"As a kid growing up in the ghetto, one of the things I wanted most was not money, it was fame." "I wanted to be known." "I want the people to say, "Hey, there goes O.J."" "You're approaching five years now at Lovelock." "Tell us about your work assignments." "How have you occupied your time for the past five years?" "Uh, when I first came here, I was a porter, which comprised of cleaning things in the unit that I was in, and basically after a relatively short period of time," "I started working as a gym worker." "I start each day, um, disinfecting, uh, the workout equipment in the gym, mopping floors with the other, uh, group of us that work in the gym." "Uh, I've coached teams, um, uh, since I've been here." "Uh, and I like to say that we won the championship, and we were old guys, a totally mixed group of players." "I didn't play, I just coached." "I do see that in 1994 you were arrested at the age of 46." "We" " We're talking about this case?" "No, the age at first arrest." "How old were you, first time you were arrested?" "For any reason." "[ Sighs ]" "Um, I think about 46, yes." "With an enrollment of approximately 16,000 students, this is the largest and oldest university of continuous existence in Southern California." "Its buildings and grounds cover 45 acres and it has graduated many thousands of men and women who are now leaders in the business and professional world." "BROWN:" "I didn't know that much about him." "I heard about his reputation coming out of junior college." "He was big, fast, powerful, dynamic." "You're awed, because you haven't seen that." "I was teaching part-time at San Jose State and a friend of mine said," ""Hey, man, you gotta go check out this little cat from, um, San Francisco." "His name is Simpson." "Orenthal James Simpson."" "O.J. takes the football." "Boom." "I think he runs about 90 yards with it for a touchdown." "He ran through 'em like foreign water through a tourist." "San Jose State was trying to recruit him, and I asked him," ""O.J., what is it that you're lookin' for?"" "Said, "I wanna be the best." "I wanna go to a school where I play against the best."" "Superstar phenom is coming to USC and all the buzz that goes around with it." "This is Marguerite Simpson." "She and O.J. have been married for five months now." "Right." "Are you happy after five months?" "Yes, I'm very happy." "And do you like this campus and everything?" "I love it." "It's like a resort." "It's beautiful." "Now, you tell us the truth, Marguerite." "What kind of guy is O.J.?" "O.J. is very serious." "He loves football." "And he's just a serious person." "McKAY:" "He has a great running sense." "Uh, as a team man, he's an outstanding person." "As a citizen, he is a tremendous boy and, uh," "I don't think we've had a boy around here who has ever been any better." "Whoo!" "Get up!" "It was pretty obvious early on that O.J. was a superior athlete, special, and Coach McKay was warmer and closer with him." "He had never had a player of this caliber." "And you didn't mess with it." "He protected him." "Johnny, would you describe that devastating" "Southern Cal offensive attack for us?" "Well, Duffy, I don't" " I don't know how devastating it is, but our attack is built around the, uh, tailback, O.J. Simpson, running a football." "We think our attack will be able to let us move the ball on most people." "There was no drama." "John McKay was gonna give him the football, and he was gonna give it to him 35, 40 times a game and you were gonna tackle him." "And then when you missed, we were gonna score a touchdown." "So we fed him the football, fed him the football..." "He had incredible stamina, that he could take the ball every play and keep on going." "Every game he did something that was eye-opening." "You-- "What?" "Did I see that?"" "He was one of a kind." "This is O.J. Simpson, USC's junior halfback." "You have been getting an awful lot of publicity lately." "How does it affect you?" "Does it bother ya?" "Oh, it doesn't bother me at all." "It's" " It's a matter of winning, I guess." "If you win, you get publicity, and they have to give someone in our offense and on our team publicity, and, uh, I'm just in a position to get it, running at the tailback and carrying the ball as much as I do." "O.J., you've got an awful big game on Saturday." "It's the big intercity rivalry." "There's just all kind of pressure." "How does the pressure affect you?" "Well, uh, I don't know." "I don't think the pressure bothers" "It doesn't bother me and-- and I think most of the team right now, it's not bothering them yet." "I'm sure it will tomorrow." "We're shooting for all the marbles this week, and, uh, I think we'll be relaxed and ready to go." "USC football is not a matter of life and death." "It's much more important than that." "Live and in color, you are looking at this view, hovering above the Memorial Coliseum which is jam packed today." "As we look at Gary Beban, a reminder that college football, a pleasant and colorful way to spend an autumn afternoon." "UCLA's quarterback was Gary Beban." "It's gonna be his year for the Heisman Trophy." "So we have the upcomer running back against the established superstar quarterback." "We were ranked number 4, they were ranked number 1." "The city of Los Angeles, the two top teams in the country, and we're fighting for the national championship." "Today with 10 cameras covering this game, over 200, uh, newsmen here, 200 photographers." "There were people out here this morning at 6 o'clock trying to get in to the ballgame." "And the ballgame is underway." "I had never been to a college game ever." "And we all wanted to go see O.J." "Offensively now for the Trojans, watch for number 32, O.J. Simpson." "None of us had any tickets." "All of a sudden, we looked up and someone had cut a hole in the Coliseum fence and about 50 people ran through it, including us." "Okay, Bud, we have approximately 9 minutes remaining in the first half." "I'd never seen the Coliseum full like that." "There was just the colors, I was in awe." "Tie ballgame, and they are in UCLA territory." "Steve Sogge." "Simpson." "There's his brilliance." "Thirteen yards." "Touchdown." "A tremendously gifted athlete, number 32, O.J. Simpson." "Everybody loved watching O.J. run." "As we look at it in slow motion..." "There was something about his style." "...O.J. Simpson." "I said, "Man, if I could but run half as well as this guy," "I might be all right."" "Beban hooking." "Deep and long to Copeland." "UCLA has tied it up." "There is Nuttall." "Touchdown, UCLA." "And with 11 minutes and 40 seconds left in the game UCLA gets the lead." "We were losing." "And we were fighting." "O.J. Simpson is deep." "Number 32." "And he's determined." "We were outplaying them, and we were very angry that we were not winning that game." "Thirty." "Moving away, and sheer sake of effort brings him out to the 34-yard line." "Things weren't going our way until that run." "Rose Bowl bid, Bud, is at stake." "Everything that they've fought for all year, it's coming down to the wire now, Chris." "These final minutes." "At the 36-yard line, a 4-yard gain, it'll be third down at three for the Trojans." "It was a pass play." "They need three yards." "And they audible, and some guys missed the audible." "I couldn't hear it." "I made a mistake." "I stood up to pass block." "The linebacker read me and backed into his passing zone, and that opened up a lane for O.J." "And he did his magic." "First down and more." "There's Simpson." "Look at that cut!" "O.J. Simpson!" "All she wrote." "64 yards. 64 thrilling, captivating, collegiate football yards, and let's look at that one again." "Wow." "Don't recall seeing anybody that can turn it on like this boy, Chris." "If you were a football fan in the late '60s and someone said to you," ""Do you remember the run," it was just one run." "That set O.J. apart from everyone." "He's so much faster, it makes no difference." "That single play is still felt to be one of the greatest college plays." "He became an instant national star." "A civil rights leader in Los Angeles has said if you are going to be a negro in a big city, then, Los Angeles is the best place to be." "The image of Los Angeles was milk and honey." "There's no prejudice in Los Angeles." "Everybody's free to do what they will." "You know, palm trees and sunshine." "It's just the ultimate place." "And anybody who was trying to go somewhere, at least in my area, you know, they were going to Los Angeles." "There is no group in America to whom California has meant more than it has to the Negroes." "In the two decades between 1940 and 1960, while the population of all other groups in Los Angeles went up by 100 percent, the negro population went up by 600 percent." "Where do the people come from?" "People come from the states of Texas, Louisiana, Georgia..." "The hope is that all the trouble I've known will be gone." "2, 4, 6, 8, we don't wanna integrate!" "I will no longer be held down by this notion held against my skin and my hair." "More literally, I can get work because it's growing so fast here." "And I can buy a house, and nobody's ever gonna come take it away from me because I'm black." "This is something that you didn't have in the deep South." "The Simpsons are from Rodessa, Louisiana." "My parents and his parents, they grew up on a 200-acre farm." "Although they had land, there was no opportunity for people of color, so everybody "got out of Dodge", as they say." "O.J. and I were born in San Francisco in '47." "He had aspirations." "He knew that he wanted to better his circumstances, and LA was the place to do that." "I moved out here looking for opportunities." "My grandmother gave me 67 dollars for a ticket, and my mother gave me 65 dollars to spend, and I got on a plane, one-way ticket." "If I had the money, I would've gone back home, 'cause it was very, very troubling once I got out here." "Racism out here was as stark as it was in Jim Crow South." "You don't really have any more power out here than you had there." "Everybody was always conscious of the police." "You a friend of Jack Grant's?" "Why?" "Jack Grant a friend of yours?" "I'm not gonna tell ya." "I grew up watching the Los Angeles Police Department." "They just were so sharp and professional all the time, if you watched things that depicted them." "I'm Lieutenant Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department." "Hell, no, we won't go." "If you do not leave now, you will be arrested for violation of section 602-J." "They were just always squared away." "The institutional culture was really clear." "We expected you to be the best, we expected you to be professional." "It's not like it was in the '30s and '40s." "Police officers don't take bribes." "There's none of that stuff, that had been cleaned up by Chief Parker." "Chief Parker turned a very corrupt police department into what was viewed as a very honest police department, but with that he brought a level of being untouchable." "Everything at the police academy was white, in the sense of command staff, officers, all the trainers were white." "Bill Parker was reputed to have actually recruited police officers from Klan rallies," "I think he, at minimum, was racially insensitive, at maximum, he was racist." "Police officers under Bill Parker would respond to a radio call, they would go snatch the person who was causing trouble, put 'em in the car, take 'em out and leave." "So their interaction with the community was almost entirely based on apprehension, and that's where the notion of an occupying army comes from." "Just getting tired of being pushed around by you white people, that's all." "You stopping' us on the street, kickin' down the doors, takin' down to the police station, you're kicking our teeth in." "Well, he took me in the car and, uh, he just started getting on me." "But was there a fight?" "How can I fight with my hands stuck?" "The complaint that you hear everywhere is that the negro is not getting the same treatment from the police as the" "Well, I know, but I'm getting a little bit weary of that, and I think perhaps the best thing to do is just to pull the police out of the area." "I've offered to do that again and again, but you see how quick they are to come back and say," ""We can't afford to have that."" "The Negroes are stepping up, they're waking up, and they're gonna do something about what the white man did to them." "I'm not afraid of bloodshed." "If I have to die for my rights, I will." "54 square miles in the middle of the nation's third-largest city." "No one expected the flashpoint of discontent to be in the sprawling, bungalow'd 450 square miles of Los Angeles." "This is where the fuse was lighted." "It began with the arrest by white officers of two young Negroes, one on a charge of drunk driving, the other his brother." "Their mother came to the scene." "There was an argument, there was a scuffle." "By then, a crowd of several hundred Negroes had gathered." "The story of police brutality quickly spread through the community." "The Watts riots." "I was 10 years old, man." "It was summer, it was hot, and white policemen had been treating us like shit forever." "And we were gonna respond." "The police in their idiocy responded with too much force and not enough understanding, and it mushroomed." "I was nervous." "There were people screaming, people shooting, people lying on the ground, not moving." "The police, four-deep in a car, all holding up shotguns." "The Watts riot was one of the first major events in the city of LA that was caught on TV." "People who grew up looking at those kinds of activities in the South, they thought that's where all of the racial divide was." "The only thing was missing in LA, there weren't dogs." "Hands up there." "Get 'em up." "Get your hands up." "Let's go." "I got home and my father was sitting there, upset, and he says," ""You know, Walter, they're out there, riot."" "And he says, "I wanna do that." "I feel that." "I feel that anger." "I know it's wrong, so I can't do it." "But I want to."" "I didn't think it was a big deal." "I didn't think these people were, quote, "persecuted"." "I didn't think these people had any problem." "Why were they rioting?" "I was as naive as any other white person." "This area is being closed." "Please go in your homes." "The question came down from white people after Watts." "They said, "Do most black people feel like this?"" "And the answer came back," ""About 99 percent of them feel like this." "And one percent are really mad."" "In creating this situation, where was the failure?" "On the part of the city, the county, the schools?" "This, sir, I think, is one of the difficulties in meeting this, is that we're trying to find a failure other than the people themselves." "They came in and-- and flooded a community that wasn't prepared to meet them." "We didn't ask these people to come here." "So long as this stubborn attitude is maintained," "I can only see the situation worsening." "I can still smell the smoulderings of that event." "There was nervousness all over the place that would ultimately translate into traumatizing an entire community." "Better to make all the rioting stop." "I don't think it'll ever stop, really." "Ever?" "And the institution that gave life to O.J. Simpson's image and presence nationally and beyond was located right in the middle of that very same neighborhood." "USC was an isolated, beautiful school right next to the LA Coliseum" "Everyone was warned not to go down on that side of the Coliseum." "At the University of Southern California, they have a living legend, and at homecoming, that's all they wanna talk about." "The name of the legend is O.J. Simpson." "When you saw him on campus, it was like, "Wow!" "There's O.J.!"" "And you might go up and wave and say, "Way to go, O.J.,"" "and he'd give you a big smile, and you felt like you were a million dollars." "You felt fantastic." ""O.J. Simpson said "hi" to me!"" "[ Chuckles ] Yeah." "Hey, O.J., how are ya?" "How's it--?" "Working hard." "I hope you're gonna be smiling Saturday." "Yeah, in about four days or five." "I plan to." "For most of the USC students, I wager, O.J. Simpson was the first African-American they really got to see and talk to." "Because most of them didn't know African-Americans at all, or any person of color." "We are!" "SC!" "USC was a football school, it was a Hollywood school, it was glamour and glitz, it was not the University of California at Berkeley." "It was not San Jose State." "Fight, fight, fight, fight!" "It was above and beyond reach of the movement." "O.J. went to USC in 1967, so he's plucked out of the black community, out of black consciousness, and he's submerged in an all-white university." "And I say this, and I don't say it facetiously, but he is seduced by white society." "USC controls TV, Hollywood, banking, finance, law and medicine in Los Angeles." "The alumni are very powerful, and their whole existence revolves around the success of the football team." "And O.J. is leading them to glory." "It was that type of school with that type of power and control that could be directed towards him." "The black man has been brainwashed, and it's time for him to learn something about himself." "The word "black" is a part of the times." "We are succumbing to the demands of the black man in the street who says that the negro is dead and the black man is alive." "It was a condition that I was born into;" "the unfairness, the racism, the hatred, the poverty that we had in this country." "You can't balance that with being a football hero." "In the '60s, societal issues were pushing their way into sports." "It has been said that I have two alternatives, either go to jail or go to the army." "There was this engagement of the athlete." "Some major athletes stood up." "Nine top negro athletes meet with Cassius Clay to discuss his anti-draft stand." "They include Bill Russell, Lou Alcindor, and former pro-footballer Jimmy Brown." "Every man in that room was a soldier." "Every man in that room, for nothing other than his beliefs and backing another brother, felt that he should be there and the hell with the consequences." "Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Ali, for sure, were race men." "They stood up for principle and damaged their commercial possibilities." "They pointed to the discrimination, not only of all blacks, but of black athletes, of people who were supposedly given entitlement in America." "At the time you were supposed to be satisfied." "Or grateful." "Why would someone that's making money and cheered by 80,000 people be complaining?" "For me, it was really a matter of fairness and what is correct." "The United States has hypocritically put itself up as the leader of the free world, while right here in this country there are 22 million black people who are catching more hell than anyone in any communist country ever dreamed of." "Black men and women athletes, professional and amateur, have unanimously voted to fully endorse and participate in a boycott of the World Olympic Games in 1968." "The movement on the West Coast recently in which Lou Alcindor supposedly said he might not play in the Olympics." "What are your thoughts?" "Well, um-- Well, this is his prerogative." "I'm not too well enlightened on the situation." "I don't know exactly what they're trying to do, you know." "The whole idea behind the Olympic Project for Human Rights was to escalate the relationship between elite athletes and the civil rights movement." "Let me say that I absolutely support this boycott." "I would also like to commend the outstanding athletes who have the courage to make it clear that they will not participate unless something is done about these terrible evils and injustices." "O.J. was approached because he was the biggest name in collegiate athletics at that time." "He was also a world record-holding track star." "That's O.J. Simpson..." "So here we got two for one." "...and Lennox Miller..." "When I asked him, I said we were trying to get black athletes to understand they have a role in the current civil rights movement, his response was, "I'm not black." "I'm O.J."" "What they think is right, I guess, they must follow their beliefs." "Well, uh, right now I don't wanna be involved in it, because, uh, I'm not in track." "You know, I'm running track, but when it-- when it comes to Olympic time, I'll be in football, so I have no comment on the matter." "O.J. was saying, "I want to be judged not by the color of my skin," "I want to be judged by the content of my character and. most of all, the caliber of my competence." "I think I'm the greatest football player that this country's ever seen." "That's all I wanna be judged by." "Don't tell me I've gotta do this because I'm black."" "I think football is a great sport." "It teaches a person an awful lot." "I would say there's less prejudice in sports than any other field anywhere, because, uh, it just-- you're accepted as what you are, you know, an athlete and what you can do," "and I think this is good for anyone." "Simpson rushed for 1709 yards in 1968, more than any other back in history." "His durability is almost as legendary as his speed and moves." "Simpson scored 22 touchdowns." "He carried a record 355 times and proved himself nearly indestructible." "He was in a different world than the rest of us." "There was an O.J. cult." "It was building, building, building." "When you bring a student athlete in there on a visit, they wanna see O.J." "The community leaders, for speaking engagements, they wanted O.J." "They wanted a role model." "They wanted the young black kids to see." "When I was 16 years old, I made an all-star team down in Los Angeles and they had a banquet, and while we were eating, the guy who was running the whole show, he says," ""Okay, I wanna introduce the guest speaker tonight, O.J. Simpson."" "And I was like, "Wow!" I said, "O.J.'s here." "This is unbelievable."" "O.J., when he walked up, he said," ""First of all, before I start is Ron Shipp here?"" "I put my hand up." "I was like, "Is this--?" "Is this for real?"" "And he goes, "Are you the brother of Michael Shipp?" And I say, "Yes."" "And he goes, "Hey, everybody, I just wanna tell you about, uh, Michael Shipp, his brother, we played against each other, he's a great guy, so on and so, Ron, if you're anything like your brother, you know..."" "and, like, he made me an instant hero in that room." "I mean, I fell in love with the guy right then." "This is the most incredible human being." "Here is the star of our show, Bob Hope." "I don't have to tell you it's a pleasure to be here at OJU." "But it's wonderful to be here at USC." "You haven't had a riot, a demonstration or even a sit in." "Are you sure this is a college?" "I have some very sad news for all of you." "Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis." "I tried to talk to O.J. before the show, but I guess he has something on his mind." "He kept referring to me as Mr. Heisman." "RFK, RFK, RFK!" "Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs!" "O.J., you've had quite a season." "Well, I have gained a few yards." "A few yards?" "You've gobbled up more real estate than Howard Hughes." "When you think of 1968, what do you think of?" "1968, I think of winning all the games, getting O.J. famous, everybody on campus thinking it's the greatest thing on earth." "That's all we thought about." "There was nothing else going on." "Several European newspapers today condemned the International Olympic Committee for sending home two militant negro athletes from the United States." "The two, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who ran first and third in the 200-meter dash, were banished after they raised clenched fists in black gloves during the playing of The Star Spangled Banner." "Uh, with your bad self!" "Say it loud!" "I'm black, and I'm proud!" "I didn't believe in the national anthem, but I stood up anyway, because I didn't want no static, but those days are gone." "Right on." "Brother Tommie Smith, Brother Johnny Carlos and Brother Harry Edwards join the ranks of Brother Muhammad Ali, because we want black people who are concerned with us first and with sports second." "Yeah!" "Say it loud!" "I'm black, and I'm proud!" "At about, uh, 10 o'clock this morning, we were notified that, uh, a Heisman Trophy winner comes back to USC and, as you all know, it's O.J. Simpson." "[ Applause ]" "Thank you." "Well, I-- I don't know quite what to say." "I'm, uh, certainly proud, and I'm very happy, and I'm" " I'm taking it as a team award and all the other guys did as much if not more than I do, for me to get the award, and I'll be glad to see all the guys," "'cause I know they're just as happy as I am." "As you can see, the Heisman Trophy award ceremony is over, and O.J. Simpson, number 32, the University of Southern California, has been beset by autograph hounds." "Mrs. Simpson, I wonder if you'd be good enough to come over." "Your tears only registered your pride, and it's a very great pride, and you should enjoy it, because this is a very great young man." "O.J., the congratulations of all of us to you for a truly remarkable season and more importantly for your impeccable character." "Thank you, Mr. Cosell." "So that's the story." "The Heisman award proceedings, number 32, O.J. Simpson." "Perhaps the greatest running back in the history of college football." "When I met him, I was quite taken with him." "This is kind of a warm June night in 1969." "Howard Cosell took O.J. and me to Bachelors III, which was Joe Namath's bar." "He was telling a story about being at a teammate's wedding with his wife sitting at a table of mostly, as he said, Negroes, and you overheard a white woman at the next table saying," ""Look, there's O.J. sitting with all those niggers."" "And I remember in my naivete, saying to O.J.," ""Gee, wow, that must have been terrible for you."" ""No, that was great." "Don't you understand?" "She knew that I wasn't black." "She saw me as O.J."" "And" " And really, at that moment, um, I thought he was fucked." "Our first guest today is one of the greatest running backs I've ever seen." "I met him when he was still in college at Southern California, and he's not only a hell of a football player, he's a hell of a guy." "The winner of the Heisman trophy, the finest college football player in the country last year, the Buffalo Bills' great rookie, O.J. Simpson." "[ Applause ]" "Thank you, Joe." "Now, with all that money you got for signing with Buffalo," "I wanna know if you're gonna help me out in some business interests." "[ Laughs ]" "How's business?" "Oh, it's pretty good." "I, uh, I'm under contract with-- I don't know if I can say it." "I'm here." "Yeah." "Well, I'm under contract with Chevrolet and RC Cola, and I'm working with, um-- What network is it?" "[ Laughter ]" "ABC." "And, uh, they're keeping me pretty busy." "The pitch to Chevrolet was that this would be the first national black spokesman." "You've got a black market." "He's not gonna be a negative in any way to the white market, but you're gonna get a lot of brownie points just for stepping up." "O.J.?" "It's a real satisfaction to me to be able to introduce a great ballplayer like you to an equally great group of Chevrolet salesmen." "My pleasure, Chris." "At the time, athlete endorsements were virtually non-existent." "And for them to sign him, a black man, a football player, was ground-breaking." "They tell me that the Chevrolet selling team is the greatest in the country." "I believe that." "That's what made perfect sense." "O.J. Simpson was the counterrevolutionary athlete." "White America is looking for somebody who can erase the threat of these seemingly angry principled black athletes who are going to create a revolution in sports." "O.J. made people feel good." "It was clear once you spent some time with O.J." "that the Carlos, you know, fist pump, and those kinds of, uh, situations were not gonna be, you know, present in-- in dealing with him." "He just gave you that confidence that he understood what this was about." "I'd like to welcome a new member of the ABC sports commentary staff." "It is O.J. Simpson." "Uh, well, Jim, I'll be doing basically sports work with the, uh," "ABC radio networks and the TV nextworks-- networks." "I hope" "O.J. was very, very rough and needed a lot of coaching in the early years." "It's pretty interesting, and I'm really looking forward to it." "We obviously wanted him to be able to speak proper English and eliminate slang, and he didn't ever take offense at that." "It was, "Thank you." You know?" ""Okay, I got it."" "He realized that his Horatio Alger story was based on him being a pleasing person to white people." "I really had the sense that he was enormously self-conscious of who he was and who he needed to be to get over." "That there was this character, O.J., which he was creating." "What does O.J. stand for?" "[ Laughs ] Oh, Joe." "[ Laughter ]" "Come on, tell it." "Tell me." "Orenthal James Simpson." "Good." "[ Laughter ]" "Now, that's a nice name, Orenthal." "Yeah." "[ Laughter ]" "It's a good name." "You" " You never got in any arguments over that, did ya?" "No, no, I had, uh" " I had some pretty good friends, pretty big friends, and they were the only guys who could tease me about it." "Well, in your movie career, uh, motion picture industry, are they gonna call you Orenthal James or-?" "They're gonna call me O.J." "[ Laughs ]" "I was taken by O.J. as a character, as somebody to write about, that somebody was so self-aware and so obviously ambitious." "The question in my mind then and still now is where did this imagination come from?" "Where did he begin to write this novel about O.J. Simpson?" "Everybody looks at San Francisco now, "Oh, it's this cosmopolitan" "Oh, you know, everybody loves everybody gooshy goosh."" "It's not." "It wasn't like that, man." "Potrero Hill was predominantly African-American." "Public housing, the old barracks from the navy." "When the navy left, the city turned 'em into low-income housing." "It was a rough area." "The Simpsons lived at the top of a big hill." "Carmelita, his younger sister Shirley had a room, and Melvin and O.J. had a room." "We crawled around on the floor together before we ever learned how to walk." "Four months apart." "I'm born in March, he's born in July." "We'd spend a lot of time at each other's house." "We're a close-knit family." "The mother worked at night, so they were responsible for themselves, and sometimes he would open the refrigerator and there just wouldn't be nothing in there, and I'd say, "Well, come on, let's go to my house and eat dinner."" "O.J.'s mother, my aunt Eunice, worked the graveyard shift at San Francisco General Hospital." "She was a provider, she was steady, but if you're in a single-parent situation, you know, there's never enough money." "[ Police siren ]" "I mean, we were poor kids, you know." "We would steal cars, we would break into somebody's house, take all the women's purses and stuff like" " You know." "We would be called criminals." "From the time we were 10 years old, you know, we were hustlers." "You know, you'd go to the football game, scalp tickets, and everybody had their own technique." "Yeah." "I would" " I can recall crying in front of a cat, you know." ""Oh, I need it." [ Laughs] "Please let me have that ticket." You know?" "[ Laughter ]" ""I wanna see" " I wanna see Hugh McElhenny play," you know?" "Cats break down, give you the ticket," "I would go on the other side of the stadium and sell it." "Why didn't I think of that?" "[ Laughter ]" "Did you ever see him in any fist fights?" "O.J. didn't fight." "No?" "No." "O.J. was boisterous." "When you say he was boisterous, did you ever see him, uh, talk himself out of a-- a fight situation?" "I've seen O.J. fight-- Talk himself out of a lot of situations." "There was this one incident at school." "Myself, Al Collins and O.J., we were all in the bathroom shooting crap." "We were cursing and talking loud, and I was shaking the dice, and, all of a sudden, these big wingtip shoes slide in the circle, and I looked up, and it was Coach McBride." "We were all on the football team." "We're like, "Okay, Mr. McBride, we're busted." "Let us go to class."" "He's like, "No." He's gonna take us to the principal's office." "O.J. stays in back of the pack." "I could hear him," ""Oh, come on, Mr. McBride." "You know we're gonna be suspended."" "So we get in the principal's office." "Coach McBride says, "I caught these guys in the bathroom shooting dice."" "And then he turned and walked out." "So O.J. turns and walks away." "Dean Smith says, "Simpson, where you going?"" "He says, "Oh, I was just helping Mr. McBride bring these guys down."" "[ Laughs ] And Dean Smith let him go." "[ Bell rings ]" "Self-preservation." "It was just that kind of smooth talk that O.J. would do in all kinds of situations." "Do you think he was shown a little preference because of his football ability?" "Oh, yes." "You said you had seen Simpson talk himself out of lots of situations." "Oh, yeah, talked himself... with me." "When we were younger, Al Collins used to stutter, and he never was good with talking to girls." "Marguerite was the nice girl from the other side of town, but Marguerite liked Alan, and they wound up going steady." "There was some party, and O.J. came and got me." "I thought we was going straight to the party, but we pull up in front of Marguerite's house, and he tells me to get in the back, and I'm, like, in shock, like, you know," "I seen her with-- you know, walking with-- with Alan." "We go down to where the party is, and Alan spots us, and he starts shaking his head and, "No!" "No way!"" "He is furious, and Al is a big guy." "And he grabs the car, and he's rocking it, rocking the car back and forth, just rocking it." "And Marguerite gets out of the car, she says, "Alan, stop it."" "And he stops." "And we were like, "No, he didn't."" "[ Laughs ] How could O.J. keep getting out of these situations?" "He stole his best friend's girl." "Later on, you see the three of them together." "Alan went to USC also." "They were as thick as thieves." "Everywhere he went, A.C. was with him." "Football really was what brought us together." "We were really braggadocious, you know." "We were like, "I'm gonna be a pro football player,"" "and O.J. said something that really struck me." "He says, "Man, let me tell you guys something." "One of these days, your children are gonna be fighting over who wants to be O.J. Simpson."" "He knew that he was going to be somebody." "He was self-assured." "I'll just-- I'll just put it that way." "O.J. has always wanted to be a hero." "If it was looking at Burt Lancaster on The Man on the Flying Trapeze or Burt Lancaster playing Jim Thorpe, he always wanted to be a hero." "An American hero." "The Buffalo Bills select as their first choice in the first round, halfback O.J. Simpson, the University of Southern California." "It was the last place you'd wanna be." "It was just like being sent to Siberia." "There was some players that said, "Oh, Mr. Hotshot."" "He understood that people around him was envious what he was getting and what he was doing." "Stand by and go whenever you're ready, O.J." "[ Chuckles ] Well, there was never much doubt about missing him." "Uh, that was O.J. Simpson." "O.J. is now a professional football player." "The Buffalo Bills is his home, and the question is how many professional defensive tacklers is he going to get