(3 of 9)
"I went to their home and met with Fred and Patti and Kim for about three hours," says Petrocelli. "We really connected, but a major concern was whether our firm could afford to take on this case. If we did it, we would have to do a first-rate job. We factored in some of the financial support the Goldmans would be getting. I also had to talk to some of my other clients, because this case would be a major commitment. All my clients [who include some entertainment-industry figures] were very supportive, and some even volunteered to raise money. Finally the partners in the firm agreed." Petrocelli & Co. also tried to anticipate how much the case would cost in attorneys' fees. Says he: "We figured out how much time the case would require. We figured there wouldn't be much pretrial discovery, because there had already been a nine-month trial." As it turned out, they were quite wrong.
The plaintiffs uncovered a great deal of evidence they did not use simply because they needed to compress their case and hit the jury with the strongest and most incontrovertible facts. Among the unused evidence: the notes of a West Los Angeles therapist who had separately treated Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman and who wrote down Nicole's account of being beaten by Simpson in the days just before the murders; and the recollections of a Connecticut limousine driver who described to the plaintiffs during deposition how, during a trip from a board meeting at the Forschner Group, a knife company, the former pro-football star used one of the complimentary knives he had just been given to demonstrate in the backseat how a person could kill someone. That conversation took place in the week before the murder. Petrocelli felt that both of those people were credible, but their stories just did not fit into the thesis he was engineering.
Petrocelli had clear ideas of how to try this case. And he knew what would not work. "The least explored aspect of the case is Simpson's motive," he explained before the trial began. "You cannot just say this murder was a culmination of domestic-violence incidents. You need to tell a jury a story. This was about a stormy relationship. I feel we really need to focus on the dynamics of that relationship and focus carefully on the last two months. That's why instead of talking with Nicole's friends, I want to focus on talking to O.J.'s friends."
That strategy made the difference in understanding Simpson. It was the background Petrocelli relied heavily on in cross-examining Simpson on the witness stand. The people who helped the plaintiffs' case most were several of Simpson's former golfing buddies--some of whom he had thanked in his infamous "suicide" letter. Many of them initially and passionately believed Simpson to be innocent. Only much later, well into the criminal trial, did they change their minds. Helping the plaintiffs, Alan Austin and Ron Shipp described Simpson's jealous rages, his obsession with Nicole and, perhaps most important, how Nicole in the last two months of her life finally made the emotional break from the man she had loved for 18 years.