(5 of 6)
A second set of DNA tests, done in a lab not affiliated with the L.A.P.D., also showed the blood of O.J., Ron and Nicole in the Bronco. But the defense explains that by saying Fuhrman rubbed the bloody glove around the car. They offer no physical evidence to support their claims, but to the mind of the jurors they may not need to. Their allegations exist in a context of public anger over the L.A.P.D.'S problems with race relations, to say nothing of Fuhrman's.
In the end, it may be that no particular court exhibit will sway the jury. What may matter most is whether the larger notion of a police conspiracy is more compelling than the preponderance of evidence.
Those are the dueling narratives that will be examined by a jury that has spent nine months in captivity--a record for sequestration. During that time, the Simpson 12 (plus two remaining alternates) have been subjected to something like sensory deprivation. Contact with family and friends has been limited to a nightly 15-minute phone call, monitored by sheriff's deputies, and the five-hour conjugal visits on Saturdays. The deputies collect the jurors' room keys each night and routinely search their belongings for diaries or other forbidden items. When a juror got permission to celebrate her wedding anniversary by having dinner with her husband in the hotel restaurant, two security guards watched over them throughout the meal.
THE SIMPSON JURORS HAVE BEEN given no counseling to help them through an ordeal that psychologists warn can induce unique and even dangerous forms of stress. Tracy Kennedy, a juror dismissed in March, attempted suicide two months later with an overdose of sedatives. Tracy Hampton, a flight attendant cut on May 1, struggled with depression so severe that she was hospitalized by the end of the month. After court adjourned on Wednesday, one juror could be seen at her hotel window with an exhausted look on her face, her forehead pressed against the glass pane. "I'm really worried about some of the people still there,'' says Francine Florio-Bunten, a juror dismissed at the end of May. "Some of them are really on the edge."
Meanwhile, most of the lawyers are already thinking about life after Simpson. Darden, who has looked solemn and unhappy much of the time, was asked last week what would be next for him. "Me?" he said with an apparent straight face. "This is my last case." Shapiro, who plans "to reacquaint myself with my family," will also soon be joining a large Los Angeles law firm as a senior partner, dissolving his own. But Johnnie Cochran swears that if O.J. is retried, he will still be beside him. "Despite the fact that I'll probably be in bankruptcy, I'll stay with it until the end."