Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 26, 1995 TAG: 9501260119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
Blood scraped from under Nicole Brown Simpson's fingernails didn't match her ex-husband's, and ``there is no blood where there should be blood'' if Simpson were guilty, said attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr.
``There were trails that lead toward innocence and they were not pursued,'' Cochran said while revealing the defense case for the first time.
Cochran vowed to prove Simpson ``an innocent man wrongly accused'' of murdering his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman in a jealous rage. He strived to portray Simpson as a generous, caring family man and an ex-athlete so battered by football that he was physically incapable of the crimes.
He also promised a parade of witnesses who claim police ignored their accounts of activities the night of the murders, including a woman who says she saw four men, some in knit ski hats, fleeing Nicole Simpson's neighborhood.
Moments after Cochran concluded for the day, another major battle erupted over evidence sharing and threatened to delay today's start of testimony.
Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman expressed outrage when defense attorney Carl Douglas disclosed a stack of reports on new witnesses never seen by the prosecution. Most of the reports were from the summer, and failure to share them violates a reciprocal discovery law.
``I don't think in the history of jurisprudence we have ever had anything happen like what happened in this courtroom today,'' Hodgman said, demanding time to study the reports.
The judge said he would make a decision today.
Throughout his opening statement, Cochran tried to cast doubt on the prosecution case by showing evidence that was left out of the state's case.
``We find blood where there should be no blood,'' Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark had said Tuesday.``That trail of blood ... is devastating proof of his guilt.''
The prosecution said the blood led from the bodies through his Bronco to the foot of his bed, but Cochran said no blood drops were found on the white carpet leading to Simpson's bedroom.
Turning Clark's words around, Cochran declared, ``There is no blood where there should be blood, and that's devastating proof of innocence.''
Cochran also said prosecutors failed to tell jurors that blood found on Nicole Simpson's thigh and under her nails didn't match Simpson's or that fingerprints, palmprints and shoeprints at the murder scene weren't his.
In one dramatic moment, Cochran also presented the ``mystery envelope'' that first surfaced in Simpson's preliminary hearing, drawing immediate objections from the prosecution.
Defense attorney Robert Shapiro later said the defense had no intention of opening the envelope in opening statements but planned to use it to show jurors that careless police investigators failed to find a potentially key piece of evidence.
The envelope's contents never have been revealed in court, but sources have said it contains a knife Simpson bought several weeks before the killings.
Cochran, striking back after the prosecution's powerful presentation, accused the district attorney's office of a ``rush to judgment, an obsession to win at any cost and by any means necessary.''
Simpson, seated facing the jury box, wore a relaxed expression, as if pleased to finally have his side of the story told. His face was off-camera to television audiences, however, because the judge barred the camera from panning the courtroom after an alternate juror's face was accidentally shown Tuesday.
Depicting Simpson as a generous man who showered his wife and her family with gifts, jobs and vacations, Cochran derided the prosecution's contention that Simpson was an abusive brute who sought to control and isolate Nicole Simpson.
Prosecutors ``don't have a motive,'' Cochran said, and therefore invented the domestic abuse theory to explain the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
``This is not a case of domestic abuse,'' Cochran said. ``It's a murder case about who did these horrible crimes.''
To illustrate Simpson's generosity and family devotion, he showed jurors a photo blowup of a broadly smiling Simpson presenting flowers to his 9-year-old daughter, Sydney, at her dance recital just hours before the murders and another of Simpson in a tuxedo posing with women at a charity function the night before.
Cochran described Simpson as a busy businessman whose 1994 calendar was jammed with out-of-town trips. He was too busy, he suggested, to be stalking his ex-wife.
``Stalkers don't go all over the country doing commercials, shooting movies, having new girlfriends and going on with their lives,'' he said.
He indicated that Simpson's girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, would be a key witness.
Cochran acknowledged that Simpson not only saw his ex-wife having sex with another man but, in ``an even more painful incident,'' learned that a dear friend was having an affair with Nicole Simpson while they were still married.
``It was hurtful, but he never said a harsh word to her or this gentleman,'' Cochran said. ``He didn't go ballistic or do any of those things. You know what he did? He let this gentleman get married at his ... house.''
Cochran also tried to show that because of his football injuries, Simpson would have been physically unable to kill two people, particularly a young man fighting for his life.
Simpson walked over to the jury box and lifted his left pant leg to show jurors his scarred knee. He also displayed a scar on the middle finger of his left hand. Jurors stood to get a good look at Simpson's body.
They were also shown a color closeup of Goldman's swollen, bruised and bloodied knuckles, then a series of photos taken of Simpson, clad only in underwear, taken just days after the murders. Cochran noted they showed no bruises or scratches on his bare skin.
Stacking up evidence of reasonable doubt, Cochran told of two women who approached the defense team after police and prosecutors refused their information.
One was Mary Anne Gerchas, who told the defense she saw four men near Nicole Simpson's condominium, ``two of which appear to be Hispanic and the others are Caucasian, several of which, I believe, have knit caps on their heads,'' Cochran said.
by CNB