February 16th, 1995.
He says, well, I've got some bad news. Your ex-wife, Nicole Simpson, has been killed.
It wasn't so much what O.J. Simpson said.
I think the first words out of his mouth were some of the effect of, oh my God, Nicole is killed. Oh my God, she's dead.
It was what he didn't say.
Did he ask you anything about the circumstances of how his ex-wife had been killed?
No.
Tonight, the state versus O.J. Simpson. The police on the stand.
This is ABC News Nightline, reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.
Among the many bizarre aspects to the O.J. Simpson trial, there is this.
There may never have been another trial by a jury in this country in which the average American citizen knows more of what is going on in the case than does the jury.
With continual live television coverage, the addicted viewer, with sufficient time on his hands, may actually know more of what is going on inside the courtroom.
There are times, after all, when Judge Ito dismisses the jury from the courtroom, while television continues to follow arguments between and among attorneys for the defense and prosecution.
Then, too, there are aspects of the case which have made it into the media, but not yet into the courtroom.
The long and short of it is that it is more difficult than ever to identify with what the jury may be thinking, if only because they have less information at their disposal than does the rest of the country.
Covering the trial for us, as usual, Judy Mueller in Los Angeles.
The O.J. Simpson defense team has suffered a number of setbacks in the last 48 hours.
First, a witness they'd hoped to call in order to provide an alibi for Simpson, his next-door neighbor's maid Rosa Lopez, has apparently fled to her home country of El Salvador.
The prosecutors now say that preliminary DNA tests reveal that a blood spout found on the back gate of the crime scene comes from Simpson.
And the defense's contention that the defendant suffers from crippling bouts of arthritis was undermined somewhat by the discovery of an infomercial made by Simpson in which he claims the product cured his arthritis.
I started taking regularly Juice Plus and started feeling, I don't know, it was mine over matter, it was a mental thing, but almost immediately I started feeling better.
The reality is that none of these setbacks have hurt Simpson so far because the jury has heard none of it and may never hear it.
What they did hear today, however, was dramatic.
The day followed the usual pattern of the prosecution trying to nail O.J. Simpson.
At the same time, the defense is trying to nail the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to LAPD detective Ron Phillips, he and three other detectives went to the Rockingham estate the morning after the murders, not because they believed O.J. Simpson was a suspect,
but because they wanted to personally inform him of the death of his ex-wife.
When the police learned that Simpson was in Chicago, said Phillips, he called Simpson's hotel and broke the news to him over the phone.
Nice as well. I've got some bad news. Your ex-wife, Nicole Simpson, has been killed.
What happened next?
I think the first words out of his mouth were something to the effect, oh my God, Nicole is killed, oh my God, she's dead, and then he got very upset on the telephone.
And then what happened?
I kept trying to calm him down and he continued to be upset, which I expected, and he continued to be upset and I finally said, Mr. Simpson, please try to get a hold of yourself.
I have your children at the West Los Angeles Police Station. I need to talk to you about that.
And he stopped and he said, what do you mean you have my children at the police station? Why are my kids at the police station?
And I said, because we had no place else to take them.
But according to the prosecution, it was not so much what Simpson said that was important, it was what he did not say.
Did Mr. Simpson ask you how she was killed?
No.
Did he ask you when she was killed?
No.
Did he ask you if you had any idea who had done it?
No.
Did he ask you where it had occurred?
No.
Did he ask you anything about the circumstances of how his ex-wife had been killed?
No.
Prosecutor Marsha Clark clearly anticipated an attack from the defense about the alleged tardiness of police in notifying the coroner of the murders.
The bodies were found just after midnight, but the coroner did not arrive at the scene until after 9 a.m.
In an effort to defuse that attack, Clark asked Phillips about his first call to the coroner's office.
Well, I wasn't going to request the coroner at the location. I was just going to make the first call notification to the coroner informing them what we had, which is exactly what I did at 6.50.
It was still the first call.
The first call was for notification only, said Phillips.
The second call, made at 8.08 a.m., was to summon the coroner to the scene.
Reading from a transcript of that first call, Clark asked Phillips why he told the coroner's deputy, quote, we're kind of not following procedure on this case.
Then what did you mean by we're kind of asking a favor?
And kind of work a little bit on this one.
We were trying to keep this from becoming a news media event for as long as possible.
So we were asking the coroner's office to go along with us and not make any notifications themselves to the news media.
Under ordinary circumstances, what would you have done if you were to follow the procedure that you were trying not to follow here?
Trying to get me in trouble, aren't you?
What I should have done.
What I should have done was I should have made a notification to a detective headquarters, which is open 24 hours a day,
inform them of the event that we had, the possible news media event that this would create, and they in turn would have called press relations people at home.