by?" "So what kind of an attitude must O.J. Simpson have to play professional football?" "Well, he's gonna have to be strong-willed, uh, in many different ways, because he will have a lot of people picking at him, he'll have a lot of" "We had a coach, John Rauch, which I've considered the worst coach that we ever had." "Blocking, he will have to block, because other people are ball carriers also." "He tried to make O.J. a receiver, more or less." "What we call tosses, quick, uh, opening plays." "And O.J. could not catch a ball." "He couldn't catch a ball if they paid him to catch a ball, which they was." "They was paying him. [ Chuckles ] They was paying him a lot." "O.J. hated Buffalo." "He hated the weather." "It's a blue collar town." "Hard working, blue collar, factory-working people." "O.J. was nothing of that." "And plus, we was on a losing team." "The first couple years of his pro career were very frustrating for him, and they were disappointing relative to the huge expectations that everybody set for him." "I mean, they were saying he was a bust." "If it had have stayed the same as it was when he first got drafted in here, he would have been a nobody, I honestly believe that." "He'd have been a nobody." "Best thing happened to O.J. was John Rauch got fired, and Lou Saban took over." "Lou Saban was a person who believed in the run game first, the pass game second." "I tell you, if Lou Saban hadn't have came in, we wouldn't be doing this story right now." "'73 was the year we opened the new stadium." "So we had a 80,000 seat stadium, and they brought in all these young offensive linemen." "Coach Saban built the team to run." "When I got there during exhibition season," "I saw him doing things that" " I said, "Wow." "Homeboy's pretty bad."" "Lou Saban started selling them on the idea that we can get 2,000." "You can get 2,000." "We can do this." "You can get it done." "What's more, you gotta get it done." "And in that first game, we turned out the lights and started it and never looked back." "First game I ever played in the NFL, O.J. got 250 yards." "O.J. Simpson could run sideways faster than most men could run forward." "And he hit the line, and he'd go [ whistles ] that quick, then up the sideline." "He was amazing." "I've been around a lot of good ballplayers, but I've never been around anyone that was as breathtaking or as captivating as he was." "He would, like, glide." "He never really picked his feet more than a couple inches off the ground, so he was, like, slithering through a hole." "When he'd hit a hole sometimes he'd turn sideways and kind of leap through it sideways." "Then if he broke open into the open, then you'd start seeing the knees go up in the stride." "That's when he was buttery." "He's the one who sucked me into being a rabid Bills fan." "Let's hear it for the Bills." "Let's hear it." "Come on!" "Let's go!" "Let's go, Bills!" "And once we got to the seventh game, it was a Monday night game, O.J. went over a thousand." "Everybody said, "Hey, we have a shot at this."" "Two thousand yards in 14 games." "That was like somebody breaking Babe Ruth's home run record." "That was unheard of." "What was going through my mind at the time is he might have a chance of breaking Jim Brown's record." "I never thought that he would go 2,000 yards." "Why are you so much better than everybody else?" "I think" " I think the offensive line is so much better than everybody." "Hey, you guys!" "We're gonna turn it on." "All of a sudden, we got a nickname:" ""The Electric Company."" "And, wow, this is pretty cool." "The nickname came from the PR director of The Bills." "There used to be a cartoon called The Electric Company, and his son watched it all the time." "He said, "Hey, dad, why don't you call 'em 'The Electric Company'?"" "They turn on the juice." "The Bills they got that Electric Company" "Montler, Foley, Big Joe D" "They turn on The Juice They turn on The Juice" "They cut him loose They turn on The Juice" "You know I love to see my Electric Company" "Turn on The Juice Turn him loose" "O.J. just couldn't be stopped that year." "Throw that switch, boys Turn the power on" "There were times when the quarterback would only throw six passes in the entire game." "There goes The Juice There goes The Juice" "The entire offense was O.J. Simpson." "There goes The Juice 30, 40..." "Nobody actually thought he was gonna go for 2,000." "With only, uh, two games to go, he was still 400 and a few yards short." "Go, Juice!" "Come on, Juice!" "During the games, I never took a minute off from the offense." "Do you want The Juice to put a move on you?" "I never made it to the bench." "Turn on The Juice" "Yeah" "I didn't wanna miss any of it." "Turn on The Juice" "It was the most exciting thing that I'd ever seen." "Turn on The Juice" "Yeah" "When we got to New York, that last game, he was going for Jim Brown's record." "With 60 yards needed, and everyone knew that The Jets didn't want him to get the record." "I was actually there." "The Jets had no chance of making the playoffs." "The only interesting thing about that day was whether O.J. was going to break 2,000." "It was a really snowy, cold day." "Hm, a little bit similar to today." "So a lot of people were worried that he wouldn't have a lot of rushing yards because of that, a lot of slipping in the snow." "He was nervous that day." "We had a little chat, and I told him, I said," ""Hey, homes, this is just another week for you."" "I think he knew that "This is gonna make or break me."" "He knew that in order for him to write his name in the book, he had to be exceptional." "He was living a very comfortable life, but he wanted to live an exceptional life," "and this was his exceptional feat." "I remember just about every play in that game." "Every time Simpson got the ball, everyone was rushing to their, uh, notepad to write it down." "And the announcers kept counting it down." "Well, gentlemen, we are coming upon it, and, uh, The Juice should break the National Football League rushing record in this next series." "Simpson running left, Simpson breaking loose, and there it is!" "All right!" "All right!" "He needed four yards, he got five and this crowd, his whole team is gathering around and congratulating him, hitting him on the head, there isn't a person sitting down." "He got the 1,863 pretty early in the game." "And they said, "Okay, now we're going for the 2,000."" "And now it's for the 2,000, Floyd." "More than 100 yards, O.J., O.J. cuts inside," "O.J. gets wide, this is on!" "Now a race he's at midfield and he's inside Jets territory at the 43 yard line." "100 yards." "How many games did he get to 100 yards?" "Eleven?" "Once he got over 100 yards, a different excitement started to hit the game." "Well, he might do this." "He might actually hit 2,000." "You had Jets fans who were basically rooting for O.J." "because they wanted to be part of history, and I think, you know," "I was basically a little kid, but I think I felt that way." "Who cared if The Jets won?" "Everybody loved O.J." "O.J., he's got five yards, and O.J. running left," "O.J. five more." "Maybe more." "I don't know." "They did it." "They did it." "Yeah!" "And when he did it, he was on my shoulder." "I knew how important it was." "I contributed to that also." "The defense has to give the ball to the offense." "I felt it." "It was mine, too." "Right after the game, there's "Gotta get O.J. to the interview,"" "and he said, "I'm not coming in unless you bring in all the guys."" "And we were in a tiny room." "We could barely fit in that room." "He brought in all the offense." "He refused to go in that room without us." "O.J., you brought 'em all with you." "Yeah." "Hey, they did the job, all of you." "I want you to meet the boys." "Here." "Mike Montler, our-- our-- our center." "Jim Braxton, Bob Penchion, Joe Ferguson." "Didn't throw many passes this year, but ball-handling is the thing." "[ Laughter ]" "Donnie Green, [ laughs ] Bobby Chandler, Paul Seymour," "Dave Foley, a former Jet." "[ Laughter ]" "All right, all right!" "[ Chuckles ] This is a guy, through the long winter wasn't supposed to play any football this year." "He had a heart problem, but you came back, and you see what we did." "JD Hill, "Crackback" Hill, my main man Reg McKenzie." "He was the most generous guy you'd ever meet." "When we broke the record, he bought us a gold wristband." "And on the back of it is, "We did it." "The Juice. 3088."" "He didn't say "2003", he said "3088", because that's how much the team rushed." "I hope to stay in the, uh, league long enough for, uh, you know, 'til all these guys get old so no young back can get behind 'em and break my record." "'73 was like a rebirth of his celebrity." "I was 22 years old, I thought, you know," ""This is like being on a team with Babe Ruth."" "Mentally, I think he was ahead of, uh, a lot of people." "From watching how he handled himself, how he operated, my whole demeanor changed." "I began to wanna be like O.J." "He was Baryshnikov." "When somebody is that great at something, when we see those people, they are special." "They just can do stuff that other people can't do." "You expect it of yourself." "You hear the crowd, but you don't hear it." "I mean, you know they're cheering, but that's the way it should be." "When I'm in the open, I'm running, this is how it is supposed to be." "This is correct." "This is the natural state of things." "I know whenever I've done it, my feelings have always been, uh, that's nothing." "Uh, this is nothing yet." "Yeah, I'm gonna do it again." "Orenthal James Simpson had that shine." "The sun hit him, and there was this thing about him." "Because he really was that great." "He really was that great." "Football has been my vehicle to come out of the ghetto, uh, to give everything I've got." "I think I have a lot more to offer." "There's a lot of things I need as a person." "You know, I need, uh-- I need that recognition." "I think that, uh, what-- what is driving O.J. Simpson is that need to be number one, that need to be liked." "That need to be said, "Hey, that's O.J. Simpson."" "When I walk down the street, I want people to know me." "Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat" "Let Hertz take you anywhere" "We had done a survey asking the customer base what was the most important attribute of the rental car experience?" "And the most important attribute was speed of service." "So we went to the agency, and they showed a storyboard of a businessman with a briefcase running through the airport." "Our marketing guy said, "Frank, it doesn't work." "That's not realistic to think a businessman's gonna do that." "We need somebody that connotes speed."" "And I said, "Like what?" He says, "Like O.J. Simpson."" "Juice comes off the blocks, immediately goes into the lead." "Steve Smith running in second place." "Right now it's Mark Gleason, but here comes Hancock." "He moves past Gleason." "O.J. looks back, sees Smith running at his shoulder, steps on it a little bit, and The Juice puts him away." "It was one of the clients who said," ""Did you see the ABC program The Superstars?" "O.J. just lit up the screen." "His personality came out, and he just made everybody smile."" "You gave him about a yard and then you took a look at him." "What's happening?" "Well, I was out there cruising." "I figure I'd coast it on in." "I saw Steve pull up on me, you know, and my ego got a little ruffled there." "I said, "I'd better get out in front again."" "I called him, and his first comment was," ""Hertz is the number one rent-a-car company." "If I'm ever going to do anything in advertising in a big way, it's always gonna be for the number one brand."" "When you're in a rush, take it from O.J. Simpson." "There's only one superstar in rent-a-car:" "Hertz." "The first ad was filmed in Newark Airport." "He was very professional, he was anxious to make sure that he did things correctly, that his diction was appropriate." "Others claim to be fast, but nobody has more to do it faster." "More pros to execute the toughest performance standards." "More cars, more locations, first with every good idea to speed up service, like the Number One Club." "Before you get there, your form's filled out, car's preassigned." "Go, O.J., go!" "Rent a Ford fast from Hertz, the superstar in rent-a-car." "I thought it was perfect." "I mean, it just made sense." "You're trying to portray speed of service, and you've got the fastest guy in America running through the airport and a little old lady yelling, "Go, O.J.!"" "Go, O.J., go!" "It was perfect." "It tested so well that they decided to use him for the print work, promotional work, and they did the right thing." "He made that company successful." "He became the image for that company." "We started in September of '75." "By two years of the campaign running, O.J. Simpson was the star presenter of the year for Advertising Age." "There was never a story that was written about O.J." "that didn't mention Hertz." "Coming or going on a business trip, you've got no time to waste." "I can see him right now flying through the airport." "Whether it's picking up or dropping off" "I was proud." "It made me want that." "Go, O.J., go!" "It gave me hope." "There you are with super-speed" "This is an important moment." "The young black kid seeing a black man running on television." "That's all he sees." "He says, "He looks like my uncle Reggie."" "You know it." "That's something I could do." "I wanna be like O.J. on television." "Hi." "Ever need to rent a car fast?" "Watch." "You're in the limelight." "We like seeing you." "You look like us." "It's kind of like when I first saw black people brushing their teeth on TV." "I mean, we always knew we brushed our teeth, but it was, like, a big thing." "Like, "Come see!"" "That's what happened with O.J. Simpson." "Those were heights that we had not reached before, so he was a pioneer." "You're a black man in America, you're fighting our war." "If you make a success for yourself somewhere, you've opened a door." "Fortunately, because of the riots of the early '60s, some doors were opened to me." "If I were to have looked at myself in any other way except a man, my brother could walk into a room and know he's the only black guy in the room." "I walk in a room, and I don't care." "I don't count the blacks or whites in the room, and in '68, when I signed to work for some white companies, you know," "Chevrolet Motor Division, I walked in the room, and I never thought that I was the first black guy to do it." "I never even gave that any credence." "For us, O.J. was colorless." "None of the people that we associated with looked at him as a black man." "O.J. portrayed success." "Success, I mean, from nowhere." "And I think people want to be successful." "O.J. was the first to demonstrate that white folks would buy stuff based on a black endorsement as long as it was not pressed as a black endorsement." "And the way they did that was to remove black people totally from any scene that O.J. was in." "It was Fred Levinson who said," ""Guys, we're going to be showing a black man running through an airport in 1975."" "I said, "When you see the commercial with a black guy running through an airport, a little different than seeing a white guy running through an airport."" "So he came up with the idea of putting in various characters who would see O.J. and endorse him by saying, "Go, O.J., go!"" "Go, O.J., go!" "Go, Juice, go!" "Rent a Ford from Hertz." "The superstar in rent-a-car." "Right." "They bought the notion that you could erase the black character, the culture." "This is what made O.J. marketable." "He's African, but he's a good-looking man." "You know, he almost has white features." "He wasn't the typical black look, African look." "What white America got out of it was they could point to somebody that had "made it"" "and demonstrated unequivocally that we are more than willing to not just accept you, but to embrace you." "What O.J. got out of it was money, fame, celebrity." "Hey, hey, hey!" "What you got to say?" "I always tell everybody, he was the guy of the '70s." "I look back at those days, there was Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron and O.J. Simpson." "And O.J. was the most popular of all of them." "Hollywood" "I didn't see them running through airports." "Hollywood swinger" "When you're a star running back, you have to maintain a certain image." "Aw." "I'm'a tell ya, I dug O.J.." "I got a chance to see how he lived, how he handled stuff." "I'd never been that close to that type of success before." "Hey, listen, Hollywood city, yeah" "They'd have 3-4,000 fans standing around the bus just to get a look at him." "He would stay on the field and sign every autograph." "I've seen O.J. sign autographs for hours." "I said, "How in the world do you put up with this?"" "He said, "Man, I wanted this."" "O.J., tonight we're gonna change your image." "Flip, you won't be the first who tried." "Hollywood, Hollywood swinging" "When I first met O.J., he was a huge star." "I'll shave one side with the leading double-edged blade." "I was friends with his wife Marguerite's sister." "I can't tell." "Both sides feel the same." "They lived up in the hills, in Bel-Air." "Marguerite felt like she was a single mother while O.J. was out being O.J." "Tonight, O.J., we're gonna be sophisticated." "Sophisticated." "We gonna have a ball, Orenthal." "I can dig it." "Cool." "Right on, O.J." "Hollywood" "The scene is this, here is three poor black kids, never had a thousand dollars in our pockets." "Now he got a brand-new drop-top Cadillac, we're driving down Rodeo Drive." "Women come up, throw their arms around O.J. and just lay it on him." "Not just women, white women." "Fine white women." "What you got to say?" "It was that kind of world, man." "Hollywood, Hollywood swinging" "Do you feel, like, any kind of pressure in some ways to" "You know, people expect that you're gonna be a hero so you always have to" "Well, I found that" " I thought that maybe my problem would be that I would have to tear that down." "You know, I would have to, uh-- You know," "I" " I found that I was becoming a trapped-- you know, getting trapped within the image other people have of me." "You know, my image was dictating what I did and who I was." "I even had a manager at one point, I was gonna do something and he said," ""You can't do that." "O.J. would never do that."" "I said, "Hey, wait." "Wait a minute." "I'm O.J. Simpson, you know?" "[ Laughs ] And I'm'a do it."" "Yeah, 'cause I would think that someone would like you to be a spokesman." "You know, to get out there." "All the time." "Yeah?" "I've had a lot of pressure on me to go into politics." "I was pulled into it once or twice in the black movement, when I was in school." "I think they tried to use us, and in many cases, it-- it hurt guys." "I felt that with Harry Edwards." "It hurt Tommie Smith, it hurt John Carlos." "Standing on his platform," "I thought they should've been standing on their own platform." "I say if I'm gonna be standing on the platform," "I'm gonna be speaking for O.J. [ Laughs ]" "When did you first meet Mr. Simpson?" "1970." "Okay, and under what circumstances?" "I met him, uh, on a tennis court." "Would you be able to describe Mr. Simpson's basic personality as you knew it?" "Very personable, very outgoing." "We did business together, and then we would, uh, socialize together." "We were at Bob Kardasian's mansion in Beverly Hills." "O.J. is playing tennis, and everybody's having a good time." "I'm with black power, get it?" "[ Laughs ]" "I don't wanna be around these people, all right?" "'Cause they're all phony to me." "I said, "O.J., look around you, man." "These people don't care nothing about us." "Just a few years ago, these guys woulda drove down Fillmore in their Rolls Royce and they wouldn't have even spit on us."" "I said, "Now they're acting like we're their long-lost brothers."" "I said, "Man, the only reason we're here is we are jocks, and you're O.J.."" "And he looked at me, he says, "Mm-hm, yeah."" "He says, "I understand what you're saying,"" "and he rubbed his tennis racket." "He says, "But I am O.J.," and ran off on the field laughing." "And I was, like, I mean, I was furious." "Because I say, "He's lost." "He's lost his identity." "He doesn't know who he is any longer."" "I think he'd been brainwashed." "Let me read you something that he said to me." ""That sort of thing hurts me even though it's what I strive for, to be a man first." "Maybe it's money, a class thing." "The negro is always identified with poverty." "But then you think of Willy Mays as black, but not Bill Cosby." "So it's more than just money." "As black men, we need something up there all the time for us, but what I'm doing is not for principles or black people." "No." "I'm dealing first for O.J. Simpson, his wife and his babies."" "O.J.'s quest was to erase race as a defining factor in his life, and that was the basis upon which white society not only accepted him, but embraced him." "Now, there are problems with that, because what enabled O.J. to be O.J. and not be black was that so many Negroes and black people stood up, made the sacrifice, paid the price." "They're the ones that set the table for O.J. and what he was saying was," ""Okay." "We may not have arrived, but I have arrived, and as far as I'm concerned, everybody else can get here the same way that I did, and when they get here, they can do what I do."" "He was so privileged, he was so accepted, he was so embraced that he was immune from the reality that he could find in the mirror every morning that he was a black man." "No matter how far he runs and how long he runs, when you look in the mirror, that black man is gonna be right there with you." "Every day." "We were just sitting around the house once and, uh, he says," ""Joe, do you think you could go back?"" "And I was like, "Go back where?"" "He said, "You know, go back to the projects, hanging out?"" "I said, "Yeah, man." I said, "I could go back tomorrow."" "Potrero Hill. [ Laughs ] Hasn't changed a bit." "We didn't have Dr. King and these other bougie folks as role models." "Our role models was pimps and players." "Those are the only people that we looked up to, because they had cool things." "They'd beat a ho down right there on the street in front of everybody so that all the women would know it, this is the kind of treatment you're gonna get if you don't bring me my money." "Your perceptions are shaped by the men that are in your lives." "Mama was Mama." "We knew she loved us, but the reality is" "I didn't wanna be like Mama." "Mama's a woman." "I want to be a man." "He had to deal with his father from time to time." "Sometimes, I guess his father came by to take care of the monthly payment or whatever." "One day, we went over to his dad's house." "We knocked on the door." "He kept looking at me, and when his dad opened the door, he was in a bathrobe, which is not a crime, but then his dad kinda opened the door more, and there was a guy in the back in a bathrobe too," "so it was obvious that his dad was gay." "We left and on the way back, we were quiet." "Because there was so much tension, we got to this certain point, and we both bust out laughing." "Calvin came to me, and he was like," ""Man, did you know O.J.'s dad is a punk?"" "I was like, "Man, shut up." "I don't wanna hear that."" "Back in our day that was the worst thing in the world." "That you could ever think about an African-American man being a homosexual." "Did you ever talk to O.J. about this?" "No." "Never?" "Mm-mm." "I felt like that issue was enough for him to deal with himself." "Think of O.J. as an American man, a poor American man, tough American man, who's recreating himself in ways that people would accept and push." "O.J. Simpson may be playing the last game of his brilliant football career tomorrow when the Buffalo Bills meet the Minnesota Vikings." "All year, O.J. has hinted he may hang up his cleats for a movie career." "He could not wait to get out of Buffalo." "He was away from the glamour." "He was away from all the Hollywood and all that stuff." "He got attention here, but it was a different kind of attention." "It was not Hollywood attention." "Lou Saban said today that he's detected a change in The Juice." "He hasn't diminished one whit as a competitor, but he's an intelligent man, and he's thinking about the whole of his future life." "There are certain opportunities outside of football that I can't, uh" " I just can't overlook too-- too many more years." "You know, I came into the league, I thought the world was mine." "I had a few bad years, and I realized then that" ""Hey, you know, when you're hot you're hot,"" "so there's opportunities that have come to me with ABC, with the movies that I would like to, uh, take advantage of and, uh, the only thing I wanna do right now is play" "Get the best possible year I can so if I do retire..." "I" " I will feel that I gave it my all and I, you know, uh, went out the best." "That's your own meretricious way of saying you want my job." "Well, you gotta explain meretricious to me, Howard." "[ Laughs ]" "[ Chuckles ]" "I always felt that there was more underneath O.J. Simpson than just the momentary superficiality of his pleasantness." "He had goals that he wanted to achieve, and he internalized those things." "There was something driving him, and I always felt that he was looking past a football career, which was going to definitely come to an end." "We are T-minus 18 seconds from liftoff." "We are T-minus 15 seconds." "Would you and your men please follow me?" "Gary, what the hell is this?" "This is an emergency." "Please follow me now!" "One of the most intriguing films now being put together in Hollywood is Capricorn One." "James Brolin plays the first astronaut to set foot on Mars, but the picture's scene-stealer will probably be O.J. Simpson." "It basically came from the studio that they wanted O.J. Simpson." "I thought there were worthy African-American actors who had paid their dues as actors, who had shown their talent." "My first choice was either Robert Hooks or Bernie Casey, so my reaction was less than enthusiastic." "I had seen Towering Inferno." "What?" "Damn it, man, you shoulda sent a man up there." "How do you expect her to hear a phone call?" "She's deaf." "I thought he was not gonna frighten Daniel Day-Lewis." "O.J. was a celebrity of enormous stature, and somebody who had not shown the chops to play the part." "How uptight do you get making a picture like Capricorn One where you're working in the company of actors of-- of real stature and-- and you're just a football star trying to be an actor?" "No, I don't think, uh, it's given me that-- that feeling." "It's obviously given me the feeling that," ""Hey, I've still got a lot to learn."" "I think, uh, you never stop learning in anything, and I" " I realize I'm still just a babe, you know, in the woods." "My goal was to see if I could make this guy work for what I wanted." "Came time to do his last scene." "Water." "Tiny says signs for water." "He's a guy who's parched and delusional." "Dry river bed." "Signs." "And so rather than him acting somebody who was desperately thirsty-- ...more sign." "I put appliances on his face that made it difficult for him to move and difficult to talk, and it just made him sound like he was in desperate trouble." "[ Sniffs ] Elizabeth, there's no water." "[ Sobs ] There's no water. [ Sobs ] I don't want to die. [ Coughs ]" "And, uh, he was pretty good." "Elizabeth." "You know, at the-- at the-- What could I say?" "He was a charming, terrific guy." "He was a positive guy." "He tried very hard, and it was clear that he saw a future for himself in film." "The Daisy was a private club in Beverly Hills, and the only people that could get in it were either rich, famous or beautiful." "All the celebrities used to go there." "And really beautiful girls." "And you could get in even if you were underage, no problem." "Jack Hanson started the disco, and he knew every Hollywood star." "Jack was a former USC guy." "One day he said, "You chum around a bit with this Simpson guy." "Could you bring him by, you know, and introduce him to me?"" "He was married to Marguerite at that time." "But as we're sitting there, this gorgeous little surfer blonde is waiting tables at lunch hour." "O.J. goes, "Wow, who's that?"" "Jack had Nicole come over and said hello." "And she didn't walk 10 feet away, and he looks right at Hanson and said," ""I'm gonna marry that girl."" "She was 18 years old, she had just graduated from high school." "She was just like my little sister." "She goes, "I met this man, and his name is O.J. Simpson."" "They went out, and I waited up for them." "She got home, it was, like, 2 o'clock in the morning and her jeans were ripped." "And I went, "What--?" "What happened?"" "And she goes, "Well, he was a little forceful."" "And I go, "Nicole, why would you let him, first date, be a little bit forceful?"" ""Well, Dave, don't be upset." "I think I really like this guy."" "That was, you know, the start of it." "About two days later, she went back to work." "She said," ""O.J. came in." "He wants to get an apartment for me and also a car."" "And I went," ""Nicole, think about this." "You know, he's married and has children."" "And she goes, "But I think I really like this guy." It was that fast." "Eighteen years old." "I mean, it was too young." "She was quiet, nice, didn't say too much." "She wasn't like she was distant or anything." "She was just a shy person." "And Nicole was a doer." "Whatever Nicole put her mind to, she could do." "She actually wanted to be a photographer, and she was always an artist." "Honestly, the connection's pretty obvious." "I mean, she's drop-dead gorgeous." "She was hot." "My sister was really a beautiful girl." "We didn't know who he was." "We were girls in the Brown house." "We didn't grow up with football." "We went to the beach." "So when Nicole came home with him, we were like, "Who are you?"" "They had a real love affair, these two." "When they were together, it was just-- it was love." "And that's what makes this thing so sad." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "I'm ready to retire." "For the last couple of years" "I've gotten very busy on the off season." "Mainly, because early in my career..." "I had those rough years in Buffalo." "I sort of told myself then" "I would, uh, put my energies in something that was gonna sustain me and last." "I knew then that I would have trouble adjusting to not being a football player." "So, I said," ""Hey, I better start preparing myself for-- for-- for, you know... now." "[ Laughs ]" "I wanna tell you that over the years" "I've heard your applause, and I appreciated your cheers." "And I want you to know that I already know it's what I'm gonna miss most." "Thank you all, very much." