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REWIND 1995: Australia Sends Its Good Wishes To O.J. Simpson (Part 2)
By Peter Holmes
Dateline: 1995.
Part 2
The public seats were in the back row, which put us about 10 metres from the defendant, his defence team and the prosecution.
Beyond them was the judge.
My head was about to explode, and it took some moments to process the scene. I couldn't quite believe we'd managed to jag our way into the trial, and now here I was, and just over there were O.J. Simpson, defence lawyers Johnnie Cochrane, Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and Robert Kardashian, prosecutors Marcia Clarke and Christopher Darden, and Judge Lance Ito.
But no jury.
At this point in the trial the court was dealing with a potentially key witness, Rosa Lopez.
Lopez was a maid who was living and working next to Simpson in the upmarket suburb of Brentwood on the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed.
The defence said Lopez would place Simpson's Ford Bronco at his home at 10:15pm on the night of the murders, meaning Simpson would have been at home at the time Brown Simpson and Goldman were murdered.
A small woman with short dark hair, Rosa Lopez had a face carved in granite. It was a face that betrayed a hard life, and one marked by tragedy.
Since fleeing her native El Salvador in 1969 and finding (initially undocumented) refuge in the United States, she had worked as a domestic maid, tending to the needs of the upper classes.
However the trial and her potential involvement had cost her a job with Simpson's neighbours - the Salingers - and she was currently unencumbered by labour.
Lopez was not thrilled with the way her life in recent times had panned out, all because she took her employer's dog out for a wee one night.
Her English was rudimentary and she gave her evidence in Spanish via an interpreter.
On occasion she answered in English and had to be reminded by Judge Ito to answer in Spanish. Upon which the translator explained this to Lopez, who then answered in Spanish.
Lopez wanted out and was threatening to return to El Salvador before her slated appearance, in coming months, as a defence witness.
In an attempt to ensure her testimony was heard should she scarper, Judge Ito directed her evidence be filmed, with the footage to be possibly shown to the jury at a later date, should the defence so choose.
Lopez, though, was still unhappy, as legal argument and other issues were causing her to have to stay in Los Angeles - where she had no accommodation - for several days.
At one point she told Judge Ito that she had booked a ticket to El Salvador and intended to leave the following day, as her life had become a misery.
She said she had been stalked and hounded by reporters; stared at by members of the public, and rejected by a family member, who said if Lopez ever gave evidence on behalf of O.J. Simpson she would never speak to Lopez again.
Ito was sympathetic but firm with Lopez, and insisted she guarantee that she wouldn't leave the country.
If she didn't, he would have no choice but to demand she lodge a bond, or be locked up.
Reluctantly, and after back and forth about whether she had actually booked a flight or merely made a refundable reservation, Lopez promised to stay in Los Angeles, and Ito agreed to take care of her lodgings and deal with any flight issues.
He said he would do his best to stop her being approached by reporters, but the way he said it suggested he had no faith whatsoever that his best would alter the media's hounding of those involved in the trial.
During an adjournment the public gallery exited the courtroom and hovered about in the ninth floor lobby. Simpson's lawyer Robert Shapiro chatted and laughed with a few people.
Though my thoughts about Simpson's guilt would change significantly as the trial proceeded, right now at this moment my view was that Simpson was probably not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Why?
For one, the timeline seemed scratchy, and there was reasonable uncertainty over whether Simpson could really have driven to the murder scene, hacked two people to death with a knife, changed and disposed of his clothes, and returned home, all without leaving swathes of evidence at the scene and in his vehicle.
Also, the investigation appeared incredibly sloppy.
And DNA was new and not to be trusted when it came to a man's freedom. Furthermore, there was a lot of gossip about LA detective Mark Fuhrman, and his use of racial epithets to describe African Americans.
And what about Rosa Lopez, who was before me in the court, who six months ago told a defence investigator that she saw Simpson's white Ford Bronco parked outside Simpson's house at the time Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were being killed outside Brown Simpson's condominium?
...
Figuring I would only ever have one chance, I strode up to Shapiro, waited for a pause in the conversation, and introduced myself as an Australian reporter who has been closely following the trial.
We chatted briefly and then, as we wrapped it up, I found myself caught up in the moment and - for reasons I still don't fully understand - offered O.J. Simpson, via his lawyer Robert Shapiro, the good wishes of the Australian people.
Although Shapiro no doubt knew I was not qualified to offer this sort of support on behalf of a whole continent, he nonetheless seemed mildly pleased with this message of support from the Antipodes.
And then we returned to the courtroom.
My eyes were fixed on my new best friend Bob Shapiro, who was sat next to Simpson, leaning in to talk to him.
Suddenly, Shapiro swivelled in his chair and pointed in my direction.
No, not in my direction. He seemed to be pointing right at me.
Simpson also swivelled in his chair, and then O.J. Simpson was looking at me, expressionless, while Shapiro continued to point at me and talk to Simpson. I exchanged a half nod with Simpson and then the pair swivelled around again to face the bench.
I looked at the people in front of me - members of families involved, court staff, journalists - and none seemed to be making eye contact with, or signalling to, Simpson or Shapiro.
I was in the back row of the gallery, and there was only a small standing space between the back of my seat and the back wall of the court, and when I looked behind me, no-one was standing there.
Postscript 1: In the coming days Lopez's filmed testimony would be picked apart by prosecutor Chris Darden, and her potential as a key defence witness would evaporate.
Two of O.J. Simpson's lawyers would be fined by a furious Judge Ito after it emerged that the defence had withheld information about Lopez giving a second interview to the defence, in which she had made no mention of seeing Simpson's Bronco at the crucial time of 10:30pm.
Postscript 2: After 24 years occasionally wondering if Robert Shapiro really had been pointing at me as he relayed the good wishes of the Australian people to his desperate client, I was watching the superb 10-episode drama The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, in which John Travolta played Shapiro.
I was living in Orange but working for the New York-based BuzzFeed News at the time, and so I found Shapiro's email address and wrote to him from my work email on the off chance he recalled the incident, as it would have made for an interesting story.
A response had promptly arrived, which surprised me. In it, Shapiro said that he hadn't recalled pointing at me, or sending the good tidings of Australia to his client, but qualified this by saying things at the time had been rather hectic.
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