlfriend, Kathy Amermann, had both worked as photographers over the years, and Schiller knew that exclusive photographs of the victory party would command a hefty price. In the weeks before the verdict, Schiller arranged to sell first rights to the photos to the supermarket tabloid
Star
for a six-figure sum. (Simpson and Schiller split the proceeds, and the photographs bore the copyright marks of both of their companies—Orenthal Productions and Polaris Communications.)

The verdict came on a Tuesday, which was the
Star
’s weekly deadline, but the resourceful Schiller had made contingency plans so the pictures could make it into the next issue. While the jury was deliberating, Schiller had converted the garage at Simpson’s home into a photo developing lab and turned the maid’s room into a satellite transmission center. All during the evening after the verdict, as friends and family joined Simpson to toast his freedom, Schiller and Amermann snapped dozens of photos, hurriedly developed them in the garage, then transmitted them to the
Star
from Gigi Guarin’s old quarters. The following morning, Schiller sent a CD-ROM full of party photographs on a plane to Germany. The Schiller-Simpson joint venture had sold those for an additional fee to the weekly
Stern
.

It was a rather quiet celebration at Rockingham that evening. The small, dedicated group who had stood by Simpson throughout the long trial all paid their respects. There was his family, of course, presided over by his mother and two sisters, as well as his older children, Jason and Arnelle. A. C. Cowlings was there, as was Skip Taft, Simpson’s business manager. Most striking were the absences—the golfing buddies, Nicole’s friends, the dozens of pals who used to attend Simpson’s annual Fourth of July bash at the house. They had all chosen the other side in this case. Those guests who did come gathered around a piano and sang hymns. Simpson mostly stayed in his bedroom, receiving guests in small groups. Only one person stayed by Simpson’s side the entire evening. That was Peter Burt, a reporter for the
Star
, whose presence was part of Schiller’s deal with the magazine.

After the party, it was Schiller who did not leave Simpson’s side. With his camera at the ready, Schiller followed O.J. for the next several days, documenting his life for the resale market. On October 6, three days after the verdict, Schiller’s literary agent, Ike Williams, faxed a letter to book publishers offering a sequel to
I Want to Tell You
. Williams said this next book, to be entitled
Now I Can Tell You
, would be “O.J. Simpson’s first person account of the trial from his arrest to the not-guilty verdict and his reunion with his family.” Like the first book, this one would be “organized and edited by Larry Schiller,” but there would be an additional bonus: The Schiller-Simpson joint venture was also offering Schiller’s “original and unique” photographs of Simpson’s reunion with Sydney and Justin Simpson, which took place on October 4.

However, these literary ventures paled in comparison to the top priority of Simpson’s financial team in the wake of the verdict. All through the summer of 1995, Skip Taft and Larry King had engaged in detailed negotiations about a pay-per-view special following the verdict. The two-hour program was to feature King interviewing Simpson live, as well as phone calls from viewers. (It was to take place whether Simpson was acquitted or convicted, but not if the trial ended in a hung jury.) Turner Broadcasting, the parent company of Cable News Network, would buy the rights from Simpson for $25 million. In lieu of a fee for himself, King would arrange for about $1 million of the money to go to his favorite
charity, the Cardiac Foundation. Simpson would receive about $4 million personally. According to King and Taft’s arrangement, the balance of the money—more than $15 million, after expenses—would go to establish a network of “O.J. Simpson Boys Clubs” in cities across America.

The photographs of the victory party ran as scheduled in the
Star
and
Stern
, but none of the other schemes came to fruition. There has been no sequel to
I Want to Tell You
. As soon as word leaked out to the public that Larry King was even considering participating in a pay-per-view interview with Simpson, executives at CNN’s parent company announced that no such project would take place. Simpson’s prospects for any pay-per-view appearance vanished completely when cable-system operators across the country said they would refuse to distribute any broadcast that would enrich the former defendant. The darkly comic notion of “O.J. Simpson Boys Clubs” never materialized.