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "[ Birds chirping ]" "[ Bus approaching ]" "Growing up in Brentwood was really a wonderful experience." "It's very quiet." "It's very affluent." "Very safe." "Very white." "Burglaries were very rare." "Violent crime almost nonexistent." "You could leave your door unlocked." "Never have to worry about anything." "I graduated the academy in 1975." "And then transferred to West L.A. 1978-79." "West L.A., the whole division, Bel Air, Brentwood, all-- it's loaded with stars." "And I'd sit back and go," ""Man, am I really getting paid for doing this?"" "When I first got there, O.J. had just moved from around Mulholland over to Rockingham." "O.J. Simpson living in Brentwood was really an anomaly." "He'd be one of maybe three black people in the entire community." "Los Angeles is unlike other places." "If you're a celebrity, you have no color." "People enjoy having you in their neighborhood." "Especially if you're a celebrity like O.J." "where everyone's husband worshipped him as a sports hero and couldn't wait to shake hands." "Once I found out he was living on Rockingham," "I decided I'd go by there, you know, and let him know..." ""Hey, you know?" "O.J., I'm here."" "This is where I work." "O.J. was great." "He'd always referred to the LAPD as "the boys." You know?" ""How's crime today?"" ""Hey, Shipp, what's going on in my area, man?"" ""Is you keeping the peace?"" "You know, stuff like that?" "And I'd be like, "Hey, man, everything's good."" "70-80 percent of the people in the city of Los Angeles, were thinking LAPD does a great job, we don't have crime here." "They thought out in the Valley or West Los Angeles," ""Hey, man, they're great." They smile." "They wave." "They're always around when you need them." "Well, that wasn't how other parts of the city were being treated." "On January 3rd, 1979, two members of the Los Angeles Police Department shot and killed Eulia Love at her home, in a dispute over $22.09 utility bill." "She died on her front lawn before the eyes of her own children." "There is no single event that had a more profound impact in LAPD history up to that point and time than the shooting of Eulia May Love." "This is where Mrs. Eulia Love stood the day the shooting took place." "There was an officer here, an officer there." "She held a knife in her hand, there was a scuffle, the knife was knocked out of her hand, she reached for it, and as she threw it, the officers opened fire." "This was a big deal." "This is a woman who's had a tough time." "And she was desperate." "So, there was a lot of empathy going out to her from the community." "Once again, we have a member of the black community... dead... under circumstances that are highly questionable at best." "It has been determined that the evidence does not warrant the filing of criminal charges." "This was a justifiable homicide, uh, committed by the officers in their own self-defense." "As far as LAPD was concerned, it was just an event." "And everybody was supposed to accept it." "This was on the lips and minds of everybody in the community." "The people gonna get justice, and it's gonna be in the street." "It didn't help that you had a police chief, who behaved poorly, and, in many ways, irresponsibly." "And I've commented on the media squeezing out the last, uh.... tear of emotion in this situation, where they talk about a $22 gas bill." "It doesn't make any difference, but it was, uh... a $69 gas bill." "Gates was Gates." "He's going to be fully supportive of his officers." "I guess they don't think I have any sympathy for anyone, other than police officers, and that's simply not true." "I have great empathy and sympathy for Eulia Love and her family." "Deeply sorry that it happened, but it did happen." "I..." "[ Clears throat ] was a big fan of Daryl..." "Francis Gates." "Gates introduced the SWAT model of law enforcement, introduced the D.A.R.E. program to all of law enforcement." "So he was an innovator." "But he was also a controversial guy." "GATES:" "We have officers out there doing the job." "Attempting to make good judgment based on the information they have, protecting themselves and protecting the people of the city of Los Angeles, that we will go to hell for." "He loved LAPD." "He loved his officers." "And there were times that I believe that his love for his officers... and the law enforcement mission... conflicted." "O.J. Simpson and Elizabeth Montgomery are two police detectives who have a problem." "They're falling in love, and it's breaking all the rules." "But you are a married man, and your conduct is supposed to be exemplary." "Would it make any difference if I was a white cop?" "It's a bittersweet story of two people caught between their emotions and their actions in "A Killing Affair"." "Sunday at 3:00 on channel 9." "Life for a black person... in a way, unfortunately, is different than for white people." "And especially for black people who attain great success." "Is there pressure from your community for you to really walk the straight and narrow?" "I know that you are currently dating a white woman." "I wouldn't be asking this question if we were living in different times, but we aren't, and there seems to be... this sort of dichotomy here." "How do you answer it?" "Well, I rebel against images because... then, um... you know, people tend to expect things from you." "I" " I think I created an image by being me." "When I get into these arguments with... people of the bla-- people of my community, the black community," "I say, "Hey, I-- I've accepted Jesus Christ"" "and, uh, I try to do unto others as, uh... you know, I would have them do unto me." "And after that, hey, my life is mine." "And I..." "I do what is morally right and acceptable to me." "I am not prejudiced in any form." "Obviously, I got a white girlfriend." "[ Laughs ]" "I admired his celebrity status." "We thought he had accomplished quite a bit." "To move from an athlete... to... a position of celebrity, and loved by all the people, not just black folk." "[ Gospel singing ]" "I invited O.J. here, early on in the '80s." "He didn't come as often as I thought he should." "But he did come to church." "I think he was very in tune with... who his mother wanted him to be." "She wanted him to be honest, to be religious." "Just to rise above a lot of the things that he saw growing up." "His mother was a staunch Christian." "And she had embedded within him the tenets of Jesus Christ." "I would talk to him about having achieved money and fame." "But all that came from God." "And there are times when you should... respond to how good God has been to you." "Now, some days, depending on his mood, he would agree." "But he was not out there... publicly... fighting for African-Americans." "I think each person who is in the limelight has an obligation... to make things better for the last, the lost, the least, the left out, and the looked over." "And I thought he should have done more." "If we, as Black people, do not take on the responsibility... to do something for ourselves, we really should be scorned in the eyes of the world." "In my circles, there were not a lot of people who were preoccupying themselves with getting to O.J." "or believing that O.J. could be turned around, or someday was gonna come to his senses and embrace all of the things that have the values that we had, in terms of really, really doing something demonstrative for the Black community." "O.J. was just one of those things that you just kind of dismissed, "Oh, that brother's a lost cause."" "His voice was mute... on any issues that related to Black people and our salvation, police brutality, all of those things." "He was just a non-entity." "[ Applause ]" "I don't know that he felt that he was sacrificing what other people thought he was." "But you're sacrificing who you are... who you are raised to be." "How does one sustain that over that period of time?" "How does one bend one's soul to that degree of denial?" "[ Sirens wailing ]" "It's easy to tell while laid out on the ground, while he's bleeding to death." "Is that what makes you happy?" "[ Indistinct chatter ]" "Did you hear?" "Did you see what was going on?" "Did he see everything happening in South Central?" "Yeah." "Did he want to take that home with him?" "Did he want that to be who he was?" "Who he identified with?" "No." "He stayed in Brentwood." "When you live in South L.A.," "I mean you live here, this is where you breath, this is where you occupy your space," "I'm not sure if, you know, a lot of people even know where Brentwood is." "That's just the reality... of Black America and White America." "Two totally... separate worlds." "[ Orchestra playing ]" "He's somebody who learned how to live with, be totally accepted by a white world." "[ Orchestra continues playing ]" "Underneath that, he learned all of the indignities of the Black world." "Although it's impossible to believe that he's that brilliant an actor." "I think he was always kind of on when he was in a White world, and he weren't when he was in a Black world." "Which makes him the right soul for Coalhouse Walker." "He very much wanted to be cast in E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime"." "And he worked hard on trying to get that part." "He saw the part as being something that he could go into a new dimension as an actor." "Let's go to your acting career for a moment." "Why did you want the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr.?" "Well, first of all, it, um... it was the only part thus far that I've ever actively went after and didn't get." "So, I'd consider it my only failure in film." "[ Laughs ] Thus far." "[ Birds chirping ]" "Good afternoon." "I wonder if you might be able to help me." "Uh..." "Uh... what do you want?" "Well, I'm looking for a young woman of color called Sarah." "Uh... who are you?" "Oh, I'm sorry." "My name is Coalhouse Walker Jr." "When I read the book, I could identify with this guy... so much" " He was a Black man in-- at a time when you were supposed to know you were Black." "You were supposed to know you had a place." "Would you please wait around the back?" "I was raised in the sports world where you're only, uh, judged by your abilities... and, uh, you know, what you have to give." "[ Playing piano ]" "Who is Coalhouse?" "Well, he's a guy who created himself." "And destroyed himself..." "ultimately." "[ Angry chatter ]" "He was a guy among other things who was very prideful and suffered." "Suffered for his pride." "Mr. Walker, let me give you some advice." "You spend the money on your wedding." "Build yourself a home and a family where you can find some comfort." "And just forget that some damn white man caused you offence." "I can understand exactly what he felt." "When he walked in a room, he gave no credence to the fact he was Black and he wasn't supposed to say things or be treated any differently." "And, uh..." "Uh.. that's the way I've tried to look at my life." "So, I felt I was the right person for that role." "I felt that I was today's Coalhouse Walker." ""Just forget it"?" "Is that it?" "I've spent my whole life forgetting." "You're a young man." "You better start learning now." "Learning what?" "How to be a nigger?" "You know, there was some tragedy in your life... in the last 10 years." "You lost a child." "I wanna talk about how it changed you." "The baby drowned in a swimming pool." "On Rockingham, there." "He was away." "You know, he was always gone." "Four, set!" "I don't know how much it changed me." "I've always tried to live my life to the fullest." "And, uh..." "I used to be so busy." "And I was on the road so much, that in a sense it partially cost me a marriage." "When I lost my daughter..." "I was gone." "When my first daughter was born, I was gone." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "When you lose a child, it's very hard." "Three weeks before Aaren drowned, my son drowned... in a pool, that Boys Club in San Leandro, California." "So, the tragedy affected us both." "It still affects me." "So, I know-- how it affects him." "He didn't bring it up, and we didn't talk much about it." "Hey, O.J.!" "I think it's the single most horrible thing in the world." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "I think what you learn in the streets, is how to bury things." "And he blamed Marguerite." "He got rid of that memory when he got rid of that wife." "He just compartmentalized it." "And got 'em out." "If anything, I made up my mind that I would be around." "And, uh... it's nice to be loved by everybody." "But there's some people that love you a little more." "So, I guess if anything," "I" " I just want to be a little more loving and be there a little more to the people that have, uh, have chosen to share their lives with me." "And now by the... authority committed unto me as a minister in the church of Jesus Christ and according to the laws in the State of California, it gives me great delight, O.J. and Nicole, to pronounce you husband and wife." "[ Applause ]" "[ "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" plays ]" "We love "Juice" like my brother." "I'm thrilled he's my partner, and we're just... totally knocked out that he finally took the step..." "[ "Jump (For My Love)" plays ]" "They had a great wedding." "Of course, they had amazing music." "And it was all, you know, Christal champagne, all you could drink." "Where are the drugs?" "No, I'm just kidding." "It was a great party." "And they made a really strong, gorgeous couple." "I just felt that they were the ideal couple." "Because it seems like to me, from what I saw, it seemed like they just had so much fun all the time." "I'm married!" "I don't believe it!" "[ Laughing ]" "I'm married!" "I really don't believe it." "[ Laughing ]" "Nicole was funny, and she was fun to be around." "She was a very good friend." "When Nicole came into my life at... what for any athlete is very difficult time, it was at the end of my career," "I was also going through a divorce at the time and, uh..." "All my life, I wanted to be a father." "I never really thought about being a husband." "And I thought I had given up... the opportunity to watch my kids grow until you came into my life and made this house a home, brought my kids in." "You brought love into my house." "[ Cheering ]" "He was really proud of her." "And she had definitely taken over." "I mean, she was running the show at Rockingham." "Rockingham, it was his Graceland." "It was all of their Graceland." "We never said, "I'll meet you at O.J.'s house."" "It was always, "I'll see you at Rockingham."" "It was what brought all of us together." "It was a special place." "I mean, you never knew who was gonna be there." "He gravitated toward celebrities." "In any field." "And that's the glue that bonded him to Los Angeles, and also made Rockingham that castle." "You'd have the greatest athletes in the world show up." "The most interesting politicians, you know?" "The entertainment world." "And everybody always had a wonderful time because it was "The Juice"." "I've always had a large what I call "family"..." "A large circle of friends, and you need 'em more, I guess, in your life." "At my house, I mean, I have to be successful to pay for the soft drinks and the beer that the guys drink at the house on the weekends." "He flew a flag at Rockingham every day." "He loved America." "He loved the red, white, and blue." "He loved that feeling that you get, you know, on the Fourth of July, and see jets fly over." "During the Olympics, when he carried the torch." "That was a big thing to him." "That was one of the things we talked about for years after." "How perfect the world was then." "I want to say to, uh... the Hall of Fame members here," "I mean, as a kid, I watched these guys and, well, I must have done something good or something right to be here, and I just want you to know that I'll never let you guys down, man." "I'll live up to the honor of being in this Hall and being on your team." "[ Applause ]" "Thank you very much." "[ Applause ]" "The most unique aspect of O.J. Simpson is that you're one of the few people who've not only been successful in athletics, but that success has really carried over to life after football." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "Well, it's real exciting for me to be back here." "You know, on the field where I had so many thrills, and to experience these Buffalo Bills fans, and, believe me, Howard, they're in rare form tonight." "Well, he certainly tried to be a commentator." "Peyton following Matt Suhey." "It's a testament to walk-- Walter's conditioning." "This guy works out harder than anybody in..." "He very much was involved in corporate America and being on boards." "I think he was trying, very intelligently, to parley his fame into wealth." "By the '80s, O.J. really was a businessman." "His new friends were all super wealthy, powerful white men." "And I think really the reason he surrounded himself with all these big, successful entrepreneurs is because he saw himself as one, too." "I've always been, sort of, an inquisitive person." "And I have friends who do a lot of different things." "And I've made it a point to find out what the people around me were doing." "He called me a lot." ""Now, Frank, I have this opportunity for HoneyBaked Hams."" "Or "Frank, this friend of mine is doing some storage things in California."" "I didn't always know those answers." "But I guess I enjoyed the fact that he trusted me enough to do that." "I introduced him to the business world." "I took him places... where I think very few Black men had ever been." "The Pine Valley Golf Club." "The number one club in America." "I got him into Arcola." "He was the first black member of the club." "Oh, yeah, by a long shot." "This one time, he brought Sidney Poitier." "And, of course, the whole club was circling around the two of them." "Even the bigots thought that was terrific." "They loved him." "Because he just fit in." "He could schmooze around and get ingratiated, 'cause he was "The Juice"." "Street-smart, this man was an Einstein." "He could cunningly and calculatingly figure out exactly what these white people were thinking about, but he was also that way with Black people." "It was almost magnetic, they were just drawn to it." "And I don't care who was there, when he got to the room, it was, "The Juice is here."" "Here's the man whose smile is more dazzling than all his golden awards." "Sportsman, actor, all around wonderful" "Mr. O.J. Simpson!" "[ Applause ]" "I always told him he had delusions of grandeur." "He thought he could do certain things in business that he wasn't capable of." "AUDIENCE:" "Three!" "One day he was gonna run Paramount or 20th Century," "Warner Brothers..." "Now, I mean, he believed things like that." "Ladies and gentlemen, another winning performance from Mr. O.J. Simpson!" "There's something deep-seated... that I think a lot of people like myself have to face up to about what created this complex character." "It wasn't just him, it was part society." "[ The Naked Gun theme plays ] [ Siren wailing ]" "We were looking for a celebrity... and I" " I don't think we wanted an all-white cast anymore, as we did for the Police Squad TV show." "This was something that, you know, kinda looked better... for us." "He was still in the public eye, but yet he was economical, because I don't think he was in demand for movies." "Police!" "Throw down your guns!" "O.J. was fine for Naked Gun." "There was nobody better." "[ Gunfire ]" "[ Groans ]" "[ Sizzles ]" "Ahh!" "Oh, no!" "Naked Gun surprised me" "[ Screams ]" "How funny he was." "He's a funny man." "I mean, he was always a very funny man." "And he was always a selflessly funny man." "Nordberg!" "Hiya, buddy!" "Hey!" "The doc says I should be on my feet and as good as new in a week!" "And back on the force." "Nordberg, that's wonderful!" "Whoa!" "Oh, Frank!" "Everyone should have a friend like you!" "[ Nordberg screams ]" "[ "I'm Into Something Good" plays]" "I used to take a lot of cops over to O.J.'s house, and I would never tell them who we were going to meet." "And I just loved looking at the expression on my partner's face when they looked and saw O.J. opening the door, and it was just like looking at" "You know, 'cause some of these guys, you know, macho cops." ""Hey," you know, "I'm LAPD"." "And you could see them melt like little kids around this guy." "Everybody loved O.J. Simpson, all the cops." "If you asked him for an autograph, you asked him for whatever," "I mean, he was just really, like, your best friend." "Now, let's take a look at today's black culture in the city of Los Angeles." "The most important point that should be considered in a law-enforcement setting involving blacks is the matter of respect." "Everyone should be treated in a respectful manner." "Okay, 4-23, you see that, uh, male black." "He's walking on the north side of the street there on your right side." "Slow down." "That's one of the suspects there." "[ Police radio chatter ]" "People who have been abused by the police have no regard for them." "They don't believe that the police comes to protect them, comes to serve them." "That would be an unfortunate error in judgment for you to conclude that all persons of a particular group are similar to the few you have contact while you are working." "We're sorry if, you know, it's our job too." "that-- that we've had to do this." "We just can't let you go." "Look how I look." "I'm light, bright, but damn sure not white." "Okay?" "But the reality is, when I'm stopped by the police, you know, they treat me like a nigger." "Okay, let's roll, and let's be careful out there." "In 1978, Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates apologized after saying some Hispanic officers don't advance in the ranks because they are, quote, "lazy", and now an NAACP official is calling a comment by Chief Gates," "quote, "so horrendous that it's laughable."" "It all started when he first defended controversial choke holds." "A number of African-American suspects had died after being subjected to a choke hold, and Gates was asked about it, and he said the problem was that they didn't respond the same as normal people." "The chief needs some time off to remove his foot from his mouth and LAPD's choke hold from the necks of black people." "When I started covering the police department, you could feel the residue of that comment." "In fact, police officers used to refer to the cars, which normally people would call black-and-whites, they called them "black-and-normals"." "And they would call them that in front of a reporter, by the way." "So it's safe to say that it was a sort of easy, call it racial insensitivity, call it racism, within the department." "I moved to LA in 1988." "I had a really good friend who lived there, and she said," ""I have to give you the black man's guide to survival in LA." "Whatever you do, don't fuck with LAPD."" "[ Police dispatch chatter]" "In Los Angeles it was a day filled with tension in many communities, because of the current wave of gang warfare." "I feel like a prisoner on the streets." "This city has vowed to stop gang violence, but as police hunt the people responsible, they must follow a trail of bodies." "We're gonna do whatever's necessary, and I told my people we're gonna wage a war." "Operation Hammer, that was the belief that we overwhelm the community with warrants where we believe that we had violent criminals, we could rid the problem." "Ladies, down on the ground!" "Put your hands down, kneel over there!" "Over the past week or so, Chief Gates, how many arrests have you made?" "Well, in the last month we've made, uh, about 3,000 arrests." "Uh, just in the last weekend we made, uh, 1,400." "You just have a culture of officers who felt that, uh, the only way the world will survive is if we neutralize these individuals as soon as possible." "Hands down, man." "And in the process of doing that, they debased and demeaned the community." "You understand me?" "There was no conversation with the community about" ""How should we deal with this?"" "It was just hammer, hammer, hammer." "We have a war." "We are going to be successful." "Whatever it takes, we will do it." "I'd just put the kids into bed, and the next thing I know, they just came in with guns and they were saying, "Get down", and they grabbed me by the back of my head," "and he threw me on the floor, then they kicked me, and they hit me on my back, and they said, "Get down, bitch."" "And then the kids were just hollering' and screamin'." "And the next thing I know they were just tearing the place up." "1988, 39th and Dalton." "Not the best police practices." "Not the best way to manage a, uh-- a warrant service." "Everything was destroyed as police batted and rammed their way from room to room searching for drugs." "Much of what they found were screaming mothers and children." "This is my bedroom over here, but they even broke all the mirrors and stuff out of the bed." "They went in and literally destroyed the apartment where supposedly a lot of drug activity was going on." "All this resulted in three quarters of an ounce of rock cocaine seized along with six ounces of pot." "You wouldn't go to Beverly Hills and do that, even if you thought there was a-- a mafia hangout." "Even if you thought it was legitimate." "I called my insurance, and I told them what happened." "He said he had never heard of the police doing this." "When you don't live in the community, you don't think of 'em as human." "In my wildest dreams, would have never thought the police of the city of Los Angeles would treat someone that way." "They started kicking me." "What they tell ya?" "They didn't tell me nothin', they started kicking me and hitting me on my ribs and stuff." "Chief Gates, we're proud of you, We're proud to wear the 'PD blue." "[ Applause ]" "You'd go to the power of LAPD back then." "They pretty much could do what they wanted to do." "Yeah." "Hi, I'm O.J. Simpson, and this season on HBO," "I'm gonna be high-stepping right into your living room." "All right, we'll do it again." "When O.J. was at SC, in my generation you didn't have the jerseys you could go buy, so I would take my T-shirts and write "Simpson", and I'd put, you know, like, you know, his number, 32, and, "Okay, I'm O.J."" "Hi, I'm O.J. Simpson, and this season on HBO," "I'm gonna be high-stepping right into your living room." "I just thought, "One day, I wanna meet this guy."" "Okay, what's the next one?" "And it was through Marcus Allen." "Follow me through Training Camp, and I guarantee that I'll" "Hey, Juice, I did hear my name." "Hey, man, this is my spot, Marcus." "Well, I've got the ball now." "I'd been marketing Marcus for a few years." "And I told him, uh," ""O.J. ever needs a manager, let me know."" "Training Camp is a time to show what you can do." "It's a time to show off your skills." "You can prove yourself as a man." "Blah, blah, blah." "I did public appearances, endorsements," "TV commercials..." "[ Clears throat ] ...autograph signings, basically everything encompassing his image." "This week in Training Camp..." "This week in Training Camp..." "This week in Training Camp..." "No." "The big thing that has always been in everybody's head is image." "Image is everything." "Never do anything that is going to harm his image." "Thank you guys." "I remember he had a-- a little hundred-yard dash with Marcus Allen one day." "And he had bad knees, O.J., from all the running." "And he beat fuckin' Marcus." "I couldn't believe it." "It's something inside of him." "He wanted to win, no matter what it took." "Chopping through that swing." "And look out." "[ Applause ]" "When he first started playing golf, he violated every rule." "Okay." "He's gotta work on his balance a little bit." "I played with O.J. and this other friend," "Little Joe Kolkowitz." "O.J. had the worst form of anybody on this planet when he swung a golf club." "One day, on the first tee, he hits this big drive, and it hooks into the trees, heavy stuff." "So we go down the fairway, we're waiting and waiting 'til Joe goes after him." "All of a sudden, he finds his ball after a place where we probably went over." "He sees the ball sitting on a tee, and he says to O.J.," ""You can't do this shit, man."" "I go, "Juice, come on."" ""Do you know what the odds of the ball landing on a tee in this area--?"" "He totally was not going to confess to the whole thing." "He definitely cheated." "Yes." "Yes." "What he'd do, he had a ball in his pants, and he'd drop it out and then," ""Hey, you guys, come on over here."" "You know, "Here's my ball."" "And he did that to the point where finally a bunch of guys got together, and they hired a caddy." "We called it The Juice Patrol." "And so he'd follow O.J. around in another cart," "[ Laughs ] so he wouldn't cheat." "It was funny." "It was, you know, it was like you couldn't get mad." "It was very hard to get mad at him." "One of the things you pride yourself in in being a golfer is you don't cheat," "but people made a joke out of it, because they so badly wanted him to understand the rules and regulations of this part of society that didn't tolerate that type of behavior." "And yet he had that amazing charm that you'd somehow let him get away with certain things." "[ Applause ]" "Juice!" "Juice!" "Juice!" "Juice!" "Touchdown!" "Whenever you went somewhere with him, like, doors would just open, and, you know, people would pick up checks." "I'd say to him, "Hey, Juice, how are we going to get in..." "somewhere?" "We don't have any tickets."" "He would go like this" "He" " That's his ticket." "I think he became entitled." "I certainly felt bedazzled by O.J. and Nicole and their lifestyle, and I was very charmed by him," "but I always did sense that part of it was not sincere." "The other side is my better side, I think." "Turn the other side for me." "And I did feel that he took advantage of that." "And if you allowed him to, I think he would, uh, use you." "All right, we're set here." "My kissable lips, ooh." "While he was married, his integrity was" "I mean, uh... not as I would have it." "I will put it that way." "He was an incorrigible womanizer." "He just never stopped." "He cornered me a couple times and tried to make, uh, sexual, you know, advance and, you know, I kind of pushed him off." "I think O.J. felt entitled to anything O.J. wanted, and I think that he really needed that adulation from other women." "She knew he had affairs, and it drove her crazy." "Most of their big fights were about his affairs with other women." "He went out of his way to almost rub it in her face." "He'd be in Las Vegas at a show and be holding hands with another woman." "She would be watching TV, and, I mean," "I don't know how she put up with it." "He was pretty darn brazen." "I think he even blamed his affair with Tawny Kitaen on the fact that Nicole got fat when she got pregnant." "And he didn't wanna have sex with her." "Something as superficial and cold as that." "♪ ...on the hammock, take a little swing. ♪" "Look!" "See the trees?" "I told him, "Man, you're breaking the laws of God, and nobody does it with immunity." "You're gonna pay for it, man." "One day everybody's gonna know everything that you've done, man."" "[ Police siren ]" "When you hear a call come out, and the 911 operator puts out on the call that she can hear the woman being beaten in the background," "that-- that's serious." "When I got there," "I saw an electronic buzzer system, so I pushed the button." "Almost simultaneously, a tall, female blonde came running out of the bushes." "She's wearing nothin' but a bra and sweatpants, covered in mud." "And she kept yelling," ""He's gonna kill me!" "He's gonna kill me!"" "When that gate opened, she ran up and just put her arms around me and clasped on me." "She was so wet and cold that you could feel her shivering to her bone." "And I said, "Well, who's gonna kill you?"" "She said, "O.J."" "She says, "You guys have been up here eight times before." "All you do is talk to him, you never do anything." "He's gonna kill me."" "Her face had already swollen." "She actually had an imprint on one side of her face and her forehead." "So I said, "Do you want him arrested for beating you?"" "She said, "Yes."" "About that time, O.J. Simpson came right up to the fence, and he started yelling," ""I don't want her in my bed anymore." "I got two other women." "I don't want her in my bed anymore."" "He's got a receding hairline, so you can see his forehead, and this vein was popping out, pulsating, and it was right up his forehead." "I told him, "I'm placing you under arrest for beating your wife." "You're gonna have to go get dressed so I can take you to jail."" "He turned around and went back in the house to get dressed." "Suddenly I saw a Bentley pull out of the other driveway." "[ Car tires screech ]" "So I said, "Back up." "He's trying to get away in a car."" "And we backed out of the driveway, and I never caught him with that car." "I never found him." "[ Marching band music ]" "Downtown Los Angeles, little ocean haze." "There is no smog today, everybody's takin' it easy." "Here at the 75th Rose Bowl game, score 7-3." "1989, Trojans were in the Rose Bowl." "I was privileged enough to-- to have sideline passes and that was actually the first time I'd ever been to a Rose Bowl game on the sidelines, 'cause when I was a walk-on at USC," "I never got to play." "[ Crowd cheering ]" "I was just having the time of my life." "All of a sudden, one of O.J.'s really, really good friends came up and tapped me on the shoulder." "He said, "Hey, man, uh, O.J. had a problem last night, you know, and, uh, he really needs to talk to you."" "[ Crowd cheers ]" "[ Referee whistle blows ]" "It's over." "[ Crowd cheers ]" "When I called, he said, "Hey, man, I had a little riff." "Boys had to come out." "Right now I feel like I'm a fugitive."" "And he explained to me that they had an argument, and she got real physical with him, and he had to defend himself and grab her and hold her" "The way he-- he told me the story, I'm thinkin'," ""Hey, man, no big deal." "You know?" "Um, you didn't hit her." "You know, you said she was aggressive, and you were trying to stop her from-- from beating you up." "Um, no big deal."" "And" " And when I got to work the next morning, it was a big deal." "I got a call from downstairs, "Someone wants to talk to you,"" "and there's Nicole in the lobby." ""Hey, Nicole, what's up?"" "You know, she-- she goes, "Did you hear about what happened?"" "I said, "Yeah, I did hear what happened."" "And she told me it wasn't the first time." "Showed me the pictures from the past beatings, and I looked at those pictures and my heart just-- just, like, dropped." "I was like, "Man, this guy is a typical batterer."" "The '89 thing, the way I saw him act in Hawaii that Christmas convinced me that, um, boy, there was something really, really wrong." "He freaked out about Nicole sitting their little son next to a homosexual in a restaurant they were at." "I mean, he just freaked." "And they fought all the way back." "The next day I got a call that, uh, he freaked out on New Year's Eve, and he beat the hell out of her." "Nicole knew that I used to teach domestic violence for the Los Angeles Police Department." "And she asked me," ""O.J.'s dad is gay." "Do you think this is why he beats me?"" "And I was like, "I" " I, you know, I don't know, but a lot of that stuff has to do with their self-esteem."" "O.J. Simpson that night definitely got preferential treatment." "Had that have been anybody else, you or me, we'd have gone to jail." "I did place him under arrest." "I tried my best, but couldn't get to him." "But when you tell someone they're under arrest, they are under arrest." "If he flees, then, he's a fleeing felon." "But the unique thing about O.J. is it was O.J." "Where can he go?" "Where can he hide?" "Where can he run to... on the face of this earth?" "Where can he go?" "[ Police dispatch chatter ]" "[ Police sirens ]" "[ Helicopter blades ]" "Now the story that might never have surfaced if someone hadn't picked up his home video camera." "I can remember that moment like it was yesterday." "I was laying in my bed, and I called out to my wife." "I said, "You gotta come see, you can't believe this."" "How will the police justify this one?" "How will they get out of this one?" "Police say the man, 25-year-old Rodney King, was involved in a high-speed chase, wanted as a parole violator." "The police department says there will be no comment until its investigation is complete." "As yet, no charges have been filed." "This is what happens when you take away a tool that would have ended this in 10 seconds." "Choke hold." "Look how this thing looks." "You can't justify that." "I was the captain at Watts at the time." "Atten-hut." "The next day, we had a training day." "I remember standing in front of all of the troops, and I told them," ""The LAPD will never be the same again."" "Oh, it was devastating, because there's gonna be a belief that if these guys do it, everybody else does it." "Those guys driving down the street in the black-and-white do that." "And that's just not the case." "But that visual image, folks remember that, and they will take it to their grave." "That home video showing a black motorist being beaten by a white Los Angeles policeman has triggered investigations now by the FBI, the district attorney there, and the police department itself." "The media didn't give LAPD a break on this one." "They showed that tape over and over and over." "I mean, it wasn't just in Los Angeles." "It was all over the world." "[ French-language newscast ]" "I was embarrassed for Los Angeles." "The real significance wasn't what you saw on the tape." "That tape became exhibit one for every mishandled abuse and excessive force incident that anyone had ever experienced." "This is an aberration." "This is something that should never have happened." "We had in place all of the procedures that would keep it from happening." "Those procedures fell down because of human error." "And we will deal with that human error." "I believe things like that do happen from time to time, but they are anomalies." "That's not what happens all day, every day in the thousands of contacts that occur." "I don't believe it." "I'll never believe it." "Daryl Gates started out saying it was an aberration." "And we say, "Darryl, don't you remember Eulia Love?"" "[ Cheering ]" "I think the thing that's most shocking about the King incident isn't even what happens to King." "It's the fact that all those officers go back to their police divisions that night, none of them knowing that a video tape exists." "They all file their reports and not one of 'em says, in any document, that they saw anything go wrong." "That suggests to me a culture in which this wasn't perceived as something wrong." "In Los Angeles today, four men were arrested, photographed, and fingerprinted." "They were policemen, charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the beating of a black motorist." "Named in the indictment:" "officers Laurence Powell, Ted Briseno and Timothy Wind and their supervising sergeant, Stacey Koon." "The FBI will investigate whether the federal civil rights of the victim, Rodney King, have been violated." "A story is not a story unless there's conflict." "Do you really wanna say this is a felon speeding on the freeway under the influence of a hallucinogenic and/or alcohol, or do you wanna say he's a "motorist", and he was stopped by these racist cops?" "How do you know these cops are racist?" "They are not racist." "The furor is only growing with the revelations of police communications over their in-car computer terminals." "An earlier message from the Powell-Wind unit referred to a previous call as "`right out of Gorillas in the Mist."" "Has there been times that we've been brutal, uh, used excessive force?" "Absolutely." "The racist part is really tough to choke down for me." "During my 38 years there, I didn't see it." "Civil rights organizations say the Los Angeles police department