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The civil trial has offered plenty of surprises, with many more to come. It is just that with the parties under a gag order and cameras banned from the courtroom, the proceedings have been a little harder for outside observers to decipher. In reality, this is turning out to be a very different trial, with key pieces of evidence, including the bloody shoe prints, and the time line being cast in an entirely new light. Rulings by Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki--who has been nicknamed the anti-Ito for his decisive, suffer-no-fools demeanor--have also caused significant shifts in strategy. Last week, for example, Fujisaki ruled that videotapes of former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman's testimony could not be shown to jurors, while earlier rulings have made it difficult for the defense to offer alternate scenarios of a police conspiracy or murderous drug lords without any hard evidence. Even without the testimony of Simpson, the plaintiffs may be able to reach the necessary "preponderance of the evidence" required to tip the scales toward a favorable verdict.
With the testimony of Simpson, however, Clark--and the world--can at least get some vicarious satisfaction. On Friday many members of the media and legal VIPs--including author Lawrence Schiller and former Simpson defense attorney Robert Shapiro--were relegated to watching the trial on a screen in a "listening room" at the Doubletree hotel next door to the courthouse. And inside the courtroom there was an air of occasion as Simpson and plaintiffs' attorney Daniel Petrocelli began their cat-and-mouse game. Simpson--who had stopped to jauntily sign autographs as he arrived--at last found himself nearly face to face with members of the Goldman clan, who sat close to the witness box. And Petrocelli got right down to the business of punching holes in Simpson's credibility. "You are not as interested in specific facts as you are in the effect of his testimony on the jury," explains Wyoming criminal lawyer Gerry Spence. "Credibility is the entire, only, whole, absolute, 100% issue on cross-examination of O.J. Simpson."
No, not, never: though Simpson's confidence grew as the day went on, the spell he cast may have been a negative one. He did not feel vengeful toward his wife. People who say he talked incessantly about Nicole in the weeks preceding the murders, including golfing buddies of his like Alan Austin, were wrong. Even tangible evidence like his phone records were wrong: at one point, Petrocelli put up a display of all Simpson's phone calls from his residence and his cellular phone on the day of June 12. Simpson acknowledged the eight calls to ex-girlfriend Paula Barbieri--who has offered the potentially damaging news in her deposition, and may soon say in court, that she broke up with him that very day--and the two calls to Nicole. But the records that revealed he twice dialed his 999 code to retrieve messages from his cellular-phone voice mail--including a 7 a.m. breakup call from Barbieri--were wrong, said Simpson. And even though he told police the day after the murders that he had picked up his messages, he now said he did not.