All of these projects fell victim to the enormous backlash against the verdict in mainstream—that is, white—America. Because of television, the announcement of the verdict became a nationally shared experience—one on par, incredibly, with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the days immediately after the end of the case in court, televised images of the verdict itself yielded to images of people watching the verdict. The pictures revealed many scenes of African-Americans cheering the verdict, from college campuses to battered women’s shelters. White viewers, by contrast, watched in stunned, generally appalled, silence. Reaction to the verdict was promptly replaced by reaction to the reaction, and then reaction to
that
reaction and so on, which is to say, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., observed, “black indignation at white anger at black jubilation at Simpson’s acquittal.” The passing months did not so much heal the wounds in race relations as witness the growth of an ugly scar.

Assessing the “meaning” of the Simpson case became, and remains, a cottage industry. But in evaluating that legacy, it is useful, even necessary, to return to the underlying events—that is, to what happened outside Nicole Brown Simpson’s condominium on the
night of June 12, 1994. The Simpson case was never some free-floating set of ideas ripe for any number of equally valid interpretations. The case emerged from a set of facts, and those facts matter.

As to the central fact in the case, it is my view that Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her friend on June 12. Any rational analysis of the events and evidence in question leads to that conclusion. This is true whether one considers evidence not presented to the jury—such as the results of Simpson’s polygraph examination and his flight with Al Cowlings on June 17—or just the evidence established in court. Notwithstanding the prosecution’s many errors, the evidence against Simpson at the trial was overwhelming. Simpson had a violent relationship with his ex-wife, and tensions between them were growing in the weeks leading up to the murders. Simpson had no alibi for the time of the murders, nor was his Bronco parked at his home during that time. Simpson had a cut on his left hand on the day after the murders, and DNA tests showed conclusively that it was Simpson’s blood to the left of the shoe prints leaving the scene. Nicole’s blood was found on a sock in his bedroom, and Goldman’s blood—as well as Simpson’s—was found in the Bronco. Hair consistent with Simpson’s was found on the killer’s cap and on Goldman’s shirt. The gloves that Nicole bought for Simpson in 1990 were almost certainly the ones used by her killer.

It is theoretically possible, of course, that Simpson killed the two victims and that the police also planted evidence against him—that he was guilty
and
framed. But I am convinced that did not happen, and that it could not have happened. In their summations, Cochran and Scheck suggested that the police, in their effort to frame Simpson, planted at least the following items: (1) Simpson’s blood on the rear gate at Bundy; (2) Goldman’s blood in Simpson’s Bronco; (3) Nicole’s blood on the sock found in his bedroom; (4) Simpson’s blood on the same sock; and (5) the infamous glove at Rockingham, which had, as Clark put it in her summation, “all of the evidence on it: Ron Goldman’s fibers from his shirt; Ron Goldman’s hair; Nicole’s hair; the defendant’s blood; Ron Goldman’s blood; Nicole’s blood; and the Bronco fiber.” The defense never spelled out how all this nefarious activity took place, but pulling it off would have required more or less the following. The
core of the defense case was, of course, that Fuhrman surreptitiously took that glove from the murder scene to the defendant’s home. Not only would he have had to transport the glove with its residue of the crime scene, but he would also have had to find some of Simpson’s blood (from sources unknown) to deposit upon it and then wipe the glove on the inside of Simpson’s locked car (by means unknown)—all the while not knowing whether Simpson had an ironclad alibi for the time of the murders. To me, this possibility is simply not believable, even taking into consideration Fuhrman’s repugnant racial views.

The other police conspirators (conspicuously unnamed by the defense) would have had to be equally adept and even more determined. Many of the police officers at the crime scene noticed the blood on the back gate at Bundy; someone would have had to wipe that off and apply Simpson’s. The autopsies, where blood samples were taken from the victims, were not performed until June 14, more than a full day after the murders. Someone would have had to take some of Goldman’s blood and put it in the Bronco, which was then in police custody. And someone (the same person? another?) would have had to take some of Nicole’s blood and dab it on the sock, which was then in a police evidence lab. (When Vannatter took his notorious trip to Brentwood with the blood vial, he only had Simpson’s sample, not Nicole’s, with him.) All of these illegal actions by the police would have had to take place at a time when everyone involved in the case was under the most relentless media scrutiny in American legal history—and all for the benefit of an unknown killer who, like only 9 percent of the population, happened to share Simpson’s shoe size, twelve.