has a history of brutality and misconduct that goes back a quarter of a century, including one incident that sparked the Watts riots." "We want effective law-enforcement in the city of Los Angeles." "You take an oath to protect and serve, but when you come to the black community, all you do is abuse!" "Hey, hey!" "Ho, ho!" "You can only take so many shots publicly before your reputation is so soiled that it can be manipulated over and over again." "That will always be included in the argument to demonstrate how brutal and insensitive and racist the LAPD is." "It's like you can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again." "We're outraged, we're disgusted, and let's close this one with," "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "It comes to Latasha Harlins, coming to the counter with what she was going to buy in one hand, money in the other." "Altercation," "walks away, is shot in the back of the head." "Latasha Harlins really hit home, because my daughter was the same age as Latasha Harlins." "Rodney King didn't touch me as much as Latasha Harlins, because this girl was killed." "She was a little teenage girl buying some orange juice." "Mm-mm." "That-- that could've been my child." "Up until Saturday morning," "Soon Ja Du was a Korean grocer in Los Angeles." "Now she's an alleged criminal, facing a first-degree murder charge." "Well, at this time, she's looking at a maximum of 30 years to life." "According to witnesses and a security camera video tape," "Harlins never tried to steal the juice." "Instead, investigators say Du angrily confronted the girl and then shot her with a .38 caliber handgun." "I hope and I know that justice will serve itself, and she will get what she deserved." "Soon Ja Du had no respect for that young woman." "The way they beat Rodney King, okay?" "Her shooting Latasha Harlins..." "It's the same people, okay, that are being victimized." "The recommendation of the people was maximum state prison." "I think that the death of Latasha deserved that." "The court decided otherwise." "Mrs. Du is placed on formal probation for five years on the following terms and conditions." "Mrs. Du is to perform 400 hours of community service." "Get the cameras off!" "No cameras!" "Get the camera out of my face!" "The judge called for peace." "She said" "How can you have peace when--?" "When this is going on?" "What?" "This woman killed a child." "She killed a child and not getting any jail time?" "I" " I" " I haven't gotten over that, really." "Wake up, Los Angeles!" "Wake up!" "Let not her blood be in vain!" "Latasha was killed, our family was killed." "Yeah!" "That's right!" "Racism is not the Korean killing her, racism is the courts system..." "That's right!" "...that allows her to kill her." "Karlin must go!" "Karlin must go!" "Chanting "Karlin must go", angry protesters stormed through security checkpoints at the courthouse in Compton." "[ Overlapping angry yelling ]" "They are still outraged over Judge Joyce Karlin's decision not to send Latasha Harlins' killer to jail." "They are willing to go to jail to get their point across." "In the community, you go to jail for selling crack for 20 years, 20 and 30 years." "How you gonna kill somebody and get probation?" "What kind of sense does that make?" "What kind of justice is that?" "39th and Dalton," "then Rodney King, then Latasha Harlins." "Three defining issues in different ways, but the tension in the environment and the disrespect shown to Black life was the theme." "ESPN presents..." "Sports Look with the personalities and cover stories making news in the world of sport." "Now, here's your host, Roy Firestone." "When you live your life so publicly and, uh, really almost with such ease, uh, it's hard to believe that there could ever be any rocky time." "The reason I'm bringing that to light now is not to dredge it up again, but more or less talk about how things can get distorted to such a point that you are portrayed as the bad guy." "Um, New Year's Eve, you had a little bit too much to drink." "There was some" "Uh, you know, that's" "You know, actually, you know, my wife and I have been together for 12 years and it really-- when I look at it, it wasn't really that big of a fight, it's just that because of, uh, it being New Year's Eve" "Right." "because it's three o'clock in the mornin', just finished a big party, uh, it got a little verb-- it-- it got a little loud." "[ Laughs ]" "Here's-- here's my point, the point I'm making, Juice" "Yeah." "is that it got to such a point that you were portrayed in the press for a while there like a wife beater." "Yeah, well, and that bothered me." "Obviously, it bothered my whole family." "I mean, uh, you know, the day after this was over, you know, we looked at, say-- you know, we had a fight, we were both guilty." "No one was hurt, was no big deal, and we got on with our life." "I had always suspected that they had violent fights." "The day of my wedding I found out that Nicole and O.J." "were not going to be attending... and he said it was because" "Nicole was having very bad cramps from her period." "I thought it was a lie." "It was always Nicole's fault." "I mean, even the '89 thing." "When I cornered him sitting on a golf cart," "I listened for nine holes, everything that she did wrong to create what had happened." ""You think that she's bruised up, you should have seen my face,"" "you know, the-- the whole pity thing that he always went through." "I think anybody that knew them..." "it was over." "Then it was a matter of when would Nicole have the fortitude to just completely walk away." "She said, "Ron, if it wasn't for the kids, I'd be out of here."" "And then I get a call from O.J." "He says, "You gotta help me here." "You-- you gotta help save this marriage." "You gotta talk to Nicole, tell her I'll never do it again."" "I saw her start to soften, because by this time," "O.J. is just doing everything with the kids." "And they're just having a great time, he's taking them here, he's taking them there." "She's looking at me goin'," ""Hey, Ron, he's really changing." "He's really changing."" "When it turned toward the domestic violence, that was one that nobody wanted to hear." "The police didn't wanna hear it, most certainly Hertz didn't wanna hear it," "NBC didn't wanna hear it." "Nobody wanted to deal with that." "Back to you, Bob." "[ Laughing ]" "When we heard that, I thought that was it." "That's-- it's over." "You know who called me to tell me that it was a false arrest?" "Nicole." "Nicole called me and said," ""Frank, it didn't happen that way."" "They'd had a terrible argument, but he wasn't abusive." "They just overreacted." "I certainly understand how she got involved with him, and I could understand how hard it would be to leave that." "There was a lot to leave." "Especially if it was to go back to your parents' house in Laguna Beach and start over." "O.J. was the income producer for the family." "For not only just Nicole and O.J." "but for Nicole's father, and mother, sisters..." "He was the-- the money man." "Nicole told me that she felt her family would side with O.J." "And that-- and that disturbed her a great deal." "Nicole was like the trophy to him." "You know, something that-- that he possessed, that he wanted control of, you know?" "And "You better do what I say," but, you know," ""You better go along with this program."" "I" " I totally believe he was concerned about his image." "What kind of public reaction did you get, and what kind of corporate reaction did you get, Juice?" "Surprisingly, so supportive it was unbelievable, you know?" "So supportive, you know?" "Uh, most of the people that I work with know us real well, so they can see first-hand that there was, uh, you know, that, hey, our relationship was as strong as-- not only as it's ever been, but as strong as any body's I know." "So nobody dropped you from any contracts?" "No." "No." "No." "See, the one thing that-- another thing people don't realize about O.J." "is he is extremely, uh, well-involved in the business community." "And he doesn't wanna do this, 'cause it's embarrassing to him, but he is one of the owners of HoneyBaked Hams, uh, Ramada Inns, a couple of Ramada Inns, three Ramada Inns," "very involved, of course, with Hertz." "And when something like this happens, it takes a toll, it takes a bite out of it, but, you know, it boun-- you bounce back from something like this." "Once they really, really got back together, you know, I mean, we were still friends, you know," "I still know the guy and everything, but, you know, he kinda had that, uh, attitude," ""I'm back." "I knew I'd be back."" "You know, "Hey..." "Don't worry about it."" "You know, "Everything's fine."" "This is where O.J. Simpson performed community service as part of his sentence for beating his wife, Nicole." "For part of his punishment, Simpson went golfing." "He spent his 120 hours of community service organizing a celebrity tournament." "Prosecutors in the case say they wanted him to go to jail." "Can you imagine if every time he did something violent like that that a report would've been made?" "When I got to the station, I checked the computer, there would have been eight previous domestic incident reports on file." "Then I would have put that in my report and sent it on to the prosecutor, that most likely that would have been filed as a felony." "Because it would have shown that a slap on the hand is not going to cure this from happening again." "And that's why I hung onto the report." "I don't have a garage full of reports," "I have one report, one, that was O.J. Simpson's report because I thought that the case might be mishandled, and I needed proof that it actually happened," "and I thought he was gonna kill her." "A controversial case involving four Los Angeles police officers goes to court today." "The officers face charges stemming from the videotaped beating of a motorist." "The case has already raised accusations of officially-sanctioned racism and brutality." "At issue is the use of force." "The question is whether their force was justified by King's behavior before the camera rolled." "I don't think that that should have been prosecuted." "Those officers had about two seconds to make up their mind to do something, and they did what they thought was right at the time." "When is too much?" "When is not enough?" "Should they go to trial?" "Definitely not." "On film, what you see was illegal." "There had to be a prosecution, and if there isn't a legitimate reason for this, there's jail time involved with this one." "I was fairly new to LA, so I'm thinkin'," ""Hey, we got 'em-- we got 'em cold." "This time we'll get justice."" "And there were people who had lived in those communities a long time, and they were saying," ""Well, you know, maybe." "I hope so." "But it's not a done deal."" "In a brand-new courthouse in a distant LA suburb called Simi Valley, the city's drama is putting a little town on the map." "The defense had the trial moved from Los Angeles county to this bedroom suburb." "This area is notably more white and conservative than LA." "It was a horrible decision." "It was the worst possible decision." "And a lot of LAPD officers live in Simi Valley." "The idea is that you get a representative cross-section of the community, that's what the sixth amendment talks about, and that people come in with different life experiences, because you really do need the people to come from different walks of life" "so that you get a complete understanding of the testimony." "Completely in fear for my life, scared to death that if this guy got back up, he was gonna take my gun away from me." "Cases involving charges against police officers are rarely slam dunks." "Even when they're on videotape." "Do you believe that the actions of your officers up to this point were having any effect on Mr. King?" "None at all." "This was a managed and controlled use of force." "It followed the policies and procedures of Los Angeles Police Department and the training." "Now, as the defense presents its case, civil rights lawyers like Johnnie Cochran worry that convictions are far from certain, because the prosecutors seem to lack experience dealing with cops." "Somebody with some experience has to stand up and say," ""Look, you can't get away with this." "This isn't right, and we're not gonna let it happen."" "The prosecution's strategy seems to be to let the violence of the videotape speak for itself." "But nobody is certain anymore what that tape is saying to the jury." "I had been telling my people at Time Magazine," ""There's something going on." "We need to pay attention." "There's a story here beyond this trial."" "I just sensed there was this unrest." "The day started like any other day, but it really wasn't." "We were waiting for the verdict to be handed down in the trial of the four white police officers that were charged with beating Rodney King." "Sergeant Koon, how are you feeling?" "No comment." "I got up that morning and I said," ""I gotta go out there and see what's going on."" "So I got on the freeway and started looking for Simi Valley." "It's a all-white town." "I only saw white people out there that day, and they wasn't that kind to me when I was asking for direction." "I wanted to be there to witness it, and I guess I thought that my being there was gonna change something." "Title of accordant cause:" "we the jury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant," "Laurence M. Powell not guilty of" "[ Gasps, shocked reactions ]" "[ Bleeped cursing ]" "Man, you got to be kiddin'." "We the jury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant Theodore J. Briseno not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury with a deadly weapon." "This 29th day of April, 1992, signed by the court." "Title of accordant cause:" "we the jury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Timothy E. Wind, not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury with a deadly weapon." "I was sitting in the bureau the day of the verdict, with all of my white colleagues and friends." "We the jury" "And every time they said, "Not guilty"..." "the defendant, Stacey C. Koon, not guilty-- ...what I heard was, "Fuck niggers." "Not guilty." "Fuck niggers."" "No justice!" "No peace!" "No justice!" "No peace!" "I was at Parker Center when the acquittals were announced." "And I recall some high-fives and some fist-pumping in the air, and, I mean, there were clearly some people who felt that the public misunderstood them, that the media misunderstood them, and that the jury got it right." "Well, first, all your reaction to what has happened." "Very happy." "[ Chuckles ]" "[ Angry shouting ]" "I'm glad the LAPD are out there protecting me" "I wanted to believe that the system would work for black people in general, even though I knew often it doesn't, but this time, it should work." "And it didn't." "And all I felt like," "I just wanted to smack somebody white." "You're guilty!" "Your skin color determines what degree of justice you have these days." "I don't think the community's gonna take this lying down." "I don't think this is gonna be good." "No justice in America, not for the blacks!" "The justice is for the other man, not for the brother man!" "Pastor, your reaction after that first verdict was read?" "Our reaction was almost universal, utter pain." "Justice!" "Justice!" "Rodney King did not have a choirboy's record, but Rodney King had the flesh and blood of decency and humanity in his heart." "What they were beating is every Black person in America." "Don't lay down for this shit!" "We had an understanding that the night of the verdict we would assemble at First AME Church." "We'd been meeting with the mayor to get ready." "I said Beverly Hills, 'cause this is some fucked-up shit that happened, man." "This is history..." "We're going to Westwood..." "Brentwood, Whitewood." "All that." "We were gonna send out groups of young men to walk the streets and keep everything in order." "[ Police sirens ]" "I had spent weeks talking to Black clergy, gang members, and they were very upfront about what they believed would happen." ""Yeah, there's gonna be violence."" "So we had everything prepared." "We had the copter fully fueled." "It seems like the only people that didn't know that there would be a riot was the news media and the LAPD." "You're looking at a live picture here at Normandie and Florence." "There has been a mini-riot at this location." "There's now been a tactical alert." "Officers have been ordered to stay out of this general area." "We're gonna try to get you more information on that." "Even before the verdict," "Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates was criticized for preparing for unrest in the event four of his officers were acquitted." "But when the rioting began, where were the police and firefighters?" "[ Angry shouting ]" "My most striking memory is of members of the police commission desperately trying to find Gates." "Which is just shocking, if you think about it in retrospect, that the verdicts in the Rodney King case were coming down and the chief was not at Parker Center." "Gates had driven to this house in ritzy Brentwood to campaign against a police reform initiative." "Fighting police reform, that's what he was doing." "He abandoned his post and left his troops in a shameful state." "[ Angry shouting ]" "The LAPD response was tepid." "All of the media gets on the police department, the people are screaming," ""We have an occupying force."" "Well, gee, we don't wanna look like an occupying force, so maybe we'll just sit here until it blows over." "That type of crap goes on." "And we were furious." "Fuck the police!" "Fuck 'em!" "Fuck 'em!" "Chaos at this particular location." "To see the very start of the violence was very troubling." "What made it really troubling was there was no police presence." "There's a van coming under attack." "They're pulling the driver out of the van, and they're kicking the driver and beating the driver." "We captured what essentially became the bookend to the Rodney King beating." "There's another driver, badly beaten." "In the case of Reginald Denny, we had black gang members beating a white man." "Oh, look at that." "Terrible." "And there's no police presence down here." "They will not enter the area." "That was the most disgusting thing I've seen in my entire career." "Two blocks away we had a platoon of metro division." "We could have cleared that intersection in a minute." "But the commander there didn't wanna release 'em to do it, because of imagery." "We're on live television." "We're seeing a dark day here in Los Angeles." "The LAPD is nowhere to be found." "So we're sitting there in our uniforms watching this poor truck driver get his head beat in." "Nobody's doing a damn thing about it." "We're screamin'." "Nobody would even move on it." "How are you this evening?" "Angry." "Angry?" "The jury is trying to tell us we didn't see what we saw." "[ Cheers, applause ]" "We've been the victims of police brutality in this town for too long!" "[ Cheers, applause ]" "We didn't come here tonight to mourn." "We came here tonight to say who we are." "[ Cheers, applause ]" "And we ain't gonna take this business lying down." "[ Cheers, applause ]" "And we ain't gonna tear up our community to be proving their point." "[ Cheers, applause ]" "Mark Brown, Channel Seven waved at the monitor and said," ""The city's on fire." "It's on fire."" "And I looked at him and said, "My God."" "I had no idea it was right across the street." "Literally." "The gas station was on fire." "What I didn't anticipate personally and professionally was the response of the community." "I went on the streets, and Western Avenue was in flames." "And this crowd is gathering, and the police have now come, and there's one guy, and he's screaming his head off," ""Burn, baby, burn!" "How you like me now, Mr. Policeman?"" "And I felt his pain." "I just didn't get it." "I just didn't understand burning down your own community." "I didn't get what it proved." "Here are people who feel like they have no stake, nobody's paying any attention to them." "This is the only way we can get any attention." "[ Angry chanting ]" "As it got darker, a crowd began to gather out in front of the police department." "It got increasingly unruly." "Someone grabbed me and tore my shirt and said something about, you know," ""You fucking newsmen." "Why do you tell lies?"" "It is the most physically-frightening situation that I've ever been part of." "[ Angry shouting ]" "[ Helicopter blades ]" "Guy pulls up, and he goes," ""Mike, whatever you do, don't go to the command post." "Go to the police station down the street." "Because it's very violent out there."" "I looked at him, and I thought, "What a coward he is,"" "get in the car, make the first turn, and the car gets lit up by gunfire." "So I go, "Okay." "Now I know what he's talking about."" "So I took my .45 out, I put it on my lap," "I took a big gulp of Copenhagen, stuck it down my mouth, turned off the lights and drove as fast as I could to the command post." "Hindsight, the overall management could've been done much better," "but once it got away from us, we were cooked." "[ Helicopter blades ]" "911 Emergency." "Yeah, can you send someone to my house?" "What's the problem there?" "Well, my ex-husband, or my husband, just broke into my house, and he's ranting and raving." "Now he's just walked out on the front yard." "Has he been drinking or anything?" "No, but he's crazy." "Is he black, white, or Hispanic?" "Black." "What's he wearing right now?" "Black pants and a golf shirt." "You said he hasn't been drinking?" "No." "Did he hit you?" "No." "Do you have a restraining order against him?" "No." "What's your name?" "Nicole Simpson." "Your address?" "325 Gretna Green Way." "Okay, we'll send police out." "Thank you." "Uh-huh." "When Nicole first decided to leave O.J., she came to me." "She said, "I wanna move out" and at that time," "I was doing real estate." "And then we had to sell O.J. on the idea." "He was obsessed with controlling Nicole." "I said, "Look, O.J., we'll get her a lease."" "He goes, "Three months."" "I said, "We'll get her a year lease." "You know?" "It'll be right nearby." "You can go to therapy and see if you can work things out." "But she needs her space."" "He really didn't wanna do it." "I think for the first time she felt free." "It was like she just came into that sense of self, that she was really ready to do life for her and her kids." "She responded great to being divorced." "She was really enjoying her life, going out and not being Mrs. Simpson, being Nicole Brown." "She wanted to pursue her photography career, and she wanted to have a normal life again." "It was a beautiful day, and we skied down to the bottom of the mountain." "And everybody's gathering on the deck, having a great time." "I looked across the deck, and I said, "Wow."" "I said that, "That is absolutely the most stunning woman" "I've ever seen in my life." "I have to find a way to introduce myself to her."" "So I did." "When I got back to LA several months later, we spent more time together." "Her and friends came by Mezzaluna one night, and we're having a good time, and, all of a sudden," "I see the Bentley come screeching up to the front of the door." "He comes in, walks straight over to our table, slams his hands down, looks me straight in the eye and says," ""I'm O.J. Simpson, and she's still my wife."" "I was sort of love-blind, so I didn't get up, I didn't run, I didn't back down," "I just stood my ground from day one." "And that's when she started to open up to me." "She told me about years of abuse at his hands." "He would beat her and lock her in closets at hotels because she asked where he was at when he was out cheating on her." "She was told how to look, told how to wear her hair, told how to dress, told where to be, what time to be, how to be, everything for O.J. Simpson." "Kind of a reverse slavery thing." "Uh, very, very odd." "You know, "That's, uh, that's my property,"" "and he always said, "That's my booty."" "The two sides of O.J., the O.J. that everybody sees on TV" "And when the Cowboys brought in their big back, that they didn't make good tackles on them, so the coach was on their cases to make better tackles, as my family throws snowballs at me." "Incidentally, uh" "That's not the O.J. that there was behind closed doors, certainly not with her, and she told me that." ""Don't ever be left alone with him, 'cause you don't know what he's capable of."" "He had her followed, and he would plant people in our group that would call him and tell him where we're going every night." "He would either show up or have a spy planted there at the club so they could watch her every move." "He never relinquished control." "He never would really let go." "He would tell me that Nicole tried to get him back, that she was actually taking golf lessons at Riviera." "And he had a girlfriend, you know, Paula." "And he seemed enthralled with her." "O.J.'s personality had totally changed, and I didn't think it was just the divorce." "Because his womanizing didn't change." "He was truly the most jealous person I ever met in my life." "He was as jealous as he was a good football player." "I saw the anger," "I saw the rage in his face on several occasions." "At me, in particular, and at her." "There was an incident where we went over to Roxbury, a hot club at the time in LA, and we get in, and she's dancing." "Maybe 20, 30 minutes go by, and I see her coming back towards me." "She goes, "O.J.'s here." And I go, "Ha." "Great." "Again."" "You know, she goes, "Let's just get out of here."" "And I say, "I couldn't agree more."" "So we drive back to her house on Gretna Green." "We go inside, and, uh, we became romantic." "We were off in a private area in one of the living rooms, and the next day he came over and pushed in the back door, confronted both of us, and he wanted to talk to her alone." "She was trembling, standing next to me, holding my hand, shaking." "And she said," ""Keith, I think you need to leave me alone with him for a couple minutes."" "I could hear him screaming at her," "I could hear him using disparaging terms about her and me." "They walked out, and he was O.J. again." "Shook my hand." ""Sorry, dude." "No hard feelings."" "You know, "I'm a very proud man."" "And he walked out the house." "And she turned to me, and she was white as a ghost, and she said," ""Oh, my God, Keith." "He watched us."" "And everything changed from that point on." "We realized we weren't safe anymore." "We realized that nothing was off limits." "I think she knew O.J. was always a presence." "She hated it." "She couldn't even explore being single again and-- and free and having fun, because everybody was still being manipulated by O.J." "When he found out that she had been with Marcus, that's-- that was a real issue." "It's a time you look the competition right in the face and say," ""Look, I'm better than you."" "No, I'm better than you." "You may be younger, but you ain't better." "Yo, who started?" "And don't be taking my number either." "Besides, I'm better lookin'." "I'm tired of you trying to be like me." "I remember going with O.J. to watch Marcus play at USC." "He was kinda like a mentor to Marcus." "They were extremely close." "Extremely." "You know, Marcus got married at O.J.'s house." "I think she always festered a crush for Marcus." "And he was the only person in her life that was as famous and as strong as O.J." "And so I think she felt in a way that she was safe with him." "O.J. said, "Marcus, we're 'SC guys." "We don't do that to each other." "What the hell's wrong with you?"" "He was a younger version of O.J." "He was almost like the newer, bigger, better version." "I had no-- no idea whatsoever, uh, that they were carrying on some kind of affair." "I was a bit stunned." "Did you ever have a romantic relationship with Nicole?" "No, I did not." "No kind of sexual or romantic involvement did you ever have with her?" "None whatsoever." "I really do not wanna talk about that at all." "Sometimes I'll try to sing, but I'm not gonna do it." "Tonight I got this tequila in me." "The girl I came here with said to me," ""Is this a blues place?"" "I said, "Oh, no, no, no." "This is rhythm and blues."" "[ Laughs ]" "Speaking of that lady I was talking about" "There she is." "With another shot of this tequila." "Now, watch her-- Yeah, that's right." "Now, watch her sing." "I don't know if-- Oh, my God." "[ Laughs ]" "That's right." "We're live right now all across America, and she is my woman." "[ Laughs ]" "I'm taking her tequila." "That's why I'm not singing tonight." "When they initially got back together," "I was the first person she told about it." "He had told her, "I'm changed." "I'm a new man." "Let me prove this to ya."" "She said, "We're gonna date first, and I'm not giving up my house, and we're gonna see how it goes."" "That was how they tried to reconcile." "She said all she really ever wanted was her family." "It's almost like she risked everything to have that unit back together." "911 Emergency." "What is the--?" "Can you get someone over here now, to 325 Gretna Green?" "He's back." "Please." "Okay." "What does he look like?" "He's O.J. Simpson." "I think you know his record." "Could you just send somebody over here?" "Okay." "What is he doing there?" "He's just" " All this again." "Could you just send somebody over?" "Wait a minute." "What kind of car is he...?" "We were filming another Naked Gun movie, and it was the first time I can remember him being just in one of the foulest moods ever." "And he said, "It's just Nicole bullshit."" "First of all, he broke the back door down to get in before..." "Okay." "Wait a minute." "What's your name?" "Nicole Simpson." "Okay." "Is he the sportscaster or whatever?" "Yeah." "Okay." "Thank you." "My ex-girlfriend approached him on the movie set and said some very disparaging things about Nicole and myself, so I knew that O.J. was gonna take it out on Nicole." "Wait a minute, we're sending police." "What is he doing?" "Is he threatening you?" "I" " He's fucking going nuts." "You're gonna hear him in a minute." "He's about to come in again." "Okay, just stay on the line" "I don't wanna stay on the line." "He's gonna beat the shit out of me." "Wait a minute, would you?" "Just stay on the line, so we can know what's going on 'til the police get there, okay?" "[ Nicole sighs ]" "It wasn't until years later that I actually sat down, and I had even listened to the 911 call." "I knew different voices for Nicole, and she wasn't mad, she definitely wasn't drunk." "She's terrified." "And that was heartbreaking." "That was heartbreaking." "Okay, Nicole." "Uh-huh?" "Just a moment." "Does he have any weapons?" "I don't know." "Okay." "He went home, and now he's back." "The kids are up there sleeping, and I don't want anything to happen." "Okay, just a moment." "When you hear O.J.'s voice, what do you hear?" "Rage." "Is he inside right now?" "Yes." "Yes." "Okay, just a moment." "All units, a domestic violence at 325 Gretna Green Way" "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "O.J., the kids are sleeping." "Is he upset with something that you did?" "Oh, a long time ago." "It always comes back." "Has this happened before or no?" "Many times." "Okay." "The police should be on the way." "It just seems like a long time because it's kind of busy in that division right now." "When she left him for good, she called me, and she's like," ""Yep, this is it, Robin."" "She said, "This is it." "I'm done." "I'm done."" "She goes, "I don't even" " I have no feeling for him whatsoever anymore." "It's just over."" "She was free, and she was happy without him, and I think he knew it was really over." "The day she changed, it was like a light switch." "He spiraled, from that day on." "Everything was different." "Who he was, that persona, everything was gone." "She wasn't chasing him anymore and it-- it spun him out." "We all believed that right toward the very end when, uh, they had split up, after Mother's Day, that Nicole was not seeing Marcus again." "I absolutely believed that she was." "And O.J. told Nicole," ""You ever see Marcus again, I will kill you."" "This was obviously "I'm-- I'm gonna get back at you, O.J." "I don't care what it takes, I'm gonna humiliate you."" "If she did it, it was more for her own personal rebellion, it was more for her saying to herself," ""I'm gonna date who I want, I'm gonna go where I want," "I'm gonna be friends with who I want." "I'm free." "You have lost me, O.J. Watch me run."" "I think there was something about her that was almost unattainable to him." "Something that he couldn't quite control." "And I think that that was part of the attraction." "And I think, in the final analysis, that's what got her killed." "(clicking)" "♪ I'm looking up" "♪ Cause baby I've been down" "♪ I'm looking up" "♪ Tired of bringing you down" "(police radio chatter)" "When I got there, they had the scene very well secured." "They had the entire block taped off." "Front door wide open, little music playing in the background, candles are lit inside." "Very violent confrontation." "Rage." "Two victims, blood everywhere." "We find a glove-- It's a left glove-- and a blood trail indicating the suspect has been wounded on the left side." "So we're just getting into this when we find out that this is apparently OJ Simpson's estranged wife." "We have two children asleep." "I have a very brutal murder." "Someone's gotta make a death notification of next of kin." "Which is Simpson." "Lang and Vannatter were talking and they called me over and said," ""You were at Simpson's house once, right?" "We want you to take us up there."" "We pull close to the gate." "Vannatter was hitting the doorbell, they keep ringing the doorbell and so I just stroll down the street." "(ominous music)" "By the other gate, there's a white Bronco." "On the driver's side door handle, blood." "I mean there was enough evidence outside, we gotta make sure everybody's okay in here." "Oh God, what are we going to do, Simpson's in there dead." "Well, yeah, we need to go in." "So I jumped up over the fence and I opened the gate." "(ominous music)" "Bang on the front door, nothing." "Walk around to the back, there's a couple of bungalows." "The first one was Kato Kaelin's." "Kato Kaelin was a live-in friend." "We said, "We're the police, check on Mr. Simpson."" "OJ's in Chicago." "Well, he left last night." "Oh, thank God." "They all leave and I'm left here with Kato Kaelin." "I go, "Tell me what you did last night."" "He goes, "Well I was talking on the phone and all a sudden there was, like, an earthquake." "It was just like..." "(pounding) ...on the wall and pictures shook."" "Okay." "I walk back outside and I start walking down the back, behind the bungalows." "And then as I pan down," "I see this brown, glistening..." "At first I thought it was dog crap." "And then I shined a light on it." "It's a glove." "Just like the one..." "Ed Bundy..." "Uh, yeah, this is gonna get deep." "This is gonna be a crime scene." "(ominous music)" "I make the decision to make a telephonic to the Brown family and I talk to Lou Brown and say that your daughter Nicole is dead." "It's quiet for about two seconds then all this screaming." "It's Nicole's sister, Denise." ""I knew that motherfucker, he was gonna kill," "I knew he was gonna do this."" "I mean, she didn't hesitate." "Nobody