Word: simpson
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...course, for those Americans who have known since the Night of the White Bronco that the opening of the O.J. Simpson trial would do more to suck up leisure time than all the debates over the balanced-budget amendment and observations about the odd January weather combined, the high courtroom drama was the big payoff. But those who had cynically decided in advance that the so-called trial of the century would be nothing more than an interminable media fest were guilty of, to use Johnnie Cochran's new favorite phrase, ``a rush to judgment...
...their opening statements, Clark and Darden hammered at two key points: the horrific crime and the motive. Darden handled the personality aspects of the case, speaking of the popular O.J. Simpson from movies and Hertz commercials and warning the jury of the defendant's ``private side.'' Simpson, he argued, was obsessed with Nicole, obsessed with control and jealous to the point of violence. ``If he couldn't have her, he didn't want anybody else to have her,'' Darden said. Simpson, who had been warned by his lawyers to refrain from his customary eye-rolling and grimacing, observed the proceedings...
Although Darden--a soft-spoken, studious lawyer who joined the prosecution team on Nov. 7, after supervising the grand jury investigation of Simpson's friend Al Cowlings--performed well, the most dramatic moment of the opening day came later, when Marcia Clark displayed graphic photographs of the bodies. Judge Lance Ito ruled these pictures off limits to television viewers, and the reactions of those present in the courtroom explained why. Ron Goldman's father Frederic wept at the sight of his son's slashed and bloody corpse up on the 87-in. video monitor, while Nicole Brown Simpson's three...
Clark, whose trial demeanor can be both intense and compassionate, walked the jury through the murder scene, telling of hairs matching Simpson's, of telltale shoe prints and trails of blood--blood, she intoned repeatedly, that ``matches the defendant'' in dna tests. As she finished, after several interruptions from Ito, admonishing her not to argue her case in her opening statement, Clark appeared close to tears as she reminded the jury to remember the victims...
...Hollywood, when a high-budget movie opens, insiders discuss whether ``the money'' made it onto the screen--whether the result, that is, justifies the expense. In this trial, O.J. Simpson's money has certainly made it into the courtroom. Scrappy, overworked state employees appear to be just that when set against the silver-tongued, monied and remarkably personable defense lawyers. Cochran, chuckling modestly in a moment of theater that must have infuriated Clark and Darden, told the court last Thursday, ``We certainly don't refer to ourselves as the Dream Team. We're just a collection of lawyers just trying...