But defense attorney Johnny Cochran in cross-examination expressed skepticism that avoiding publicity would take precedence over solving the crime.
And as an experienced homicide investigator, you know that it's important for the coroner to be notified,
because the sooner the coroner gets there, sooner the coroner can do what the coroner does and try to ascertain when the time of death was.
Isn't that correct?
That's important.
Cochran implied through his questioning that the coroner's office has officially complained about the tardy notification by police in this case.
A spokesman for the coroner's office would not confirm or deny that.
Cochran also implied that police chief Willie Williams had begun his own investigation into the matter.
But a spokesman for the chief told ABC News that Williams did no such thing.
On the stand today, Detective Phillips insisted he had given the coroner's office adequate notice, despite Cochran's insinuation that police had ignored regulations.
This is the black and white thing you're referring to.
I'm dealing in the gray area out here.
When you walk out to a crime scene, you just don't immediately turn around and make a phone call to the coroner's office.
You have to see what you have.
You have to investigate what you have.
You have to talk to some certain people.
And so as soon as practicable, you immediately make that notification.
It's not one of the first things you do when you get to a crime scene.
Never has been, Mr. Cochran.
Would you agree with me that waiting from 1215 to 650 in the morning, you think that's immediate, the first call?
Well, no, but the circumstances out there dictated that.
The timing of the calls to the coroner is among the broadest strokes in the defense's portrait of a bungled investigation.
But the defense is adding to that portrait by raising doubts about all the prosecution's evidence.
Ted?
Thank you, Judy.
Raising doubts and raising new theories about what might have happened that night when we come back in part two of Judy Mueller's report.
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Berries that could stain like blood.
Melting ice cream left unphotographed.
A possible dog bite.
All things that defense lawyer Johnny Cochran used in his cross-examination to raise doubts in the minds of the jurors.
Here again, Judy Moeller.
Cochran's cross-examination was aimed at painting a picture of an incompetent police investigation.
One in which key evidence was ignored.
Key evidence according to Cochran included burning candles and a cup of melting ice cream in Nicole Brown's condo.
Why, he wondered, hadn't the photographer on the scene taken pictures of that evidence to help establish the time of death.
While you were there and before you left to go over Rockingham,
you never asked Mr. Rokar or any other photographer to take any pictures of the interior of that residence, is that right?
No, I didn't.
And specifically you never asked him to photograph the ice cream cup, did you?
Cochran also asked Phillips about stains on the condo walkway caused by berries falling from overhanging trees.
As if to suggest that berry stains could have been mistaken for blood.
And he threw out another theory as well.
Did you and Mark Ferman, who worked for you, theorize that the suspect or suspects had been bitten by the Sakita dog somewhere in that walkway that particular night?
I never heard that theory by anybody.
So did you or any officer in your presence that night check with any local hospitals to see if any person had gone to that hospital for treatment of a dog bite?
No, sir.
And Cochran questioned the detective's claim that the police went to the Rockingham estate in an effort to inform O.J. Simpson.
If they'd really wanted to contact him quickly, said Cochran,
they would have seen Simpson's number listed as Daddy on a speed dial phone in Nicole's condo.
You were concerned about Mr. O.J. Simpson and you never at any time looked inside the house to see whether or not there was a number where you could call him in the house, right?
Inside Miss Nicole Brown Simpson's house. You didn't do that.
And Cochran insinuated that the detectives went to the Rockingham estate because they already considered O.J. Simpson a suspect.
After all, said Cochran, Detective Mark Ferman had been there before on a domestic abuse call.
In addition to indicating that he knew where Mr. O.J. Simpson lived, didn't he say he'd been over there in response to some domestic call back in 1985?
Did he say that to you?
He never told me why he was up at that location. He told me he responded to that call when he worked patrol.
The defense hopes to convince the jury that Detective Mark Ferman is a racist cop who planted key evidence, the bloody glove found at the Rockingham estate.
But by hammering away at every single police officer who takes the stand, the defense is essentially putting the entire department on trial, showing it to be incompetent at best, conspiratorial at worst. Ted?
Thank you, Judy. Joining us now from our Los Angeles Bureau are two ABC News legal consultants, defense lawyer Leslie Abramson and former L.A. District Attorney Robert Philobosia.
Bob, first of all, is it customary, and you were, as I just mentioned, a DA in L.A., is it customary for someone who hears about the murder of a loved one necessarily to respond with a series of questions about where did it happen,
how did it happen? I mean, clearly, the prosecution was trying to suggest that there is guilt implied here.
How are these findings going to be used in the police?