comes unglued like that unless they have a strong suspicion." "We gotta look at it a little differently now." "We lock everything down, no more searching, can't do anything until we get a warrant." "Phil Vannatter called me and said," ""I've got some information;" "I need to get a search warrant." "I need you to tell me if you think it sounds okay."" "And he just summarized the evidence and it was huge." "Okay, yeah, go ahead, get the search warrant, you're fine." "And he said, "You know who it is?" "It's OJ Simpson."" "OJ Simpson?" "Um..." "I was never into sports, so I didn't even know what game he played." "I thought he was a has-been." "Monday afternoon came around," "Simpson came back from Chicago and they handcuff him." "It was quite surprising." "Your ex-husband's always a suspect in a case." "Okay, wow. (laughing) Here we go." "(ominous music)" "He said he's gonna talk to us, which is really strange." "You have one opportunity forever to talk to this guy, forever." "He's thinking he can control a couple of cops." "Especially these guys 'cause, you know, they're pretty nice." "What Vannatter and Lang failed to do was simply to pin him down on what he did on the day of the murder." "OJ just rambled and created an interview transcript that was useless to the prosecution." "What do you mean, you were running around doing what you do?" "What do you mean?" "What do you mean you cut yourself in Chicago but the blood got on the Bronco before you left." "What do you mean?" "There's a million things that they just let go." "Yeah, uh huh, yeah, uh huh." "Oh my God." "What I wanted was his blood, photographs taken of the bleeding finger, I wanted his fingerprints now that we've got his cooperation." "We get the blood, we get all these things we want which are going to be evidence." "And then, ya know, he's released." "What?" "Why would you do that?" "If he was any other guy, would you have let him go?" "And they said, "Where can he go?" "After all, what can he do?"" "I mean, everybody recognizes him." "(orchestral music)" "When I went over to Rockingham, he had like three TV's and each and every one of them, he had a different channel on." "Suspect, what are you talking about?" "Is he crazy?" "And I said, "OJ, what happened to your finger?"" "And he says, "I cut it on a glass in Chicago."" "And I went oh, okay." "Somebody else sat down and asked him the same question and he said, "I was chipping golf balls."" "And I went, uh-hmm, later on that evening, same question came out, "Oh man, I was getting the cell phone out of the Bronco, cut myself."" "I was like, wow." "I tried to leave there and OJ goes, "Shipp, hold on."" "and he says, "They asked me to take a lie detector test." "I told them no."" "I said, "What do you mean, you told them no?"" "And he says, you know, jokingly, he says" ""Well, you know to be truthful, Shipp," "I have had dreams of killing her."" "I wanted to leave." "I said, "I'm outta here."" "Here, at OJ Simpson's home, in the fashionable suburb of Brentwood, the world media has settled in to the siege." "Against the public backdrop, police are quietly, methodically reconstructing the events of last Sunday evening to answer the question:" "Could this American sports hero, possibly, be a murderer?" "(deep bass music)" "(jet engines)" "At the time that this murder took place," "OJ was at home, awaiting a limousine to take him to the airport for a promotional event in Chicago." "OJ Simpson has described him as his quarterback." "He is defense attorney Robert Shapiro." "I agree with that assessment." "(upbeat music)" "He was known as the fixer." "He was a Hollywood lawyer." "He was not know as a "trial dogg" with two G's." "You hired Bob Shapiro to cut a deal." "Bob had never tried a murder case." "And so when he called me in June and said, "I need some help in the OJ case."" "I was more than ready." "Well, I worked for Bob Shapiro on some of his other cases and I was pretty successful." "So they recruited me as the defense investigator." "OJ was putting together his team." "They sent a guy over to me." ""Hey man, we're putting together this thing."" ""We're going to need you, OJ needs you."" "And I said, "I'm not on board."" "And I'll never forget that investigator's look on his face." "He said, "What?"" "I said, "OJ killed her, I'm not on board."" "(piano music)" "I gotta say, I had a lot of fun with her." "At times, I felt like a big brother to her 'cause" "I'd come over there and she'd share things with me." "And I kinda felt special that she thought enough of me to tell me her problems." "She's a great human being." "Thank you." "(applause)" "I remember early in... in the years that her and OJ was dating, we were all down in the Caribbean." "OJ was working on a film, and if a lot of don't know, I'm gonna let you know now, blacks can not swim, we can't float." "(laughter)" "Justin can." "Well, thank God, well he got that from his mom." "So, we're out in the saltwater, right?" "And Nicole is out there looking like, you know, she was made to swim, she's backstroking and she's doing all these things." "So, here's OJ and I, we're standing on the shore and she's waving us in." "(laughter)" "Now, this is saltwater, in the Caribbean." "Everything down there floats." "OJ and I got out there and we tried to float, and she thought that's the funniest thing she'd ever seen in her life." "She could not believe it." "And one of the things about Nicole, which all of you will agree, was Nicole's laugh." "Once that woman laughed, she was, uh..." "She brought out a lot of goodness in you." "Nicole was very, very special to me." "That was my buddy." "And, um..." "And I know, Sydney and Justin, you've been blessed because a lot of her character and the goodness about her." "You're not going to notice it now, but you're going to notice it as you get older cause she's laid a great foundation for you two." "I love you, Nicole, and I love you too, Jason." "I mean Justin and Sydney and I'll always will be there for you." "(applause)" "OJ Simpson may soon face legal action." "The Associated Press says a homicide detective has told them Simpson's arrest is imminent." "It is not only OJ Simpson's life that is coming under the media microscope." "Reporters are looking, too, at Ronald Goldman, the aspiring model, who was killed with Nicole Simpson." "His family said he was nothing more than a friend." "He was a special human being that didn't deserve what's happened." "He was gonna open a restaurant." "After Ron was murdered, we went to his apartment." "He had a floor plan, he had a menu, he had names of people whose art he was gonna hang on the wall." "He had everything worked out." "Obviously, this is your older brother." "We don't get to spend very much time together, so I'm very glad that I was able to be here." "So I love you very much and I'll see you soon." "That was all taken away." "My sister's body was gonna be behind closed doors." "I said to my friend, "I can't go in there."" "And as I'm having this conversation with them I'm hearing screams." "Looking at her I can remember a black dress up to her neck because" "what I had heard is that her head was almost cut off all the way." "Which even shocked me more and more." "I mean that was just like... and seeing her there, lying there in a coffin." "I mean, it really, I mean," "I don't know, it's just terrible." "He came to the wake." "It was just unbelievable." "We were all kind of in shock that he came there." "Judy asked him directly, "Did you kill my daughter?"" ""No, no." "I loved her too much."" "He was, like, on Xanax or something." "He was just sedated." "I leaned over to him and said," ""We're going to get through this."" "I had no idea what was going on." "(orchestral music)" "Action News has learned that Simpson's attorney is working on a deal with police for Simpson's surrender to avoid what the lawyer calls, and we quote, "a media circus."" "(orchestral music)" "Shapiro was going to surrender him to the detectives in the morning." "We're standing outside Parker Center waiting for OJ to turn himself in." "Every time a car would pass by, is that OJ?" "I think it was 11:00." "Oh, no, he doesn't show up." "I think I'd already scheduled a press conference." "And it's like, oh, no." "We potentially could look like a bunch of clowns here." "I did not know about the arrangements for his surrender." "I went with the assumption that they would announce that he had been arrested." "Gascon's coming up." "Looking out at the auditorium, not only are all the seats taken, but all the aisles are jammed, the front is jammed, the back wall is jammed." "He's on the stage." "And I was the one who was gonna have to stand out there naked." "This morning detectives from the Los Angeles" "Police Department sought and obtained a warrant for the arrest of OJ Simpson, charging him with the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman." "Mr. Simpson, in agreement with his attorney, was scheduled to surrender this morning, to the Los Angeles Police Department." "Initially, that was 11:00." "It then became 11:45." "Mr. Simpson has not appeared." "The Los Angeles Police Department, right now, is actively searching for Mr. Simpson." "The gasp that went through the room," "I think it's right at that moment, that I realized, oh boy, this is big." "We will continue our pursuit of Mr. Simpson and hope to have him in custody soon." "He's gone." "I looked at Marika and said," ""It's a helicopter story now." "Let's find this son of a bitch."" "I can take a few questions." "(everyone speaks at once)" "I'd known Gascon for a long time and he's a fairly easygoing guy normally." "You're gonna have to hold it down." "One at a time or won't be able to hear you." "Then a sense of humor to add a light touch." "You asked a question, would you like for me to answer?" "He got pretty tightly wound that day." "I doubt that there's anyone around this country that's been monitoring television, radio, or newspapers, that doesn't know at this point that something's going on in this case." "If you, in any way, are assisting Mr. Simpson in avoiding justice, Mr. Simpson is a fugitive of justice right now." "And if you assist him in any way, you are committing a felony." "I was pissed off that we were in essence given the old Italian gesture." "I don't recall being that upset before in the DA's office." "I'm angry, I'm not embarrassed." "Angry at who, beyond..." "I'm angry at OJ Simpson." "(police radio)" "It is not an escape, he was not under arrest." "He was under sedation in a very, very emotional state." "He was at a residence that is secluded, that is very, very hard to find, and there was never any thought of him leaving that residence without us." "This letter was written by OJ today." "First, everyone understand," "I had nothing to do with Nicole's murder." "I loved her, always have, and always will." "If we had a problem, it's because I loved her so much." "It's 1700, 5 pm, when you have" "Kardashian reading the letter." "I thought, wow, maybe he killed himself." "I think of my life and feel I've done most of the right things, so why do I end up like this?" "I can't go on." "No matter what the outcome, people will look and point." "I can't take that." "I can't subject my children to that." "We deal with folks who are in crisis and get to a very dark place and they just do it." "Don't feel sorry for me." "I've had a great life." "Great friends." "Please think of the real OJ and not this lost person." "The note says, to me, feel sorry for me but..." "I'm the guy, you know, I'm the bad guy." "He was, Mr. Cowlings was with him, he was his best friend, he was by his side for the last few minutes alone while we were upstairs." "AC just had a love for OJ." "I remember once, in high school, a friend of mine had a starter pistol that he brought to school." "So we said okay, let's go, take the gun and pull it on OJ and act like we're gonna shoot him." "We were all down for it." "So, we went out on the field where OJ and Al were and my friend, Ray, well, he pulled the gun out and everybody sorta stepped back." "And Al Cowlings stepped in front of OJ." "And said, "Ray, if you gonna shoot OJ, you gotta shoot me first."" "(police radios)" "1993 Ford Bronco." "We're listening to the Los Angeles Police Department and they believe that this vehicle is somewhere in the vicinity of the El Toro Y." "And I look down below and there's the El Toro Y." "And there's a white Bronco." "Then there's a sheriff's unit and there's another sheriff's unit and another sheriff's unit." "Okay, here we are, open the door." "We get the door open and we get our very first shot." "And I'm back on the two way radio telling CBS, you gotta get us on the air, we found him." "And with a flip of the switch, we were on with Dan Rather." "This is Dan Rather with Connie Chung in Los Angeles and let's hold on a second here." "I'm seeing on the monitor this live helicopter coverage of the Ford Bronco being followed by the police." "And let's pick up some of the transmission from the helicopter." "They believe he's suicidal and very dangerous." "Unfortunately at this time it does not appear as though the driver is slowing down or complying with the orders of the officers." "We were on the air exclusively for 22 minutes." "And this was the most conflicted I had every been." "The gravity of the murder, I mean, this was a double homicide and this is a tragic story." "Very few human beings fall as far as OJ Simpson." "I've fallen quite a bit transitioning, you know, you go from being like a hero pilot to some tranny, you know, so I've fallen somewhat myself but this is like an epic fall." "And I'm weighing consequences of this with also the biggest news story, like, ever." "I'm going to use a pair of binoculars to try to determine whether or not I can see Mr. Simpson." "Fuck NBC, fuck ABC, fuck those guys." "I hope they shoot this son of a bitch." "And I hope they kill him before the competitors get here." "(phone ringing) 911, what are you reporting?" "This is AC." "I have OJ in the car." "Okay, where are you?" "Please, I'm coming up the 5 freeway." "Okay." "Right now we are okay." "But you got to tell the police to back off." "He's still alive, but he's got a gun to his head." "Okay, hold on a minute, Monica." "He just wants to see his mother." "Let me get him to the house." "Okay, hold on a moment." "Okay, what's your name?" "My name is AC." "You know who I am, God dammit." "Okay." "Right now, that OJ's sitting there is the passenger seat with a gun pointed at his own head." "Someone turned the TV on and there he is." "14 units of the Orange County Sheriff's" "Department and Highway Patrol following behind a good distance." "Oh my God, this isn't real, this can't be real." "We're dumbfounded." "Law enforcement is following Simpson." "They want him to stop." "Red lights and sirens." "It's not an escort." "Why are they allowing him to continue?" "Really, the game plan is really being conducted by Mr. Simpson at this point and it's very much like when the president travels down a major thoroughfare, like a freeway." "I was wondering, okay, maybe around the next curve they've got it marked off and they're going to force him to stop." "It wasn't like they were going 100 miles an hour." "But I'm not a police tactician." "That was their call." "I've covered so many of these things, this was not usual police behavior." "If OJ Simpson were black, that shit wouldn't have happened." "He'd be on the ground getting clubbed." "But since he transcended race and color to the exalted status of celebrity, he got a motorcade." "This is not a chase, this is basically an accompaniment." "(ominous music)" "Nobody is doing anything." "So I'm talking to Eddie Jo Fairbanks in the DA's office." "She said, "Well, I just happen to have his cell number, would you like it?" "(laughing)" "(phone ringing)" "You there?" "Just let me get to my house." "Okay, we're gonna do that." "I swear to you I'll give you," "I'll give you me, I'll give you my whole body." "Okay" "I just need to get to my house." "Okay, we're gonna do that, just throw the gun out the window." "I can't do that." "We're not gonna bother you, we're gonna let you go up there." "Just throw it out the window, please, you're scaring everybody." "This is not to keep you guys away from me, this is for me." "I know that, nobody's gonna hurt you." "This is for me." "He's trying, in my mind, to imply he's going to commit suicide, but he's not saying that." "So, I'm playing along with that." "(moaning)" "Hey, everybody loves you, don't do this." "Just throw it out the window and nobody's gonna get hurt." "You've got a guy here that's," "I don't know where his mind is," "I really believe he killed two people." "But now he's got a loaded gun, and he's being chased by cops." "Is he gonna start shooting at the cops?" "Is he gonna shoot at AC and kill..." "Is he gonna blow his own brains out?" "I do know if I can engage him in a conversation it's going to temporarily at least take his mind off the gun." "I'm the only one that deserves this." "No, you don't deserve that." "You do not deserve to get hurt." "Don't do this." "All I did was love Nicole." "All I did was love her." "I understand." "Love everybody, show everybody my whole life that I love everybody." "We know that and everybody loves you." "Your kids need you." "I've already said goodbye to my kids." "You're gonna hurt everybody." "I'm just gonna have to see." "No, don't" "I'm gonna go with Nicole." "That's all I'm gonna do." "That's all I'm trying to do." "Think about everybody else, alright?" "I couldn't on the freeway." "I couldn't do it in a field." "I want to do it at her grave." "I want to do it at my house." "You gonna go to the house?" "We were told he was going to the Rockingham location." "And that's all we were told." "If they requested SWAT to handle something, that's because they can't handle it themselves." "I was told you're going to do the talking, you're going to be the negotiator." "Drive time from downtown to the west side was gonna take 30, 40 minutes." "We were trying to beat him." "They were pressuring us." "He's pretty close." "We were estimating we were about 10 minutes ahead." "The last thing we want is for him to get there before us." "Because now we're going to lose control." "And we're on the freeway and all the overpasses, there were people already staged." "Signs, free OJ, we love you OJ," "What a bunch of losers." "I think people realized, hey, this is gonna be passing my neighborhood." "And they wanted to see OJ's last run." "This was not a somber event." "This was one of Los Angeles's largest parties." "(orchestral music)" "This was lined with people." "(police sirens)" "And they're running full speed down the street, trying to get to the location." "We're not used to seeing those types of crowds rush in." "(chanting) OJ!" "OJ!" "OJ!" "OJ!" "District Attorney of Los Angeles," "Mr. Gil Garcetti, will the fact that he has fled make things worse for him?" "Any time you have an accused who leaves, that and the fact, we believe, shows a consciousness of guilt." "(chanting "Free OJ")" "I think earlier in the week, all of us close to OJ didn't believe that he had been involved in this." "And now I think there's a sense of resignation and has been for the last 24 hours and we can't believe what's happening and there was nothing ever, ever in the past that would indicate that OJ would be capable of doing what he's doing right now." "Did they let you go?" "They didn't say anything, all of a sudden, they just..." "What was that?" "Yeah." "Oh, okay, CBS is trying to get you in." "Now, he's pulling off now, they've just pulled off a main highway." "Judy Mullard, help us here." "I can't tell ya, looks like" "Santa Monica Freeway, heading I can't tell ya yet." "Look at all these people" "rushing up to the corner..." "No, it's an exit" "This word has obviously spread" "Judy, hang on, look at all these people rushing, waving... (police sirens)" "There is an absolutely utterly macabre nature to all this." "They've been cheering him on, yelling, "Go Juice go."" "Cheering him on," "He pulled off at Sunset, off the 405, he's on his way back toward Brentwood." "When I got on scene there, I walked toward the residence, there was family inside the residence and they were eating." "Looked like they had like a sandwich buffet that they were doing and they were watching tv." "Dining." "I use that clinical term." "Nutty." "(police sirens)" "Both sides of the street have pedestrians, he just passed us at Barrington." "Okay, Eric, its only now probably three minutes at the most I would say to his home in Brentwood." "They're passing the church installed there." "They are heading right into Brentwood now." "He's heading to my house." "He's making a right turn, I assume, that's up into Brentwood Park, and appears to be on the way to either his home or very close to his home." "We closed the gate on Rockingham, we left this one open to force him through and make him come into where we wanted him." "There was a sniper team in this house across the street, there's a sniper team on top of the roof at the residence." "And there was one across the street." "(police radio) Use your own discretion." "You take him down if you have to." "When'd you see the kids last, Juice?" "He's pulling up in my driveway." "I know, I see you, I see you." "Please, toss the gun." "Juice, just toss it." "He's pulling into his house, oh shit." "I've never seen anything like this." "Mr. Simpson, OJ please." "When we're standing in the threshold there, to my right is a television so, when the Bronco pulls into the driveway" "I see Bronco, Cowlings, Simpson in the backseat and then I look right here and I get the point of view that you're seeing." "Oh my goodness gracious." "He's come home after all of that." "Just as we're trying to get words out, a young man runs up to the driver's side of the door and starts hitting at AC Cowlings." "Who is that out there?" "He's just trying to help." "He's just trying to help, man." "Kardashian said, "That's Jason Simpson, That's OJ's son."" "So, I told Pepabrick, I said, "Go out there and get him."" "Moved him out, now we get down to the business that we designed." "At this juncture, it's very fragile." "What exacerbates, what makes it crazy, is the noise, you had a helicopter seemed like about 50 feet off the deck, every car that was in the following had their red lights and sirens on." "If you just take a snapshot, you'd go, this is madness, absolute madness." "I watched that from the newsroom and when I saw a couple of the SWAT officers that I recognized run across the shot, I thought, oh my God, they're gonna kill him in the driveway." "Just toss it please." "Alright?" "Juice, just toss the gun." "I did not want him to get out of the car with a gun in his hand, they'd have dumped him, they would not have had a choice." "Juice, come on, Juice." "They resolve most situations peacefully, but they are there to finish it one way or another." "OJ, no, no OJ." "Don't, no man, don't." "Juice, don't do it, Juice." "Pick it up." "I'm thinking, okay, there are a lot of people that are betting on us." "That we're going to screw this up." "That are cynical." "That believe that we are a brutal horrible organization." "And it's just not the case." "How do they know, that the police and the DA didn't make all this evidence up, to make him act the way that he's acting?" "We were recovering from Rodney King and it's so important for the people to see things that go the right way." "There is so much on the news where things go the wrong way." "Normally, that wouldn't be on my mind, but that night it was." "Door's opening." "That is Al Cowlings." "He's quite, quite upset at the moment." "Yeah." "Quite emotional here." "I've got to get Cowlings out." "As much as he was trying to help, he was interfering in where I needed to do." "I needed to speak directly to Mr. Simpson, to try and keep him from hurting himself." "And Mr. Cowlings was trying to be a go between." "He was very worried about his friend." "He kept asking us, please don't hurt him, please don't hurt him, please." "And he wanted to go back, he wanted to stay with his friend." "And we wouldn't allow it, we can't." "Police haven't made a move, we understand negotiations are still going on." "Simpson, you can see him, cradling what looks like framed photos, but clearly he has the barrel of a weapon under his chin and it looks like he's just resting his chin on the barrel of the weapon." "It was the look of a defeated man." "They are, according to police scanners, talking to OJ on the phone, from the inside the house, trying to negotiate something." "I said to him very early on," "I don't think your children need to see another tragedy." "And he immediately changed the subject right to about himself, he wouldn't even speak to that." "I said I know where he's coming from." "There was so much memorabilia and stuff of him everywhere, normally you would see other photos of family members or something else, you didn't see those things, it was all him." "I told Mike Albanis, Mike, I can talk him into it." "We can appeal to his ego enough that he's going to come out for us." "His voice, in the beginning, was excited but then it calmed down." "The more we spoke about him, the more he liked it." "We want to show them that you're still the person you have been all these years." "This great football player, this great everything." "(dramatic music)" "He asked me to come out to the car, and I said, "No, you're going to show them yourself, you're going to show them just how big and courageous you are, you're going to walk to me and you're" "going to leave the gun in the car, you're going to walk out and show everyone, right now." "You're going to do this."" "My personal spin, I think, he wanted to surrender when it was dark." "So that he wouldn't be seen." "Night has fallen here over Brentwood." "He had two picture frames that were cradled in his arms." "We told him, open the door, put your arm out with the frame, and the other arm out with the framed photo, so it's clear to everybody, so there was no mistaking." "Doors open, dome lights on, he's out of the vehicle." "Kinda just hunches over, shuffles six, eight steps to us, and collapses in our arms." "He goes, "I'm sorry," "I was never going to hurt you guys." "I'm sorry." "I was never going to hurt you guys."" "OJ's in custody." "We understand that OJ's in custody." "They're calling a code four." "All clear, all safe." "Thank you, thank you to God." "(reporters asking questions)" "Unbelievable, we saw an incredible situation that's gone on for hours." "Incredible restraint by the Los Angeles Police Department." "The officers kept their distance." "They allowed the SWAT team, the pros, to come in, they took their positions." "He'd asked me to stay with him throughout the process." "I promised him I would stay with him." "I said it's time, I gotta handcuff you now, you need to be handcuffed." "I'm sorry, this is the way it works." "(police sirens)" "As we take off, Simpson is amazed at the crowds." "He just couldn't believe there was this many people there." "(Free OJ, Free OJ)" "And he said, "What are all these niggers doing in Brentwood?"" "(crowd cheering)" "I walk outside and Shapiro's there." "Shapiro shakes my hand, he says," ""Thank you for not killing OJ Simpson."" "He grabbed me and went to hug me." "I go, let's just," "I wasn't in the mood for a hug and maybe I wasn't professional." "I don't know the frickin' guy, right, and he wants to weep on me?" "(dramatic music)" "Well this is one nutty day." "It really is." "I said, I have seen everything in law enforcement." "There is nothing else that can top this." "(dramatic music)" "(piano music)" "Later today in Los Angeles, OJ Simpson is expected to make his first court appearance." "OJ has been in jail, under a suicide watch, visited only by a psychiatrist and his lawyer." "Please," "Alright, people." "Please speak up so you may be heard." "Uh, yes." "Pardon me, I'm sorry." "May we start all over again?" "Yes." "He looked a mess." "He looked like someone who had committed murder." "There was nothing about the old smiling Simpson, about him that day." "Your charges for this complaint in that you willfully and unlawfully with pronounced forethought murder Nicole Brown Simpson." "In count two your charge is the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187." "That you willfully and unlawfully with pronounced forethought murder Ronald Lyle Goldman." "When he initially entered the plea, he barely choked it out." "Not guilty." "Alright, then, the not guilty plea will be entered, the case will be set for a preliminary hearing within the statutory period." "Recess." "This case will be handled as every case is handled, the case will be thoroughly investigated by top notch investigators, we will present the prosecution in a thorough and professional manner." "I amongst others, recommended her." "I was aware of her successes in the court room." "I knew she was a very dynamic trial lawyer." "I want no one to forget the fact that" "Robert Barto wakes up every morning, and Rebecca Schaeffer lies buried in a grave in Oregon." "Worked extraordinarily hard, she was very facile with trace evidence, hair, fiber, and the like." "She was up to speed on DNA." "She was one of our best trial lawyers." "I think that with all the questions that we've been getting about the public sympathy for Mr. Simpson, we should not forget the fact that we have two victims, that were brutally slain." "I have to say, it never mattered to me who the defendant was, it was a question of who did it." "Whether they're famous, whether they're not famous." "They all get the same treatment." "You are looking at inmate number 4103970, OJ Simpson." "(camera clicks)" "(cell doors shutting)" "I believed he was innocent." "I was like everybody else, it was incomprehensible that my friend could do this." "I snuck into the jail to see him and there's this guy that was my buddy and" "he looked emaciated, he was in an orange jumpsuit, and he was shackled to the desk in front of me." "Then he looked at me on the other side of plexiglasses, close as he could be, and he said," ""I swear to God, I didn't do this."" "I believed him." "He asked me if I would kind of be the chronicler of the whole thing." "Would I write a book about the whole thing." "I backed away from that." "Then, in a moment of ultimate surrealism," "I'm sitting with OJ and Lyle Menendez walks behind him." "And I just went, shit, this is more than my little pea brain can handle." "(dramatic music)" "Bob, OJ Simpson is in a Los Angeles jail cell tonight." "His attorney says he spoke to him today and that Simpson was in tears." "Al Cowlings, was himself, arrested on a felony charge of aiding a fugitive." "Get away from my fucking house." "Simpson, had $10,000 in cash and a passport at that point." "I love OJ no matter what happens." "The murder with special circumstances, death penalty charges..." "The final DNA tests are positive for intents and purposes, OJ Simpson really has no option but to admit that he killed." "The man who will lead the prosecution of the case, against OJ Simpson, is Los Angeles District Attorney, Gil Garcetti." "You said earlier, "It's not going to shock me if we see OJ Simpson sometime down the road say okay" "I did do it but I'm not responsible."" "That certainly sounded, to me, like a prosecutor very comfortable with his case." "I am comfortable with the case," "I don't mean to speculate as to what the defense is going to be but I have been a prosecutor for 25 years" "The evidence was so overwhelming, there was just no doubt." "A blood trail that led from Bundy all the way into his bedroom." "I don't think I'd ever seen that much evidence in any single case ever." "When you couple that with evidence of motivation, and that was the history of domestic violence, with Simpson physically and psychologically abusing Nicole Brown." "This is my woman." "This was a domestic violence case that culminated in murder." "End of story." "Both sides are going to try to place the publicity their way but because this is a major celebrity, probably this is the most famous" "American ever charged with murder, there will not business as usual." "My former criminal law professor, Alan Dershowitz, was part of what would later become known as the dream team," "OJ Simpson's lawyers." "So, I called up Alan, and I said," ""You know, what do you think of this case?"" "And he said, "I don't know, but you ought to look into this guy, this cop." "Mark Fuhrman, there's something bad about him."" "I first met Mark during the execution of a second search warrant." "I was impressed, he seemed to have an eye for detail." "Some of his investigative moves, particularly going up to Rockingham, struck me as this is a smart detective." "Mark Fuhrman, M-A-R-K F-U-H-R-M-A-N" "When he testified at the preliminary hearing, he did a really good job." "Blood to the left of the footprint would indicate that the person that left the scene was bleeding from the left side of his body." "And the spot on the Bronco could coincide with that injury." "He was on top of his game." "His memory of the search of" "Rockingham was the primary thing." "And it was detailed and consistent." "And why was it that you did not secure the residence for a search warrant before finding the glove." "This is not a situation where we had the time to stand out in the street and just wait and wonder." "We had to do something." "I thought maybe this guy Fuhrman has done something wrong." "Maybe, he's been sued." "There was this dungeon-like basement in downtown Los Angeles with all the records of civil court filings." "And I started burrowing through these records looking for Mark Fuhrman as a defendant." "And that's not what I found." "I found a lawsuit where Mark Fuhrman was the plaintiff." "He had actually sued the Los Angeles Pension Board asking to be relieved as a police officer and get a pension because his mind was so poisoned by hatred of black people." "And I thought to myself, now that's a story." "I show up uninvited at Robert Shapiro's office." "And I say, "I've been looking at Mark Fuhrman's file and there's some pretty amazing stuff in there."" "And I remember, to this day, he sort of rocked back in his chair." "He said, "You saw that?"" "I said, "Yeah."" "He said, "You think that's bad, we think he planted the glove."" "(camera clicks)" "Fuhrman, according to this article had used a lot of racial epithets." "Having that out there, really brought home the fact that we've got a dynamic here we're gonna have to deal with." "They found a flaw in me, and then they made up a nexus, a connection to the flaw to the case." "I mean, I had a bad couple years but I came out" "better, I came out of it." "It is what it is." "That article came out at just about the same time, Johnnie Cochran was coming aboard the defense team." "And my thought at the time was, here comes the race card." "(gospel music)" "My name is Johnnie L. Cochran Jr." "I am primarily a civil rights lawyer." "And I represent a number of clients who have had their civil rights abridged." "He and his firm were central players in this story of the LAPD and race in Los Angeles." "Growing up in America, any African American will tell you that, we know we have to run faster, jump higher, work harder, to do the same that anyone else has to do." "(applause)" "Johnnie Cochran was always the icon to young black, brown, and oppressed people in Los Angeles because Johnnie was that young dashing lawyer who took on the police." "Johnnie Cochran made his name as a public lawyer in the Deadwyler case." "The latest explosion of violence in Watts really began here 11 days ago." "A negro motorist driving down here was rushing his wife to the hospital, she was having labor pains, they were stopped, stopped by a white patrolman." "One policeman got out and came around to my side and my husband leaned over me and asked him if he would lead him out to the hospital to care of me." "And then he, he didn't say anything, and he shot him." "And he fell over me." "(dramatic music)" "Mr. Cochran would like to know, did you get inside the Deadwyler car with the upper part of your body voluntarily?" "Yes sir." "Mr. Cochran would like to know, did you observe any weapons within the Deadwyler car?" "No, sir, I did not." "Mr. Cochran wants to know, that became the catchphrase because the lawyer, himself, could not ask the questions." "He had to go through the county council." "Mr. Cochran would like to know, if you been trained to keep your weapon away from a suspect?" "Yes, sir." "Johnnie was like 27, 28 years old then." "He was a young whippersnapper." "Mr. Cochran would like to know, while you were at the Los Angeles police academy, did they train you to put your upper part of your body inside a car?" "Not specifically that, no." "Because it was a televised trial, he became a hero to everybody in to the South Central community." "Few people had higher standing, deeper standing." "Johnnie was always that stalwart defender of justice, fighting against the bastille." "Each of the defendants across the board were found not guilty of the assaults on the police officers." "Mr. Settles was beaten, the booking photos show that." "I want to know if they had anything to do with his death." "I want to know, whether or not, he hung himself or whether or not he was hung." "The only version that you heard of what transpired was what the police officers told you, isn't that correct?" "(dramatic music)" "It's not that Johnnie was the only good lawyer for OJ Simpson but I would say that he and his firm were the only lawyers who would really understand and argue this case in the context of the LAPD's relationship to African Americans." "Now, did he also like a big celebrity trial, you bet." "Michael Jackson has maintained his innocence from the beginning of this matter." "He still, maintains that innocence." "He was a big character, he was flamboyant." "I love you." "Hi Johnnie." "We were talking about different styles of lawyering and how you make a case to jury and one of the things he said about predominately African American juries, he goes "Jimmy," which is what he used to call me," "he said, "Jimmy, blacks like big."" "(laughing)" "And he liked to be big." "(drums playing)" "My daughter was in the Watts parade and" "Johnnie Cochran was the grand marshal." "He said, "I want to see you guys at the trial."" "I hadn't planned to go, but since he asked me," "I said, well Johnnie wants me to come, and he asked me to come, so I'm coming down here." "I'm gonna find a way to get here every day." "(dramatic music)" "OJ Simpson is about to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom." "He's going to enter a plea, a date for trial is going to be set, and a judge to oversee the trial is going to be appointed." "This is the time set for the arraignment of Mr. Simpson." "Mr. Simpson you are charged with the crime of murder." "Are you ready to enter a plea at this time?" "Yes, your honor." "How do you plea to counts one and two?" "Absolutely 100% not guilty." "That's what I want to hear, you're not guilty." "He was back on his feet and ready to tell the whole world that he was wrongly accused." "And it was just the biggest bunch of horse shit." "Thank you, you may be seated." "But he sold it." "I gave him a thumbs up." "And he looked over at me and he waved at me." "He was very good looking." "And that day he was really good looking." "(laughing)" "I may not have thought he was a big celebrity but it became really clear to me super fast that he was to others." "OJ Simpson, I really admire the guy, football, and great actor." "OJ Simpson has been a hero of mine since college." "I think he's a great man and a a great hero, and has touched a lot of lives." "I don't think he did it, doesn't seem like that kind of person." "I'm assigning the case to Judge Lance Ito." "Judge Ito is an acceptable fashion." "Judge Ito will be accepted for the people as well." "Very well, thank you, then that is the assignment." "Here's the first time we'll really get to see the system." "To see if it really works." "For someone with some money, a celebrity." "A well loved, respected, cherished type of man." "Now, let's see if justice can work for him." "(dramatic music)" "There's nothing more important during a jury trial, than the selection of your jury." "You can win or lose you case right there." "The issue of where to conduct the trial, the Santa Monica court house, largely white jury pool." "Downtown LA, largely black jury pool." "Gil Garcetti, the DA, always said," ""Well it just logistically had to be downtown."" "A lot of us thought that Gil Garcetti, elected official, needed to protect his reputation in the black community, a big voting block, by keeping the case downtown." "I'm confident that we can, indeed, find white, black, brown, every color juror there is, who will, indeed, be fair and impartial." "I think it would have been societally better, from the DA's perspective, to win a conviction downtown." "And to not be accused of having stacked this, in such a way that whites were to stand in judgment of black men." "If you have a juror who believes police never do anything wrong, you're in tough shape." "Certainly, you can find most people, want to believe their police officers are fair and want to do their job and so that's a given, you start with that, but you've got to find that person who" "understands that in the real world that doesn't happen all the time." "We interviewed over 5000 people in Los Angeles in preparation for the OJ Simpson trial." "The conclusions were that just presenting the straight up evidence, you weren't going to get a lot of sympathetic African American females, many harbored a resentment that this famous athlete, this charming guy, had a married a white, blonde woman" "rather than someone from his own community." "But the antagonism was to her and not him." "OJ you look gorgeous right now." "How come you're so loyal to this man who married a white woman?" "And was dating her while he was married to a black woman." "I mean, doesn't any of this make you feel a little less defensive of him." "Marcia Clark had this faith about her ability to connect with African American woman." "African American women had been some of my best jurors on previous cases." "Even when the defendant was an African American." "There was just a way, an easy way I had, that I could talk to them." "Now, we will show you the other side of the smiling face that you saw on the Hertz commercial." "We had trial simulations" "The one you never saw on camera." "Marcia was not received positively." "Marcia Clark, every black woman, bitch." "When they had the mock jury, the mock trial, and some of the comments came back about you, about maybe being really hard or tough, what did you think when you heard some of that." "I was very surprised, the balance of them said good things, so, you know, the media takes one kernel and blows it up into a huge bowl of popcorn." "Marcia tended to discount the fact that black women jurors didn't seem to appreciate her very much." "I had no illusions about what" "I was going to be up against." "The odds were stacked against us in terms of the African American jurors because that's what the polls showed." "A California poll, released today, found that only 10% of blacks, who were surveyed, believed it is very likely that Simpson was guilty." "The ideal juror would have been younger, i.e. someone not familiar with Simpson at the high of his fame," "Asian, or probably white." "All we want, just give me, 12 fair, responsible, unbiased jurors who are going to follow the law and put aside their personal feelings and do what the court and the law requires." "In Los Angeles today, the judge and lawyers in the OJ Simpson murder trial began interviewing prospective jurors face to face." "Just to set the scene for you, when all the jurors walk in, all the attorneys are lined up like a receiving line, and several times during the proceedings," "OJ Simpson would turn and seem to make eye contact with people, and occasionally smile at people in the audience." "The quest for impartial jurors has been going on now for more than a month." "They called me to the chair." "When I sat down, I didn't even put my purse down." "Because I felt like it was going to be that quick." "They were going to say, you're excused." "I'm looking at the list," "I know what's coming up." "I know who's left behind me." "I know what I've got in the box." "I have to look and see, am I going to do better or worse." "There was a process, of what I have labeled as reverse Darwinism," "I call it the survival of the most unfit jurors." "Many it seems want to watch, but fewer wish to serve." "91 of 219 people summoned for" "Simpson jury duty, said in a questionnaire, a likely 6 month trial would be too great a hardship." "I think it's the only way, to assure that we are going to have a fair trial for both sides." "Jurors who were available for six months skewed heavily towards a lower socioeconomic strata of jurors and a much more diverse jury pool." "A lot of smart jurors who might have been open to DNA scientific evidence simply went by the wayside." "We didn't have many of our type of juror." "I thought, okay, I better quit while I'm behind and not get further behind because it was only going to go downhill from there." "They said, "Your Honor we accept,"" "and at that point, I sunk in my chair." "I was stunned." "Oh my God, oh my God, and I told my daughter, and she said, "Oh Mother, oh my God."" "And my son, he said, "Oh my God, Mother."" "And that was it." "In the end, we did the best we could with a bad lot." "We wound up with eight African American women," "I thought, you know it will be an uphill battle but I think they'll listen." "Thrilled, we're thrilled." "We were so stunned that we had such a large collection of favorable jurors." "75% of the actual jurors believed that he could not have committed these murders because he excelled at football at USC." "The only thing that could get you through some times is that guys look at each other and say, hey man, we are SC." "(laughing)" "We were about to walk in to the lockup from the court room." "OJ looked back one last time, it was me, Johnnie, we were going back to talk about everything and OJ said, "Guys, if this jury convicts me, maybe I did do it."" "(birds chirping)" "(orchestral music)" "It has taken seven months to reach this point." "We are, and I think the client, is really, really pleased, that we can have someone stand up and speak to the triers of fact." "Time to stop posturing." "Let's go to trial." "Have a good one everybody." "Five, four, three, two, one" "Council and the audience please be seated." "Alright, are both sides prepared to go forward, Mr. Cochran?" "We are, your Honor." "Ms. Clark?" "Yes, we are, your Honor." "Alright, do the people wish to make an opening statement?" "Yes we do." "Alright, you may proceed." "Mr. Darden, thank you." "When we started off, the prosecution had their team of lawyers." "Your Honor Judge Ito, Mr. Cochran," "Mr. Shapiro, and Dean Allman." "And here's this new face at the table." "And to you ladies and gentlemen of the jury," "Good morning." "And I'm like, why did they bring him here?" "And we're here today, obviously, to resolve an issue, to settle a question, a question that has been on the minds of people throughout the country these last seven months." "Certainly has been on the mind of my people up in Richmond, California and friends in Fayetteville, Georgia and all across the country and everybody wants to know, did OJ Simpson really kill Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman?" "It was apparent to everyone in America, why he was now on the case." "Well, certainly because he was black." "That was everybody- because he was a good lawyer." "He's a good lawyer, we needed to add to the team." "Strengthen the team up, that's the party line." "I thought Chris was a very good trial lawyer." "Any questions for Chris?" "He was young, he was learning." "Come on, man, come on." "Look at this guy, come on, we have to drag him over." "But he was very good." "There was a little bit of cockiness." "But it was not an offensive cockiness." "I don't care what anybody says," "I dress much better than Johnnie Cochran." "(laughing)" "Johnnie, I'm going to introduce you to my, well I'm gonna show you the rack where I buy my suits." "He had a pretty good reputation as someone who can build a case." "And of course, most notably, Chris was black." "And Marcia and I were not." "You hear a lot about this talk about justice." "I guess, Dr. Martin Luther King said it best, when he said that, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." "So, we are now, embarked upon this search for justice." "I have to tell you personally, for all the cases" "I've tried, I never felt so white." "It seems to me that the fact that blood mysteriously appears on vital pieces of evidence and it's predicted what the results will be regarding DNA, when that evidence is still in the police lab, is devastating evidence of something far more sinister." "Using the concept of a conspiracy, historically, in Los Angeles will resonate with diverse jurors, who know about this history." "You had to have someone to blame." "Detective Mark Fuhrman, now it's very interesting, that the prosecution never once mentioned his name yesterday." "It's like they just want to hide him, but they can't hide him, he's very much a part of this case." "Chris Darden saw that this case was becoming this weird referendum on the LAPD," "on the history of race in Los Angeles." "And Chris, he understood those issues." "He had worked in what was then our SID unit, which investigated police abuse cases." "They obtained those warrants simply to level and make uninhabitable those locations." "Any of the police officers that were called to testify by us, lied on the stand, it was obvious to everyone that they were lying." "Every black lawyer idolized Johnnie Cochran in 1994." "And I say, Chris Darden wanted to out-Johnnie, Johnnie." "He wanted to beat the man on the biggest stage of his career." "Police detective Mark Fuhrman, did he find or plant a bloody glove at Simpson's estate?" "Judge Lance Ito must soon decide whether the jury gets to hear about detective Fuhrman's checkered past." "We knew Fuhrman was going to be an important witness." "People had indicated that he had used racist language in an offensive way, in a way that, I think, jurors and everybody else would not like." "The N word, or any other racial epithet, has an inflammatory effect, that is incomparable, and to that specific issue," "Mr. Darden wishes to address the court, and" "I think I'll conclude my comments at this time." "Mr. Darden, good morning." "Good morning, your Honor." "Your honor, I think the best indication or evidence on just how inflammatory the use of the word is, is the fact that it appears that Mr. Cochran and I, the only two black lead lawyers on each side of the council table" "are some how dragged into this issue, to argue the issue to the court." "They used him to make the argument, that an African American jury can not listen to the utterance of that word in some sort of dispassionate, objective way." "It blinds people." "It will blind the jury." "It will blind them to the truth." "They won't be able to discern what's true and what's not." "He hit the nail right on the head." "He said, if you do this, you know, then that's all that this case is gonna be about." "All they'll think about is frame up, frame up, frame up." "All they do is mention the word, say to Mark Fuhrman, hey did you ever use that N word, and he'll say, "Yeah," and it's over." "He must have planted the glove." "I remember whispering to Johnnie, is this nigger serious?" "And I'm not saying Mark Fuhrman is a racist" "Is this nigger crazy?" "He was suffering from stress and it has to be stressful to be a police officer in the city of LA, geez the stuff that is going on in this city in the last five to six years." "Is he serious?" "Or is he just carrying the white man's bucket?" "It will give them a test, and the test will be, who's side are you on?" "The side of the white prosecutors and the white policemen or on the side of the black defendant and his very prominent and capable black lawyer." "That's what it's gonna do, either you're with the man or you're with the brothers." "I must say, and this is one of those sort of bracing moments, this is why you need diversity in newsrooms, by the way, is that I came out of there thinking that Darden made a pretty good point." "That it's such a shocking word, that I found myself flinching at the use of it." "My colleague, Andrea Ford, an African American women, was outraged." "She felt it was really insulting to blacks, to African Americans, to think they couldn't hear the word and give it the proper weight." "And I remember thinking, after talking to Andrea, wow, that didn't really occur to me." "It is a reminder, that who we are and how we're brought up does affect the way we hear things." "Thank you very much, Judge Ito." "I have a funeral to attend today but" "I would be remiss were I not at this time to take this opportunity to respond to my good friend, Mr. Chris Darden." "When Johnnie gets angry, which is very rare, you know, he's remarkably articulate and good." "Johnnie got angry that day." "His remarks this morning are perhaps the most incredible remarks" "I've heard in the court of law in the 32 years I've been practicing law." "His remarks are demeaning to African Americans as a group." "And so I want, before I go to this funeral, to apologize to African Americans across this country." "African Americans live with offensive words, offensive looks, offensive treatment every day of their lives." "To say they can't be fair is absolutely outrageous." "I am ashamed that Mr. Darden would allow himself to become an apologist for this man." "You can't justify that in a civilized society." "Nobody wants introduce race into this case, your honor." "Johnnie was dying to get the word" ""nigger" in front of the jury." "He also did it in such a way that, frankly, he made Darden look ridiculous." "To come here and testify as an expert to you of what black people think in America." "All across America, today, believe me black people are offended at this very moment." "I think that Johnnie was rough on him." "I think it hurt his feelings." "A lot of people thought that Chris would end up at the Cochran firm." "And, obviously, that didn't happen." "People had contempt for him because they felt like he was a tool that was being used." "It's a time to not to do things that it seems to me will last a person's entire career such as insulting a whole race of people who have meant so much to this country." "Let's be clear about this, the subtext of everything that Johnnie Cochran said about Chris Darden was, Uncle Tom." "And it was egregiously unfair." "Johnnie Cochran, among other things, tried OJ was an African American defendant." "When OJ Simpson didn't really have much of a reputation as an African American person, really." "I used to walk on the wild side, now I just take a brisk walk." "This was not a person that you thought of as a, kind of, iconic black figure in Los Angeles." "I mean, he lived two blocks from Mayor Riordan." "(dramatic music)" "We wanted the jury to see Bundy but the defense said, well if we're going to do that, we have to go to Rockingham." "They do not need to go to Rockingham but if they do, show them where they found the glove." "That's all that arguably relevant." "(police radios)" "We come to find that Ito was going to let them go into Rockingham." "He's going to march the jury through the inside of the house, which is relevant to what?" "No part of the crime happened inside the house." "What are we doing there?" "What we did that day is create an illusion." "When you would walk up the grand staircase there was a large wall with pictures of the family," "pictures of friends, pictures of OJ's career, problem was the overwhelming majority of pictures were of Caucasian friends and colleagues of his." "We had an African American jury and we wanted to make sure that the home setting" "would reflect the themes that we wanted to reflect." "We took all of his white friends down." "Put all of his black people up." "Pictures he probably had never seen before because that is what we were told the jury would identify with." "We made him blacker." "There was a Norman Rockwell lithograph that we took from Johnnie's office" "and we put that picture at the very top of the stairs." "We did not remove all of his pictures with white people." "The whole house would have been gone, would have been dark, we didn't do that." "You have got to be kidding me, it's night and day." "This was an African American man's house." "Who had no associations with any white guys whatsoever." "Marcia saw the wall and she said, "Carl, you know damn well, he has never had this many black people on his wall, his entire life."" "I said, "Marcia, what are talking about?" "How dare you accuse us of such things."" "I was miserable, I was angry." "That is very dirty pool." "If we had had a Latin jury, we would have had a picture of him in a sombrero, there would have been a mariachi band out front, we would have had a pinata at the upper staircase." "I objected, we went outside, we convened a hearing and I said, this has no relevance whatsoever." "They've now changed the scene." "It was never relevant to begin with and now it's completely irrelevant." "You know, the defense is always going to push the envelope, that's what they do." "It's up to the judge to stop them." "Ito let them get away with it." "(dramatic music)" "All of a sudden he became black." "They threw off the cape and now he's one of them." "I was surprised to see the depth of feeling that so many people in the black community, certainly those around the courthouse, had for him." "I feel that he is not guilty and" "I also feel that he is being unfairly treated as so have a lot of African" "American persons who have been through the judicial process." "I think that you find among black people, an incredible amount of forgiveness for anybody living through the pain" "of being black in America." "They were not involved with OJ in terms of critical thinking." "Why does he mean so much to you?" "You know, I can't answer that, this is just something that's really struck a chord with me." "And I'm just compelled to be here." "He was a black man who was on trial that they perceived that white people were trying to unfairly harm." "They're trying to railroad him, they need to find the murderer." "Go out and look for the murderer." "He's accused but we all know he didn't do it." "He was wealthy, he was powerful, he was this, he was that, there is a B-U-T, but," "he was black." "So, he didn't do it?" "No, he didn't do it." "How do you know?" "I know he didn't do it." "How do you know?" "I just know." "You may be at the top house in Beverly Hills, and I may be in the basement of a place in Watts" "but we are connected." "(dramatic music)" "(dog barking)" "(rumble of car engine)" "(barking continues)" "We got this call, and I didn't know whose house it was." "I had never been on a call there but there had been 10, 11, 12 officers that had been on various calls over the years." "Simpson is standing on the left side of the driveway, by the shrubs, holding a baseball bat." "Nicole is sitting on the front part of a 450SL Mercedes, windshield smashed in, and she's bawling, heaving, I mean, almost uncontrollably." "He's got this look on his face, like he's going to do battle." "And I say, "Put the bat down."" "And he's got this look, this rage look." "I said, "Put the bat down."" "He didn't do it the second time." "I took out my baton, and I said, "Put it down now."" "And then all of a sudden there was this calm that came over his face, he dropped it, and he goes, "Oh, sorry, Officer."" "And I went over, and she was still crying, and I said, "Do you want to make a report?"" "And she goes, "No."" "I remember saying this because it was..." "I think expressing my displeasure that she was allowing herself to be treated like this." "I said, "It's your life."" "(somber music)" "Alright, let the record reflect that we have been rejoined by all members of our jury panel." "Mr. Darden, you may continue." "Did that search warrant authorize you to drill a hole in a safe deposit box at Union Bank?" "Yes." "Whose safe deposit box was it?" "Nicole Brown Simpson." "Recognize that item?" "Yes, it was in a sealed envelope that was contained inside the safe deposit box." "The strategy had been to open the case with a couple weeks of domestic violence evidence." "Did you remove that Polaroid from Nicole Brown's safe deposit box?" "Yes, I did." "Do you know who took that photograph?" "I did." "The swelling over her right eye." "That isn't how she usually looked, is it?" "No, it's not." "Going to present all that evidence in an effort to knock Simpson off the iconic pedestal on which he stood." "And you mentioned that pictures began flying off the walls." "How did they come flying off the wall?" "O.J. was walking up the hall, or up the staircase, and he started throwing them." "He took them off the wall and started throwing them down." "Did the defendant say anything?" "He wanted her out of his house, and he threw her up against the wall, and the eyes got real angry." "It wasn't as if it was O.J. anymore." "I was so disappointed." "I just had no comprehension about it, no knowledge." "What did the defendant say about your sister's weight while she was pregnant?" "He used to call her a fat pig." "It's like finding out your wife's a bad person, you know?" "911 Emergency, (inaudible)?" "I heard a female screaming." "Hello?" "I definitely felt for Nicole." "And then I heard someone being hit." "(taped screams)" "You know, I looked at him, "You're a pretty bad person."" "He's capable of outbursts." "(inaudible) in the living room!" "If you have the personality, you can physically abuse women." "I don't want to stay on the line." "He's going to beat the shit out of me." "Wait a minute." "Well, then to me, you're also capable of murdering that woman." "She felt like she was in imminent danger, and so we made it life..." "I made it life threatening." "Miss Brown, directing your attention to June 12, 1994." "Had you and your parents and your sister planned to go somewhere after the recital was over?" "Yes we did, we were going out to dinner." "Okay, and where were you planning to go?" "We were going to Mezzaluna Restaurant." "The domestic violence testimony was the 'why' of it." "Did you invite the defendant to go to the Mezzaluna?" "No, I did not." "Did you hear anyone else invite the defendant to go to the Mezzaluna?" "No, I did not." "Abusers blame their victims for the cycle of violence, and on that particular night I think it all came to a head for him." "He went to the recital, and the Mezzaluna date was made, he was not included, and then he tries to reach Paula later that night, at 10:03, calling her twice, when he was in the Bronco." "She was not there." "And I think that was the last straw for him." "He was abandoned by Nicole, he was abandoned by Paula," "and that's why we're here." "There's a connection with abuse, and could it lead to death?" "Sure." "But I don't think they proved that." "How many times did you hear her shout, "He's going to kill me, he's going to kill me,"?" "Four or five times." "Let me tell you," "I lose respect for any woman that take an ass-whupping when she don't have to." "Don't stay in the water if it's over your head." "You'll drown." "They did not get it." "They just didn't care." "They got it, I mean, you know, it's not that complicated." "They didn't care." "So..." "Our hearts sank." "We thought, we are really going to have a tough time if our jurors don't understand how this is relevant." "The last thing I told her is that I loved her." "Knowing what I believed I knew," "I still refused to testify." "But, I get a call from Chris Darden, he said," ""Look, you know, you don't, you're not going to testify, but I need you to come down here." "I've got to ask you a couple of questions." "Would you please?"" "I went, "Okay."" "Chris is sitting there, and he goes," ""Hey, man, how you doing, what's going on?"" "30, 45 seconds goes by, someone went," ""Chris, you've got a phone call."" "He goes, "Oh, Ron, be right back."" "And as I'm sitting there," "I look in front of me, you know, where Chris was sitting," "I see this book, and it has a big Ron and Nicole on it." "I opened it up." "And I see these beautiful pictures of Nicole, with her modeling." "I keep opening it, nice pictures of Ron." "And all of a sudden, I get to the actual homicide pictures." "Now, I've seen a million homicide pictures," "I've been in, I don't know how many homicides in my 15 years as an L.A.P.D. cop." "But all of a sudden you look at some pictures of somebody you actually know." "Looked at those pictures, it changed me." "It changed me." "Everybody always beating cops up." "Man, there's a lot of stuff that we see, and we suppress." "I'll never forget the first homicide that I saw." "Oh, it was, um... excuse me." "It was a 19-year-old girl." "(police radio chatter)" "We got a call." "When I went up there, she was totally nude." "She had been beaten to a pulp, and discarded in the parking lot." "I was like, "What kind of guy would do this?"" "She was 19 years old." "I couldn't even, I couldn't make out her face, because it was beaten in so bad." "Blonde hair." "And we got a call that the guy turned himself in." "We went and picked him up." "And I sat in the back seat with this guy." "I wanted to kill him." "I mean, all I thought about is this is somebody's daughter, sister, whatever, that's never coming home." "Oh, when I saw Nicole's pictures, that was the same thing, I felt like that, with O.J." "Only an animal would do something like this to the mother of your kids." "Chris came back, and when he sat down, I said, "I'm testifying."" "He said, "What?"" "I said, "I'm testifying."" "The People call Ron Shipp to the stand, Ron." "To the stand, Mr. Shipp." "Raise your right hand, please." "Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" "Yes, I do." "Please be seated." "Traitor." "Judas." "Ronald Shipp." "R-o-n-a-l-d." "Becky called him Judas." "And what did the defendant say?" "He kind of jokingly just said, you know, you know, to be honest, Shipp, that's what he called me, Shipp." "He said, "I've had some dreams of killing her."" "This is my one moment to help put somebody who's responsible for Nicole and Ron's murder, put them in prison." "Do you and the defendant remain friends today?" "Well, I still love the guy, but..." "I don't know, I mean, this is a weird situation." "I'm sitting here." "You say you still love him." "Sure." "Did he tell the truth?" "Yeah." "But any body's that's credible, what do you have to do?" "Nothing further." "You have to destroy them." "You drink a lot, don't you?" "I used to." "You've had a drinking problem, haven't you?" "In the past I have." "They painted him out to be an alcoholic, womanizer." "Isn't it true, Sir, that you were with a friend, other than your wife." "Yes I was." "She was blonde, was she not?" "It was a friend of my wife's, that's correct." "I see." "And when you were at his home, in the dark, with the blonde, who wasn't your wife, who's here in court, you did ask that he bring you a bottle of wine." "Didn't you?" "That's correct." "They destroyed him." "You're not really this man's friend, are you, Sir?" "Well, I guess you could say" "I was like everybody else." "one of his servants." "I did police stuff for him all the time," "I ran license plates." "You weren't the kind of friend that he would share some private secret with, were you, Sir?" "Nothing except for the 1989 beating, where he needed me." "When they started lying, and they came up with all these different things." "Isn't it true, Sir, that you have told Mr. Simpson's friend that if Mr. Simpson weren't around, you might have a shot at Nicole Brown Simpson yourself?" "No, I did not." "He looked at me with that O.J. Simpson smile." "And, oh, I felt that hate come back." "I felt it come back." "Mr. Douglas, I hope you get your facts straight, okay?" "Hold on, hold on." "You're attacking me." "Hold on, Mr. Shipp." "This is sad, O.J., this is really sad." "Your Honor, I move to strike that." "I was like, "This guy deserves to rot in hell."" "I do remember that I was told, you know, after I did make that decision to testify," ""You're not alone."" "And I saw a list, they said, "These are the ones that are going to be testifying."" "But after they got through with me, everybody got amnesia." "I will not have the blood of Nicole on Ron Shipp." "I can sleep at night, unlike a lot of others." "Mr. Shipp." "I think that was the first person that it became evident that everybody's expendable." "That if the Titanic sank, O.J. was going to take a life vest for himself, but he's going to probably take yours, too, just in case." "He was a fighter, he was a hustler, he was a competitor." "To survive, to get to where he was, he had to be good, and he was." "I was struck by how engaged he was." "That when we're in court that day, you'll recall, usually I'm sitting next to him when we talk about that, you know what I mean?" "In a lot of cases, the defendant is really sort of incidental." "You really have the sense that it's legal team versus legal team, whereas I did have the sense that he was a significant player within his own team." "O.J. was brilliant in terms of how things played." "You say that the conversation with Mr. Simpson was eating you up." "Is that your statement?" "That's correct." "And did you hope to exorcise this pain from your body." "He would give me more than a few tongue lashings to make sure that I would communicate in a way that would convey the image that he thought would be best." "I remember I had some spittle on my mouth." "And he said, "Wipe your mouth!" "Wipe the spit off your mouth!"" "He took me to the woodshed." "But I was 39 years old, working on behalf of O.J. Simpson and on television." "I'm living the life of all my colleagues would dream." "So, if I had to eat a little cheese, while being on TV, that was a small price for me to pay." "What was remarkable about him was his ability to turn on the charisma." "And it, like that." "In a moment, he could smile." "He knew when the camera was on him in that courtroom, and he would be, have a really benign expression." "And when the camera moved away from him, the face fell." "Everything that happened in that courtroom was by design." "Who sat where, what colors they wore, what ties they wore." "Some days, it would be very irritating to see the games the defense was playing when they would put on those ties, that kente cloth." "Stop it." "He's communicating to the jury." "I know Johnnie well enough," "I know how he works." "Now the prosecution, Miss Clark." "They're insulting you." "They're insulting the intelligence, and the credibility of this jury." "When they implied that we are in some way trying to manipulate a predominantly black jury by my wearing this African tribal tie." "(laughter)" "That's an insult to this jury, and I am personally offended." "Not only on my behalf, but also on the behalf of my esteemed colleagues." "Mr. Shapiro..." "Mr. Bailey..." "And Mr. Scheck." "I had spent a lot of time thinking about cameras in the courtroom." "The camera is going to be out to about here." "It was supposed to be something that would really elevate the country's understanding of the American legal system." "Having the cameras in the courtroom allows everyone to see how a trial really proceeds, so then they see the actual evidence, as it's being brought out, and that's a good thing." "But that's not what happened." "There was no internet." "There was no MSNBC." "There was no FOX." "There was one cable news network, and CNN covered the case gavel to gavel." "This case was everywhere." "The Simpson Trial, by any standard, is a very, very big news story." "In this country, the O.J. Simpson." "At the O.J. Simpson Trial." "There are some big decisions to report in the O.J." "More on the O.J. Simpson story tonight on Nightline, and tomorrow night on 20/20." "I think before O.J., what was the biggest story?" "The Lindbergh kidnapping." "I can't think of one bigger than O.J." "where celebrity drove the story." "On the 3 Network Newscast, the Simpson story has been given more time in two months than any other topic this year." "There is a ravenous public appetite for this, and the fact of the matter is, it is one whale of a good story." "O.J.'s celebrity status clearly made it a big time story." "But I think the fact that you had the interracial angle there kind of juiced it and I think it had a little extra pizazz." "Here is a black man, in America, who is accused of killing a white woman." "Black hero killing white woman." "Black men killing white women, now that happens." "Nobody cares." "But black American hero killing white woman was a giant thing." "It was branded as the 'trial of the century', and my mother said, "If O.J. had killed Marguerite, this would not be the trial of the century, and his black ass would be in jail."" "The Simpson Case never felt like a real murder case." "It felt like a media circus." "I would walk out the door, and there would be the press standing right there with microphones, and cameras and I'm wearing a white dress, and the press is holding microphones in my face, and saying, "What's the significance of the white dress?"" ""What does it mean?"" "You know, it was clean." "There was a certain amount of denial" "I was living in in terms of how much attention I would get at any given point." "As you can see, Clark is smack-dab in the middle of a national debate, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the O.J. Simpson trial." "Here's more on the story from Judy Muller." "I really hated it." "The coverage of it became, you know, real infotainment." "O.J. girlfriend in Playboy," "O.J. girlfriend before Grand Jury." "O.J. Defense Tip Hotline unplugged." "O.J. houseboy's girlfriend holds news conference." "The O.J. stories are everywhere." "So is the ET coverage." "Our job is to tell people what happened today, and what was important." "We have lost sight of giving people the news in terms of its significance." "We're giving it to them in terms of what we think simply is the most titillating and the most ratings-grabbing." "You think he'd be there for you the way you were there for him?" "The celibacy thing, I don't know about." "There was so much hand- wringing at TV networks, and at The New York Times." "There was one editor at The Times who was quoted as saying, "Now I find myself reading the Enquirer every week, and chasing leads out of it."" "I think we have to ask at what point do what should be journalistic decisions become marketing decisions?" "I think a lot of the elitism went out of the mainstream media at that point." "And they're like, "Well, if this is what people want, this is what we're going to give them."" "Tonight the woman who calls herself" "Nicole Brown Simpson's best friend, Faye Resnick." "If Nicole was caught talking to the gas station attendant, he would make it seem as if she was having an affair with him." "The cameras in the courtroom, I think, gave too much notoriety to the witnesses." "I heard a thumping noise." "How many thumps did you hear?" "Three." "(thud, thud, thud)" "Someone pointed out and said," ""There's Kato Kaelin."" "I'll say, "Oh, yeah."" "And I'll gawk like everybody else." "The same can be said for all the attendants, in the courtroom, I mean, I remember one day" "I saw Marcia and she said, "Larry King is in chambers with Judge Ito."" "Did you talk about him possibly appearing on your show?" "They made everyone celebrities." "I understood money and attorneys, reputation and celebrity." "And who am I?" "I'm a nobody." "I am nobody." "I began to get some insight into Fuhrman, and I said, "There's the jugular vein."" "All we have to do is cut that." "And there's nothing left of consequence." "He was going to be their fall guy." "We all knew it." "But they were going to go after him any way they could." "We heard from a guy that Fuhrman wanted a job in South Africa." "He wanted to be in a force where you could shoot niggers that have not been accused of anything." "Another witness said Fuhrman had pulled her over, and when he did a Corvette went by with a black guy driving and a nice looking white girl." "And Fuhrman spewed out a line of epithets about how unconstitutional that was, for this guy to be running around with a white woman." "These stories were hair-raising." "These allegations get more outrageous by the minute." "And I'm stricken again by the preposterousness of the claims of the defense." "The people respectfully submit to the court that what we have here is not a defense, it's a smear campaign." "We made him a central part, consistent with the themes that he's the bogeyman." "Who is Mark Fuhrman, and what was he like?" "I got a bunch of calls from black police officers, who said, "Fuhrman is absolutely not a racist."" "His former commanding officer, who happens to be black, told me that he was one of those people who made the most remarkable turnaround, and became such an exceptional detective, and was really a good guy." "Joining us now is the former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Daryl Gates." "We knew that the police department would take a very defensive posture." "I think the record supports the fact that Mark was a good police officer." "That he was a nice young man." "He was not a racist, he was this and that." "The better he played to us." "You cannot take the words of a defense team as the gospel in the city of Los Angeles." "(applause)" "There was one glove found at the crime scene." "Its match was found at his house bearing the blood and hair and fiber from Ron and Nicole." "How does it get more incriminating than that?" "And that's why the defense knew they had to knock out that glove." "I had to go." "One way or another." "A truck hitting me, they would have done whatever it took to get rid of me." "None of them thought that I planted that glove." "But they wanted the question to loom." "I am convinced that glove was placed there." "We call that framing a guilty man." "I mean, look, cops plant guns, I mean, why do you think they plant guns?" "They don't plant guns on somebody who they perceive as innocent, they plant guns on somebody who they think is a dirt bag, and they had maybe a questionable shooting, so they needed to place the other gun in order to justify their shootings." "Mark Fuhrman picked the glove up at the scene, put it in a baggie, and carried it with him until he had a chance, with no witnesses, to plant it." "Do you realize how ignorant he sounds?" "You have a man that's a famous attorney, that has made up everything without a shred of evidence, and then you have people hook, line and sinker, go, "Yeah."" "I do not for one second believe there was any sort of conspiracy here." "15 people were at the scene before Fuhrman got there, and viewed the left-handed glove." "The right glove was found behind the bungalow when he ran into the air conditioner and dropped it." "Fuhrman would have been willing to sacrifice his career and be convicted of a felony when he didn't know who did it." "And on top of it, there's absolutely no motivation for anyone to want to do this." "O.J. had sinned having a consort, let alone a wife, of white race." "It was a capital offense in Fuhrman's mind." "So that would justify to him whatever he did." "And he had come to O.J.'s house, when Nicole complained to police, as she often did, that O.J. was going to beat her up." "When Fuhrman got there, they sent him home." "No complaint." "I think Mark Fuhrman dwelled on it, and was inspired by it." "The People call Detective Mark Fuhrman." "Detective Fuhrman, can you tell us how you feel about testifying today?" "Nervous." "Reluctant." "Will you tell us why?" "Since June 13th, it seems that" "I've seen a lot of the evidence ignored, and a lot of personal issues come to the forefront." "If I don't put him on I basically can't put the glove into evidence." "And if I don't do that, it looks like an admission that it was planted." "So I had no choice." "What did you do next?" "I asked Mr. Kaelin if anything unusual happened last night." "He said he heard a crash, or thump on his wall, he thought there was going to be an earthquake, and his picture shook." "He looks confident, he's tall, he's nice looking, has nice hair." "He came off as a nice guy to the jury." "I walked out of the driveway, and I started walking in the direction going back towards Kaelin's room." "They had no reason to doubt him." "I continued walking down the path, and saw what now I identified as a possible glove." "If he were telling the truth, that would condemn O.J." "Thank you, Sir, I have nothing further." "Early, early, early on," "Fuhrman had been a witness that Lee staked out, and he wanted to take." "I thought it required to dismantle this guy, as he should be dismantled, the work of somebody with a lot of cross-examination experience." "I was the only one on the Defense team that fit that bill." "He's one of my heroes." "F. Lee Bailey." "Mr. Bailey, what do you think" "Sam Sheppard's chances are of going free?" "Sam is free, and he's going to stay that way and the odds are astronomical." "F. Lee Bailey was one of the great criminal advocates of his time, for sure." "He pioneered a lot of, you know, great techniques as a criminal defense lawyer." "As far as I'm concerned right now, Lee Bailey is the doctor, he's a surgeon, and I do what he tells me." "He was obviously a man of great ability." "Detective Fuhrman, you went out there in the alley, where you've never been before." "Yes, I went in that pathway." "You walked there by yourself, correct?" "Yes." "You had three detectives, who were armed, in the house, and didn't tell any of them where you were going, correct?" "That's correct." "The purpose of a cross-examination is to peel back the witness' outer skin, and let the jury see what's underneath." "If it's a saint, you're going to get buried, but if it's a Fuhrman, you'll be making money every minute of the day." "Didn't it seem strange to you that after seven and a half hours that glove still showed moist, sticky blood," "Detective Fuhrman?" "No, I knew nothing at that time when it was deposited, or left there." "That's seven and a half hours." "That's enough for blood to dry, isn't it?" "Under certain conditions, yes, I'm sure it would be." "Unless it's encased in plastic, or rubber, and evaporation is stopped." "Wouldn't you agree?" "No." "I thought Mark Fuhrman told the truth about what happened." "But, F. Lee Bailey, in his brief star turn, knew how to pin him down." "Detective Fuhrman, when you said earlier that you were concerned about matters that you viewed as irrelevant, that was about certain language that some find offensive." "Yes." "Okay." "I tried to put my best demeanor forward, and as professional as I could, but it was pure survival mode." "Do you use the word nigger in describing people?" "No, sir." "Have you used that word in the past ten years?" "Not that I recall, no." "You mean, if you called someone a nigger, you have forgotten it?" "I'm not sure I can answer that question the way you phrased it, Sir." "I had a dozen witnesses that would bury him as a racist, so I wanted him to lie." "Do you have difficulty understanding the question?" " Yes." " I'll rephrase." "I want you to assume that perhaps at some time, since 1985 or six, you addressed a member of the African-American race as a nigger." "Is it possible that you have forgotten that act on your part?" "No, it's not possible." "No I didn't, yes I did." "Which one's right?" "One you're lying, one you're a racist." "I whacked him with it really hard." "In the face." "And you say under oath, that you have not addressed any black person as a nigger or spoken about black people as niggers in the past 10 years, Detective Fuhrman?" "That's what I'm saying, Sir." "So that anyone who comes to this court, and quotes you as using that word, in dealing with African-Americans would be a liar, would they not, Detective Fuhrman?" "Yes, they would." "All of them." " Correct?" " All of them." "I didn't use that word to people." "Face to face, suspect to police." "Had I ever used the word?" "Well, obviously, yes." "That's all I have, Your Honor." "Alright, thank you very much." "You're excused, Sir." "Once Judge Ito allowed race into this trial, there was no escaping anything for me." "I had a visceral reaction to Fuhrman's testimony." "It just didn't seem credible." "Another cop, white cop." "Prejudice, bias." "Watch out." "The way you work around something like that is to deal with the physical objective evidence that we had." "This was a case about blood." "That was the heart of the case." "Simpson had cuts on his left hand, particularly on the middle knuckle." "How did you get the injury on your hand?" "I don't know." "To the left hand side of the bloody shoe prints, walking away, there were five blood drops found." "Those blood drops were tested through different DNA analyses, and by different labs, and it came back to Simpson." "Quite simply, that was Simpson's blood." "Inside the Bronco we have Nicole's blood, we have Ron's blood smeared inside there, and we have O.J.'s blood." "2.1 miles away from the Bundy crime scene, we've got blood drops in the driveway, blood drops inside the house." "The best thing about scientific evidence is that it's objective, it doesn't have biases or prejudices, that's why we concentrated so much on DNA." "We went to two labs, first time ever that's been done." "We gave them sample after sample." "We gave the opportunity to prove that it wasn't O.J. Simpson." "I could have been the biggest hero, perhaps in Los Angeles, if not the country, if I could have walked into court a week after he'd been arrested, and said, "Guess what?" "It's not O.J. Simpson."" "But all the DNA evidence points to Mr. Simpson as being the person who committed those horrible crimes." "I think a lot of people stayed supportive up until the DNA." "I was 99.9% sure he was the killer right then." "As the results were coming in," "Mr. Simpson was saying, "Look, you know," "I can't explain it, but it's not true."" "There were six lawyers in court." "Sometimes seven, nine behind the scenes." "There were two lawyers, Barry and Johnnie." "Barry did the science, and Johnnie did everything else." "And even Barry did everything else." "He had a single minded focus, and purpose, and he emerged over the course of the trial as second chair in the case." "Good morning, Mr. Fung." "How are you, Sir?" "Morning." "My favorite lawyer was Barry Scheck." "He was the most colorful." "I thought he was brilliant." "Why don't we talk about the envelope for a minute." "There was a key piece of evidence which was the envelope that Ronald Goldman was bringing back to Nicole, and there was some foot impressions in blood on the envelope." "Mr. Fung, when you are collecting an item which could contain fingerprints, you would not touch that item with your bare hand, would you?" "I would try not to." "Well, you say you try not to, it would be wrong to do that." "Wouldn't it?" "Yes." "We had looked at hours and hours and hours of news footage of Mr. Fung and Miss Mazzola picking up items of evidence at the crime scene." "Did you touch that envelope with your bare hands while collecting it, Mr. Fung?" "No." "Are you sure of that?" "Yes." "I'd like to show you this piece of videotape, Mr. Fung." "There, there." "How about that, Mr. Fung?" "Is that a question, Mr. Scheck?" "Yes, how about that picture, Mr. Fung, does that refresh your recollection that you took the envelope from Andrea Mazzola with your bare hand?" "It could be anything." "They called it a Perry Mason moment." "You know, it was just a good impeachment of the witness but in some ways it really encapsulated the problem that they'd used terrible methods in terms of gathering this evidence and potentially cross-contaminating it and destroying it, just very precious" "crime scene evidence." "I found that the specimen handling procedures were done in such a manner that there's a tremendous risk of the potential of cross contamination." "Something we'd never do unless you absolutely have to is cover a body because of contamination." "A sheet was over the body." "You recall seeing that?" "I believe it was a blanket, yes." "Do you know where that blanket came from?" "I believe the inside of the house." "And can you tell us, Detective, who took this blanket out and put it over the body, who did that?" "I did." "You have to make some decisions to protect the evidence." "Cameras were looking right down on the crime scene, all the evidence, the bodies." "As a general principle as a criminalist, you try at all costs to avoid taking an object that could have lots of hairs and fibers on it, and putting it right into the middle of a crime scene, don't you?" "That's correct." "That's a terrible mistake from the point of view of a criminalist, isn't it?" "Yes." "Over the past few days, the defense has chipped away at the growing presumption of O.J. Simpson's guilt." "The way evidence was collected, the way it was processed, the way it was stored gave rise to reasonable question as to whether something wrong could've happened." "You did not change gloves between the collection of each sample, did you?" "Not that I can recall, no." "Dennis Fung was a definite weak link." "This kid, he tries, okay?" "They ripped him up terribly." "On July 3rd, you saw blood on the gate that you collected." "Yes." "Let's look back at the picture of the gate on June 13th." "Where is it, Mr. Fung?" "I can't see it in the pic... photograph." "We don't know what happened to that blood." "All I know is when I was listening, they was saying they took a picture where there wasn't no blood on the back gate." "And then a month later, there was some blood." "Why it didn't get picked up, why it didn't get collected, difficult to explain." "In the fog of war, people on the scene and all the activity going on around it, things get missed." "It is my opinion that, that the bloodstain contained EDTA." "EDTA is a preservative that was added to the blood samples taken from Simpson, and the victims, and if EDTA is present on the evidence, the defense says the blood may have been planted." "In your blood right now there is a low level of EDTA, because it's in everything you eat, it's in the laundry detergent, it's everywhere." "You're going to find EDTA no matter what you do." "But the defense is trying to insinuate that somebody took the blood that had been drawn from Simpson's arm, and took that test tube, and sprinkled it all over the crime scene." "And it's ridiculous." "When you took O.J.'s blood sample, you were at a place called Parker Center?" "Yes, sir." "What type of security did you use for that blood vial?" "I placed it in a manila envelope, maintained control of it, and hand-delivered it to the criminalist." "Where was the criminalist?" "At Rockingham." "You're bringing the suspects blood back to a crime scene where we're collecting blood?" "Really?" "How many times have you taken blood from Parker Center out to a crime scene?" "I don't know, this may have been the first time." "I don't know." "I can't recall right now any other times that I've done that." "If you're a juror who has grown up in Los Angeles, and spent your whole life hearing that the L.A.P.D." "is capable of doing anything to a Black person, and you hear that, you've just been handed some doubt." "When did we start carrying blood in our pocket?" "When did our SID lab stop wearing gloves?" "When did we not book stuff in a timely fashion?" "That... there's no rationale for that." "We had a, I think, a pretty good demonstrative of a black box." "The idea was that certain crime scene evidence came in and the black box was the L.A.P.D., and the way they handled the evidence, and on the other side were all the results from Cellmark, the F.B.I., the DNA laboratories." "It was pretty simple when you broke it down." "Garbage in, garbage out." "I mean, you cannot go back and say," ""Well, maybe they planted evidence on the glove," ""maybe on the back gate, oh, there's blood missing."" "Big deal." "How can that be a big deal?" "Scheck was very disingenuous." "I mean, EDTA, missing blood, coincidence?" "Corroboration." "Something is terribly wrong." "It was absolute nonsense." "You believe that that blood was planted by the L.A.P.D.?" "You know, it's not my job to believe, or not believe." "Could the police officers in Los Angeles have planted evidence against Mr. Simpson in this case to improve their chances of winning?" "You know, there was certainly good evidence to support that hypothesis." "Barry Scheck really was an expert." "Can you remember the whole business about development length and the notion of controls failing?" "He knew that so much of what he was trying to show with these witnesses was just garbage." "Mr. Yamauchi opened up the reference tube in the morning and spilled out the blood." "It was unethical." "He argued things he knew were not true, he knew could not be true." "The most likely and probable inference is the one that is not for the timid or the faint of heart." "Somebody played with this evidence." "And there's no doubt about it." "Just so I'm clear, you believe that all the blood evidence in the case..." "You know, you're asking me this question, do I believe..." "Think, you know, is not the, because you're... the, as you know from meticulously researching this case, and this has been written about, we presented, you know, sound arguments and evidence to explain each piece of this evidence," "and how it got there." "You know, I'm not omniscient." "Do you think you did what you needed to do?" "I did the best I could." "It's the best defense money can buy, and that's very expensive." "For O.J. Simpson, an estimated 50,000 dollars a day." "O.J. had money to spend, and a willingness to spend it on his own defense." "This was the first for me." "Zillionaires, one of a kind." "He'd been in jail two or three days, tops." "The first thing he wanted to do is to make sure that we started marketing and merchandising and generating a lot of money." "Because O.J. was not convicted of any crime, and autographs was his normal business," "he was allowed to still sign autographs in jail." "Rather than taking a jersey into the jail to be signed, he would take a number in, like this, he would sign the number, and then the number would be put onto a jersey like this." "Rather than being able to take in a whole football, would take in a panel." "He would sign the panel, then the panel would be sent in to the company, then you'd have a football." "I'm not sure what drove the market, but it was driven." "It was nonstop." "There were times he'd sit there, and go through 2500 cards." "And then say, "Okay, so 2500 cards times 25 dollars."" "He'd run the math." "And he said, "Not bad."" "He sat in jail, we did three million dollars in autographs." "It just went and went and went." "There was no end." "Photos of he and Johnnie Cochran that he and Johnnie signed." "That's probably the only item that" "I did it, and I'd look back, and I thought," ""Man, this sucks, I can't believe we did this."" "The Goldmans were screaming, but you're innocent until convicted." "What was found on the glove at Rockingham?" "Simpson's blood, Nicole's blood, Ron's blood." "That glove is now tied into three people, that can only intersect when they're bleeding." "That might be a time frame that might be a little difficult to put together, unless you are killing two people and cutting yourself." "Whoever wore that glove killed those people?" "Yes." "I'd like to show you a pair of gloves." "Showing you People's 164A." "That is an Aris Leather Light glove that was an exclusive glove for Bloomingdale's." "And what is the size?" "Size is extra large." "Is that a Bloomingdale's credit card sales receipt?" "Yes." "And is there a signature on the credit card receipt?" "Yes." "Can you read that signature to us?" "Nicole Brown." "It was later in the afternoon, and the person they had giving the testimony regarding the glove." "Wait, may I try this on?" "You could see where it was leading up to." "So, this is an extra large glove?" "Yes." "Extra large is kind of small?" "No, but they stretch." "Obviously, it was too big." "At 24 years old I could see this is a trick." "Don't fall for it." "We can see that that glove is big on his hand." "You don't have to do anything." "That afternoon I got a call from Marcia, basically affirming the game plan, "We're not trying the glove on, right?"" "There's too much of a gamble here." "It's shrunk, he's probably been working out his hand, absolutely not." "I went over to him, and said, "Chris, you know you're a good shit, but you've got the balls of a stud field mouse." "That glove won't fit O.J., and if you don't show the jury that, be it the fact, I will."" "Chris says, "I want to do it."" "And I told him in no uncertain terms why we should not be doing this, and he said, "Well, if we don't, they will."" "And I said, "Then let them, let them." "And we can show why it was a bullshit experiment, it was never going to work, between the shrinkage and the latex, it's never going to fit him the same way." "Don't do this." "It was the biggest fight Chris and I ever had." "Darden, I think felt, "You know, I've been pushed around in this courtroom enough, I've been made to feel small."" "You could see the disaster coming." "There's a camera to our right." "Watching everything." "Johnnie comes back from sidebar, and says," ""Okay guys, they're going to ask O.J. to try on the gloves." "I don't want anyone to react."" "We've been rejoined by all the members of our jury panel." "Mr. Darden, do you have any further questions of Mr. Rubin?" "Just a few, Your Honor." "Your Honor, at this time, the People would ask that Mr. Simpson step forward and try on the glove recovered at Bundy, as well as the glove recovered at Rockingham." "He can do that seated there." "You could hear a pin drop." "O.J. was initially seated, putting on the first glove." "I'm handing Mr. Simpson the left glove from Rockingham." "And right when it was clear it did not fit," "O.J. goes into Naked Gun mode." "He stands up, and shows his hand, and that's when he's now, "Okay."" "The guy's an actor, for God sakes." "He's playing to 50 million people." "Alright, records reflect Mr. Simpson has both gloves." "What was he going to do?" "Make a good faith effort with plastic over his hands?" "Alright, will you show that to the jury," "Mr. Simpson, and the (inaudible)" "The whole thing was so wildly in conceived, so totally inappropriate, so doomed to failure." "The idea that Chris Darden would do this." "Mr. Darden, would you wrap it up, please?" "I looked at him like, "I can't believe you did it." "You let him play you." "You are the weaker one."" "And you didn't have to be." "You just take the gloves, you take both attorneys, and the deputy, and the suspect, and you go into chambers." "And you do it on the record in chambers." "You don't do it with latex underneath." "My grandson couldn't have gotten into those gloves with latex underneath." "Did you observe the manner in which Mr. Simpson put the gloves on today?" "Yes, I did." "You've seen people put gloves on in the past." "Yes, I have." "Did he put the gloves on in a manner consistent with what you've seen other people..." "Objection, your honor..." "Sustained." "The jury observed what happened." "It made the prosecution look silly." "Anything unusual about the way" "Mr. Simpson put the gloves on, based on your experience?" "Object, Your Honor." "Sustained." "I felt sorry for him." "Because he looked weak." "I have nothing further." "This was the definition of the trial lawyer's mistake." "Don't ask a question to which you don't know the answer." "He didn't know whether that glove fit." "Chris honestly felt that he would have a dramatic courtroom moment by demonstrating the gloves fit." "It was an intuitive move on his part, and it was a mistake." "Had O.J. never put that glove on," "I would have assumed that it fit." "I saw how big it was." "And that's when I just knew that, you know, why is this guy here?" "He's ruining this case." "Outside of Perry Mason, what could be more dramatic than O.J. Simpson showing the jury that the killer's gloves don't fit." "Prosecutorial attempts at damage control might not be able to undermine the power of that image." "The funny thing about the glove, he didn't want to put them on." "I said, "Look, if you're worried about the gloves fitting or not fitting, just don't take your arthritis medicine, no big deal."" "And he said, "Mike, my hands would hurt like hell."" "And I said, "Why would they hurt like hell?"" "And he, and you could just see the light click, you know, just, ah, hands would get swollen, and couldn't bend his knuckles." "So, he didn't take arthritis medicine for like two weeks." "Do you think that made a difference?" "Well, he couldn't bend his hands." "You tell me." "One day a friend of O.J.'s, Alan Austin, came up to me, and he said, "Answer a question for me." "What would Mark Fuhrman have to know before he placed the glove there?"" "Well, I don't know." "He said, "He would have to know that" "Orenthal James Simpson, a six foot two and a half black guy living in a white world had no alibi." "He was in no woman's bed, he was in no restaurant, he was on no airplane, he had no alibi." "So how could Mark Fuhrman place that glove if he didn't know that?"" "And I said, "Are you telling me he's guilty?"" "And Alan just nodded." "And the tears were streaming down my face." "And suddenly, I felt cuckolded." "Because I'm telling you if O.J. had put his face up to the glass to me, and said," ""Something happened, and I just snapped, and I went crazy."" "I would've defended and forgiven him." "When he put his face next to the glass, and said, "I swear to God I didn't do this,"" "and then it suddenly looked like he did," "I got angry, I felt wounded, I felt betrayed." "I know it sounds naive, I know it sounds stupid, it just didn't occur to me that he could do that." "Dr. Golden dictating autopsy case 94-05136, autopsy on Nicole Brown Simpson." "Having studied the crime scene," "I believe that Nicole had come out of the house expecting Ron Goldman." "She encountered O.J., then she was quickly subdued." "There was evidence of blunt force trauma near the crown of her head, possibly consistent, per the testimony of the coroner with having been struck by the butt end of the knife." "Scalp bruised, right parietal." "I believe she went down." "Four stab wounds, three deep, one shallow were inflicted upon the left side of her neck." "Her head was on the first step above the lower pavement level where the rest of her body was." "I believe that Ron Goldman came upon the scene after Nicole had been subdued." "As Ron came upon Nicole, as he moved forward, to the fallen Nicole, O.J. grabbed Ron from behind, and probably had the knife at his throat." "Simpson's left hand was perhaps around Ron's chest, and in the course of short exchange, which could have include some sort of taunting," "Simpson poked Ron in the right cheek five times, and then drew the knife blade twice across his throat." "I suspect Ron, in an effort to free himself from Simpson's grasp, went to the hand that was controlling him, Simpson's left hand, grabbed it, pulled it and probably in the process wrenched the glove from Simpson's hand," "hence the left hand glove being found in the foliage." "And then Ron turned with his back inside the security bars at the foot of the stairs, it was in effect a killing cage." "Ron had bars to his left, bars behind him, tree to his right, stairwell coming down, and he had a very strong, powerful figure with a very sharp knife slashing at him." "Ron suffered defense wounds to both of his hands, deep defensive wounds, so he's clearly trying to parry the knife." "He suffered a number of stab wounds, as he's twisting and turning in the scene." "At one point Simpson catches Ron, with a, it was kind of a sweeping stabbing motion to Ron's left flank." "And the knife blade penetrates Ron's abdomen, and almost completely severs his abdominal artery." "You've got about a minute to live because of the massive bleed out." "Blood is filling Ron's abdominal cavity, blood is pouring out of the wound of Ron's left flank, soaking the left pants leg of Ron." "And ultimately after a matter of some seconds, it's hard to determine how many, I believe" "Ron simply sank to the ground in a seated position with his back against the upright bars." "As we know from the evidence, there was movement between the two bodies." "I suspect Simpson went back to Nicole's body, lifted her head by grabbing her blonde head hair, and causing the massive incise wound across her neck, in the process severing just about everything in her neck and putting a quarter-inch nick" "in her C3 vertebrae." "This is a fatal sharp force injury." "Simpson moves back to Ron Goldman, grabs his shirt so it would be above Ron's right shoulder, transferring blood, head hairs, from Nicole to Ron's shirt, twists Ron's body to the side," "and we know there were four deep intersecting knife wounds to the left side of Ron's neck." "In my opinion, overkill." "With regard to Ron, overkill." "With regard to Nicole." "Simpson at this point stepped back, stepped in the blood that's pumping from Nicole, and in what appears to be a very even stride, goes up the steps, and out of the crime scene, towards the back of the house," "towards the alley, where the Bronco had to have been parked." "(barking dog)" "Listen." "I just flat out, categorically deny the fact that he could do that." "Period." "I came up from court one day, and Bill said, "I've got some bad news."" "More, again?" "He said, "There are some tapes."" "What if it could be proved that Detective Mark Fuhrman lied on the witness stand when he denied ever using the word nigger?" "Oh, no." "Both sides want to get their hands on the twelve hours of taped interviews" "Fuhrman gave screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny as background for her fictional script on L. A. police." "On the tapes, Fuhrman used racial epithets and talked of framing people." "What the fuck, dude?" "We were not aware of the tapes." "Should he have told you about them?" "We were not aware of the tapes." "It was pennies from heaven." "We'd been given a gift." "Miss Drummond." "Listening to that, I just felt like somebody opened up a drainpipe and just rolled it over my body." "Things that were said resonated with things I had heard for 30 years or more about the way that cops think, and act." "When you hear those things, some of the characters in that screenplay" "I wrapped around some of the people that I knew, on L.A.P.D. and other departments." "I can remember where I heard them," "I can remember some who said them, and then there's a little exaggeration in it." "Fuhrman may say he was just fictionalizing, but his words rang true." "Does that mean that he planted a glove?" "No, it doesn't mean he planted a glove." "It doesn't even necessarily mean that he's an authentic racist." "But it means he's prepared to act like one." "Yeah, it was pretty bad." "And there's nothing that you can take back, there's not like a, "Oh, gee, gosh, I'm sorry."" "We came to this court seven months ago, expecting a fair trial." "My son had a right to it, we as a family had a right to it," "Nicole and her family had a right to it." "Instead we get this crap spewed in front of the cameras for two hours." "For what purpose?" "I'd love to know what the judge had in mind." "This is now the Fuhrman trial." "It's not the trial of O.J. Simpson, who is accused of murdering my son and Nicole." "(crowd chanting) We want justice!" "In all their ugliness, the tapes have now been made public, but Judge Lance Ito has yet to decide if the jury will hear what others already have." "The tapes shall be released." "We want them now." "We want justice now." "The judge was on the fence as to whether or not he was going to let certain stuff come in." "That required people speaking out to say, "This is not something you should be hiding from they jury."" "We know that if you can railroad O.J. Simpson with his millions of dollars and his Dream Team of legal experts, we know what you can do to the average African-American and other decent citizens in this country." "It was bigger than O.J. Simpson." "Something larger than him is at stake." "Release the tapes, release the tapes." "O.J. Simpson became a symbol of that decade, of that time, of that response to has the mentality of America changed in the civil rights struggle." "Or is it business as usual?" "(chanting)" "For me, as a progressive Christian," "Democrat, I'm going like, "When are we going to go back to the evidence?"" "You would find yourself in a room of ministers and community leaders, and the conversation inevitably would go back to O.J. and how O.J. was being mistreated." "Justice be done in the courtroom, we pray, "Yes!"" "We are talking about justice!" "Instead of getting in and saying, "Free O.J.", as if he was a political prisoner, it for me was, "Let me just get quiet."" "Let me sit there and say nothing." "Free O.J., free O.J." "I really do believe privately a lot of African-American leaders felt the same." "If this case gets covered up under the rug, we will never trust the criminal justice system again." "You turned O.J. Simpson into a civil rights cause." "Do you at all regret that?" "Absolutely not." "O.J. Simpson was a vessel." "He was merely a tool that allowed something to come out and be exposed." "So you were using O.J. Simpson for your own cause?" "I was using O.J. Simpson for our cause." "For black people's cause." "There was a realness to the people who were responding to the Fuhrman tapes outside the courtroom." "What was going on inside the courtroom was manipulation to the extreme." "This is a blockbuster." "This is a bombshell." "This is perhaps the biggest thing that's happened in any case in this country in this decade, and they know it." "They've got to face up to it!" "No one planted any evidence at any time." "There has been no false statement made about where that evidence was found, the analysis of the evidence or its results." "And the defense wants to squirm away from that fact by playing the race card." "This isn't about any race card." "This is about credibility card." "This is about perjury." "The whole case got forgotten." "It was all about Fuhrman now, it was all about racial injustice." "Occasionally these cartoonists come up with something that's edifying." "It's a little child, speaking to his mother, watching television, who says," ""What's the forbidden 'N' word they keep" ""talking about, Mommy?"" "She said, "Nicole."" "O.J. Simpson's defense team, stunned by Judge Ito's ruling last night, that only two excerpts of the inflammatory" "Fuhrman tapes, filled with racial slurs, may be presented to the jury." "We think this jury is much smarter than this judge gives them credit for." "What he let in was enough." "Then we have two excerpts Your Honor, we would like to play at this point, if we could." "It's a slap." "It's a slap." "Every time you hear it." "We have no niggers where I grew up." "Do you recall him saying that?" "Yes." "To hear anybody speak on race like that, is not okay with me." "When Officer Fuhrman used the word nigger, it was not lighthearted, it was something that he would use in normal conversation." "Devastating." "I believe those tapes never should have been allowed in." "What is the nexus between the tapes and the murder?" "What does it have to do with the evidence?" "What proof is there that any evidence was planted?" "Well, it definitely became believable that he was capable." "And I didn't have trust in him anymore." "He was using it in a demeaning, derogatory fashion." "You're saying what's on those tapes is not reflective of your attitudes, or your experiences?" "I don't know how you feel, or see me, but I can tell you this." "You would be shocked if you saw me in the field." "I was so fair beyond, beyond all scope of what you had to be." "Fighting?" "I didn't use tasers." "I didn't use sticks." "When I fought a suspect, I fought straight up." "I was fair on the street." "There was a time that I was pretty violent." "But that was long before I was on the police force." "Alright, Mr. Uelmen, I take it at this point you wish to recall Detective Fuhrman?" "Yes, Your Honor." "I didn't want to look at him, he made me sick." "You have been a liar throughout." "And the only reason I know that you didn't plant the evidence is because you couldn't have." "Otherwise, I'm with them." "Detective Fuhrman, was the testimony that you gave at the preliminary hearing in this case completely truthful?" "I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege." "And one of the most shocking moments was when he took the Fifth." "You don't see police officers take the Fifth." "Have you ever falsified a police report?" "I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege." "Any kind of questioning is going to help to convict him one way or another so he had to take the Fifth to avoid incriminating himself." "A lot of people don't understand about the Fifth." "If you answer one question, you answer them all." "I can't let the Defense attorney just run with me." "I had to plead the Fifth." "Is it your intention to assert your" "Fifth Amendment privilege with respect to all questions that I ask you?" "Yes." "Could I have a moment?" "Certainly." "That's the main question." "I mean, he didn't ask the main question." "Did you plant the glove?" "That was the most important." "It didn't matter, he wasn't going to answer." "I only need one other question, Your Honor." "What was that, Mr. Uelmen?" "Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?" "Hell, no, I don't plant evidence." "That's your response." "And you get incensed." "L.A.P.D. cops don't plant evidence." "I made a damn fool of myself by using a racial epithet, I never should have done that." "You lay it out, because you've got nothing else to lose." "I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege." "He didn't do that." "Why in the hell wouldn't you do that?" "For you, it's a documentary." "For me, it's the end of my life." "Now I'm going to tell you a story." "In 1989," "I was married, I had a house, had a daughter that was born in '91, a son that was born in '93." "Had this group of friends, unbelievable friends." "Every one of them was different than me, though." "They all came from intact families, fathers, houses they still go back to, rooms that they still had, but they welcomed me into this group." "I thought I had it made." "I finally was really happy for the first time in my life." "Then I answered a phone." "I call upon the public to remember that Mark Fuhrman is not the L.A.P.D." "The vast majority of men and women at L.A.P.D." "are hardworking, honest people." "They're husbands, they're wives, they're sons, they're daughters." "They have mortgages." "They have kids they want to get through school." "They work two and three jobs just like I did as a young officer in the sixties and seventies." "And they want to divorce themselves from what they've heard these past few weeks." "I believe the police force did their job, and did it correctly, and I cannot see any way that the framing of O.J. is something that is valid." "All the evidence points back to the police department, and it looks like a major setup to me." "I think he's innocent." "And not just because I want him to be, it's just based upon the facts that have been given." "I have found most people to be vehemently convinced that O.J. Simpson is guilty of this double murder." "Well, I believe that he was set up." "And he's a black man in America, and black men in America have a hard time getting justice." "O.J. was known as a very good Black man who had appeal across the board, racially." "Whether O.J.'s guilty or not, is maybe why you're here." "But my theory's that people who live out in Iowa, or out in farmland, who've never interacted with us, will suddenly have a negative opinion of us." "The Black man's image, and the beating that it's taken after we've worked so hard to show that we're not all criminals." "The long awaited closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson trial." "This is the last great hurdle for the lawyers, as they try to convince the jury that their version of events is the right one." "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen." "Good morning." "Finally." "I feel like it's been forever since I've talked to you." "It kind of has." "I got up, and I spoke to them." "I gave my argument." "In the course of presenting all of this evidence, some evidence has been presented to you that really is not relevant to answer the question of who murdered Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown." "And it's up to you, the jury, to weed out the distractions, weed out the sideshows and determine what evidence is it that really helps me answer this question." "I thought, "They're listening with half an ear."" "From 9:36 until 10:54, the defendant's whereabouts were unaccounted for." "At 10:43, Allan Park, the limo driver, saw a person approximately six feet tall, two hundred pounds, African-American, wearing all dark clothing walking up the driveway." "Stone faced." "Marcia Clark." "You are truly a marvelous jury." "Perhaps the most patient, and healthy jury we've ever seen." "When Johnnie was up there, they were, "Oh, we're there, we are there."" "Like the defining moment in this trial, the day Mr. Darden asked Mr. Simpson to try on those gloves and the gloves didn't fit, remember these words." "It was the weekend after the glove demonstration, and we were talking, and you know," "Jerry was on the speaker phone." "He says, "Hey guys, hey, hey hey." "I've got, I've got a phrase."" "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." "The room then erupted." "High fiving, hey, hey, hey." "What everybody remembers about Johnnie Cochran's summation is, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."" "Which was cute and fine, but it wasn't the heart of the summation." "The heart of the summation was, "Whose side are you on?"" "When you go back in the jury room, some of you may want to say that, "Well, gee, you know," "boys will be boys, this is just like police talk, this is the way they talk."" "That's not acceptable." "That's the consciousness of this community." "If you adopt that attitude, that's why we have this." "There's no more powerful a narrative in American society than that of race." "A racist is somebody who has power over you who can do something to you." "A police officer, in the street, a patrol officer is the single most powerful figure in the criminal justice system." "He can take your life." "And that's why, that's why this has to be rooted out." "He was magical to watch in court." "Just magical." "Stop this cover-up." "Stop this cover-up." "If you don't stop it, then who?" "Do you think the police department's going to stop it?" "Do you think the D.A.'s office is going to stop it?" "Do you think we can stop it by ourselves?" "It has to be stopped by you." "It offended me, because he was using a very serious, for real issue, racial injustice, in defense of a man who wanted nothing to do with the black community." "Van Atter, with his big lies, and then we have" "Fuhrman come right on the heels, and these two twin devils of deception, it's part of a culture of getting away with things." "It's part of a culture of looking the other way." "If we determine the rules as we go along, nobody's going to question us." "We're the L.A.P.D." "He and that team were willing to go anywhere that they could to get the killer off." "It's just not honorable." "It's not right." "Officer Fuhrman went on to say that he would like nothing more than to see all niggers gathered together and killed." "He said something about burning them, or bombing them." "There was another man who had those same views." "People didn't care." "People said, "He's just crazy, he's just a half-baked painter."" "They didn't do anything about it." "This man, this scourge became one of the worst people in the history of this world, Adolf Hitler." "The word Hitler had not been in any of the prior drafts." "People didn't care and didn't try to stop him." "He had the power over his racism." "And his anti-religions." "And nobody wanted to stop him, and it ended up in World War II." "I found his closing arguments to be irresponsible." "Thank you, very, very much." "I appreciate your attention." "We have seen a man who perhaps is the worst kind of racist himself." "Someone who shoves racism in front of everything." "Someone who compares a person who speaks racist comments to Hitler." "This man is a disgrace to human beings." "(inaudible) No." "He is one of the most disgusting human beings" "I have ever had to listen to in my life." "He suggests because of racism, we should put aside all other thought, all other reason, and set his murdering client free." "He's a sick man and he ought to be put away." "Johnnie pushed." "I may have used a different analogy but I can't criticize what he did." "Did you go too far with the Hitler analogy?" "Some people are offended by that." "Excuse us, excuse us." "Could you answer it for us, Johnnie?" "Yes." "The playing of the race card as he did in all respects, insinuations that were made," "impacted how I felt about Johnnie." "Do you owe an apology to Fred Goldman?" "He owes an apology to me." "I am so tired of the unfair suggestion that Johnnie Cochran played the race card." "We played the credibility card." "We played the evidence card, man." "You have to look at the evidence in a case." "And who in America can deny the fact that Mark Fuhrman is a genocidal racist?" "He's their witness, he's in the middle of this case, so race has to be an issue." "It would have been contrary to our oath as advocates to ignore race." "And to not exploit it, given the circumstances and the context of this case, in this city and in this time." "The attorneys are telling my brother's story." "And it's very shocking that once Johnnie gets up and starts telling what we feel happens, that this has rocked somebody's world." "I think it's time for everybody to wake up, and realize that we are in a for-real world, and we have dealt with racism all our lives." "Every single day." "It's hard, it's really hard." "This guy's on trial for his life." "Not one word that Johnnie Cochran said was objected to, by the prosecution." "Unlawful, under the rules of evidence." "So, what's the problem?" "On the other hand, really?" "O.J. Simpson as civil rights victim?" "Hero?" "It was disgusting." "It was appalling." "What was your feeling when Mr. Cochran compared Mr. Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler?" "Your personal feeling, Sir?" "I'll address that after the jury verdict." "(suspenseful music)" "One month after the murders, in July last year, 63% of whites thought Simpson was guilty." "65%¤ of blacks thought he was innocent." "And now, more than a year later, with all of the evidence, having been laid out, 77% of whites think Simpson is guilty, and 72% of blacks believe he is innocent." "blacks and whites are actually farther apart." "It's not even the trial of the century anymore." "Suddenly, the case of The People Versus O.J. Simpson has become the trial of Los Angeles." "(crowd murmuring)" "All right, let's see what O.J. can do." "He's got it up and he holds it good enough to get a call from the referee." "O.J. Simpson stands up and that one is hit hard to left." "High enough, wind helps, it's gone." "Watch this." "Tell me how many right-handers you've ever seen do this, pick off the five ten." "(cheering)" "Juice is moving 'em out." "He's gotta good run going." "Ready for the hurdle, this is gonna be a good time for O.J. Simpson." "(melancholy trumpet music)" "Ladies and gentleman, thank you for your patience." "I have just a few final instructions that I need to give to you before you start your deliberations on this matter." "You are reminded that you must not be influenced by mere sentiment, sympathy, passion, prejudice, public opinion, or public feeling." "Both the prosecution and the defendant have a right to expect that you will conscientiously consider and weigh all the evidence, apply the law as I have instructed you and reach a just verdict regardless of the consequences." "There's a rough rule of thumb for jury deliberations." "One day of deliberation for each week of trial." "So, we all settle in and we think, okay." "We're gonna be here awhile." "All the lawyers on the case were going to do something that first day that the jury was out, because everyone knew we had at least one day." "It was Johnnie's birthday." "He and his wife had taken a one-day excursion up to the wine country," "and I called Johnnie from the courtroom." "I said, "Jay, Jay, we got a verdict."" "He said, "What?" "!"" ""We got a verdict, man."" "We reached the verdict." "We were happy about that." "After more than eight months of testimony, more than 100 witnesses and more than 45,000 pages of court transcripts, the jurors, who'd been advised not to talk about the case since it began, came to their decision" "over the course of a morning's work." "We had to go home." "That's all I got to say." "We'd been gone a year." "We had to come home." "Being held up for nine months," "I wouldn't want that." "But why don't we talk about a couple of things that may be on our mind?" "They did not deliberate." "I truly was offended." "267 days." "That's how long the trial lasted." "1,105 pieces of evidence." "45,000 pages of trial transcript from 133 witnesses." "How the hell did you deliberate for three and a half hours?" "How many days was it again?" "267 days." "266 nights." "266 nights I went back to that room, alone." "Wasn't able to talk to other jurors." "Wasn't able to talk to family." "Nobody but me and my thoughts." "I waited til the end to come up with a decision, but each night that I went home after listening to testimony," "I stored that." "By the end of that trial, I knew where I was." "And it was clear." "O.J. was extremely emotional." "Puts his hand on the glass like you see on TV, and he said, "Look guys," ""if it is guilty, I never wanna see you guys again." ""Don't come see me in prison," ""because your lives are gonna be changing," ""and what am I gonna say?" ""My life is the same as what it was yesterday." ""Same as it's gonna be tomorrow." ""Nothing will ever change." ""So, I don't wanna see you guys again, ever."" "We got there around 3:30 in the morning." "By 6 o'clock it was just very crowded." "People everywhere." "Policemen everywhere." "We were underneath the criminal courts building, in case there was trouble." "They brought in police on horseback, as if they were preparing for a riot." "Why don't you get the fuck out of here, you fucking asshole?" "I had reporters coming to my front door, and I had really had it." "Can I fucking hit him?" "No." "I think part of me knew which way that verdict was going." "For a trial that seemed to go on forever, the fact that it will end has produced a national surge of adrenaline." "Did you have a rather sleepless night last night, Mr. Garcetti?" "Sleepless night?" "I had my usual four hours' sleep." "(various news broadcasts in foreign languages)" "I have to fully admit, I thought he was guilty." "I thought it was obvious he was guilty." "So I thought the jury agreed with me." "And the record should reflect that we have now been rejoined by all the members of our jury panel and our alternates." "All right, Mrs. Robertson, would you, do you have the envelope with the sealed verdict, please?" "Yes, Your Honor." "All right, would you give those to Deputy Trower?" "The Judge had admonished us not to say a word, not to make a sound, not to move, not to do anything but sit there and listen to the verdict." "All right, Mr. Simpson, would you please stand and face the jury?" "In the matter of The People of the State of California vs Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097211." "We, the jury, in the above entitled action find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187a, a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson, as charged in account..." "It was almost like an out of body experience." "I had a feeling of numbness." "Did this really happen?" "They really did it, they acquitted him." "They really did it, they walked him out the door." "Johnnie is in back of O.J. and Johnnie's saying," ""Juice, you're going home,"" "and he's putting his head against his back." ""You're going home, Juice, you're going home!"" "It was fabulous." "I actually thought I might pass out from shock." "I was so astonished." "Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder upon Ronald Lyle Goldman." "One of the young guys, either one of the Goldman families or the Brown family, he said, "Murderer, murderer."" "I was focused on Kim Goldman." "Convicted of at least one crime of murder of the first degree and one or more crimes of murder of the first or second degree to be not true." "It hurt me to know that I had to hurt somebody else like that, and I didn't want to." "My mom and dad, just stoic." "I'm the more emotional one." "There was this deputy there, and I was like, "Can I leave?"" "And she goes, "You can't leave."" "The other piece of this was that kind of, you know, moment of triumphant Simpson." "I remember thinking that that gesture, that's a competitor." "He had been through a big ordeal." "He fought hard and he'd won." "One of the jurors, I believe it was juror number six, a male black, stood in the jury box and raised his fist like this." "What?" "This was a guy who presented as the most mild mannered, and then we find out, yeah, he was a member of the Black Panthers, years ago." "Later, I was talking with the Deputy Sheriff." "He had taken jurors to where they were released." "So glad to be back, I feel free." "He said, "All across this parking lot," ""there was high fives and cheers and smiles."" "He said, "I heard it over and over." ""That was payback for Rodney King."" "We the jury find the defendant not guilty of the crime of assault with a deadly weapon." "Do you think that there were members of the jury that voted to acquit O.J." "because of Rodney King?" "Yes." "You do?" "Yes." "How many of you think felt that way?" "Oh, probably 90% of them." "90%?" "Did you feel that way?" "Yes." "That was payback?" "Uh-huh." "You think that's right?" "The majority of the world or the majority of Americans think that we're a group of idiots who didn't get it right." "I think that the jury was made to be the scapegoat for their faults." "It was a mistake to present Fuhrman the way they did." "It was a mistake to let Darden get up there and be a part of that case." "Had they come correct, had they had the right attorneys up there putting on the case that they need to put on, they would've won." "It wasn't payback." "They messed up." "It may have been payback, but it wasn't payback for anything that happened recently." "It was payback for what's happened over the last 400 years." "It was payback for how black people are treated in America." "I believe that that was on the minds of every black person in America." "In the matter of The People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097211." "We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty." "(cheering)" "There was joy." "You could hear it in the barbershop or the beauty salon or in the classroom at the school, on the streets." "A release of breath, exhaling." "The Juice is loose!" "He's loose!" "He's loose!" "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty," "I'm free at last." "It was like that day Jackie Robinson opened the door for black players." "This trial tapped into the racial history of Los Angeles." "I didn't realize how much it tapped into the national pain of race relations." "...finds Orenthal James Simpson not guilty... (screaming and cheering)" "It was all so much bigger than we were, so much bigger." "I think the black jubilation was very offensive and very hurtful." "Who laughing now, ya know who did it?" "My family did it, the races of America." "Those films of African- Americans cheering and whites crying, it put a huge red line across society." "Certainly, the resentment that African-Americans have toward whites" "was shocking." "It was absolutely shocking." "Now you know how it feels." "We are flush with illustrations where we have been the victims of what you consider to be racial thinking." "And that's why your moment of joy may only be a moment." "That's why you seize your moment of joy, because tomorrow, sorrow." "To actually have a black man found not guilty, when every other black man who's ever been blamed for anything like that or anything near something like that, has been killed." "This is indicative of progress, regardless of what you think about him." "It was like wow, things have changed, somewhat." "I just really hoped that, probably in a terribly pollyannish way," "I really hoped we had come some distance." "My white neighbors, people I'd grown up with all my life, the person I talked to every single day, just stopped speaking to me because of this trial." "I received hate mail." "They would send the hate mail to the court." "The court would forward it to me." "I got a lot of personal blame, a lot of personal threats." "In essence, you know, "You deserve to die."" "What sort of personal toll did this take on the prosecutors who tried the case?" "I shake my head because I haven't been able to weigh it entirely, but the toll is immense." "If there was anything that ever motivated me throughout the trial, it was the idea, the notion, that one day I'd have to turn to the Goldmans... with the realization that he had been acquitted." "I am honored to have..." "Chris was in bad shape." "He was really devastated." "A verdict of guilty would have been redeeming for him in the black community." "You could feel this sense of brokenness within him, because he gave everything that he had." "My guess is that if Chris were given the opportunity again to say yes or no on this case, he wouldn't have taken it." "He's paid one huge price." "This has been a hard-fought battle, but I want to make it as clear as I can that this trial is over." "No one in our community believes in murder, and our hearts have gone out to these two families from the very beginning." "A statement from our father." "I'm relieved that this part of the incredible nightmare that occurred on June 12th, 1994 is over." "I will pursue, as my primary goal in life, the killer or killers who slaughtered Nicole and Mr. Goldman." "Whatever it takes, I'll provide." "They are out there somewhere." "The children." "You did tell them?" "Yes, we told them." "Told them Daddy's free." "Did they say anything to you?" "They were happy." "They love Daddy." "We have never said anything negative about Daddy." "People were on fire, excited about finally, the criminal justice system worked in favor of an African-American man." "But everything is not about race." "Everything is not about how we were treated historically in this country." "I didn't see it as an example of African-Americans being free or we beating the criminal justice system." "Not for African-Americans." "It was a victory for a rich guy named O.J. Simpson, and I was troubled by it." "Now, go back in, go back in." "Did he give you any indication when he would want the children, or what would happen?" "I think he is reasonable enough to know that the children have a good life here." "That they find strength and love in this house." "They switched over." "I don't think that he knows, really, what he wants, right now." "There they are, right there." "Bryce, go in tight." "I can tell you right now he ain't coming out any time soon." "Okay, we're gonna get up, we're gonna pull up high." "Get out of all this bullshit." "(triumphant music)" "Yes!" "You're home!" "What has the atmosphere been like at Mr. Simpson's house today?" "Who is with him?" "What are they all doing?" "It's, as you can imagine, a very, very touching time." "A very cheerful time for a man who's spent 15 months in prison and was found innocent." "(TV blaring in background)" "I wanna hear this like a hole in the head." "Don't even listen to it." "How do you turn this up?" "Yeah, this is the one case, you got the wrong guy like all those other cases you let who did it get away." "He invited the lawyers to come by for a drink, and I was the first one there." "And he was up in the bedroom." "He said, "I wonder where Bob Shapiro is?"" "I said, "Look up above you." ""He's on television." ""With Barbara Walters."" "Mr. Shapiro, you said in the beginning that race would not be a determining part of this case, that you would not play the race card." "The race card was surely played." "Barbara, my position was always the same." "That race would not and should not be a part of this case." "I was wrong." "Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck." "The hypocrisy of his suggestion that the decision to use race was a bad one, when it was the card that he stacked the deck with." "From the very beginning, it was his theory." "Would you work again on a case with Johnnie Cochran?" "No." "Would you work a case again with F. Lee Bailey?" "I will not talk to F. Lee Bailey again." "Thank you, Mr. Shapiro." "Everybody say hogwash, c'mon." "Hogwash!" "Come on, talk to each other a little bit, come on, talk to each other." "Not so fast." "Okay." "Wow, where'd we go that night?" "Probably home and cried." "Probably home and cried." "And probably said 100 times, how did he get away with it?" "You don't ever get over it." "You don't ever get over it." "It doesn't go away that he can't live his dreams." "It's all still there, close to the surface." "It's always still there." "We actually believed that if he's found not guilty, we all go back to our lives and just move on." "He thought he'd walk right back into it." "His view point, I'm back and I'm gonna be playing golf everyday and I'm gonna be O.J." "and everything's fine." "I think he felt he could con the rest of the world into believing that." "Here we have the top 10 ways he's searching for the real killers." "Number nine, elaborate ongoing sting operation at Pebble Beach." "Yeah, excellent, excellent piece of detective work." "I think the vast majority of the people in Brentwood thought he was guilty, and it became very uncomfortable for him to be here." "I saw him filling up his car one day, and people, literally, were giving him the finger and screaming insults." "He filled up his car and pretended he didn't hear anything and moved on." "I was walking the dog and that feeling you get where the hair stands up on the back of your neck where you know someone's watching you, and O.J.'s leaning out of the Rolls Royce, and I remember saying, "Oh, shit."" "I walk over to him, and he gets out, and we hug and we kiss." "He turned to me and said, "Why don't you come see me?" ""Not too many people come to see me."" "I said, "Sure, of course I will."" "There was that hug goodbye, and of course I'm gonna see you, where he knew I was never gonna see him, and I knew I was never gonna see him." "You had a pretty close relationship, is that true?" "We had the type of relationship that we'd see each other a couple times a year." "But I wasn't one of his best friends." "All the black people in my life used to tell me, man, white America will turn on you, and they will zip up your nigger suit on you so fast and they will forget about you like that." "Why don't you sell the Brentwood estate, go away for a little while?" "Go where?" "What, do they want me to go to Africa, is that what some of those people would want?" "Go where, I live in LA." "I see people, I haven't seen 'em." "I hear there are people in Brentwood that don't want me in Brentwood." "Maybe they are, but I would say this." "I think I've probably lived in Brentwood longer than 90%¤ of 'em." "They're squatters." "If they don't want me in Brentwood, they should leave." "Would you say the criticisms about missing your daughter's birthday..." "Hey, O.J.!" "Esquire had chosen me to do a story about O.J. Simpson." "I was interested in O.J. as a pariah." "Don't play with O.J." "Go away, O.J., go away." "I wanted to try to find out how or whether he could uphold the O.J. persona in the face of public wrath and hatred." "I don't think there's anybody out there that won't say that wherever they met me, all over this country for the last 30 years," "I took time, I treated you the way I wanted to be treated." "He's a wife-beater!" "Go home!" "I don't think there's anybody out there that ever met me anywhere, in airports, in ballparks, on the street, that I wasn't kind to you," "I didn't treat you the way I thought you wanted to be treated." "Anybody who's ever written me, I wrote 'em back." "Charities that ever call me, I always sent them something, at my cost." "I only ask you to give me that courtesy, to treat me the way I treated you." "You ugly murderer!" "You ugly-ass murderer!" "I felt sorry for him, I did." "I just couldn't bring myself to feel that he was bad in the pure sense of the word." "I kept feeling like he was a victim." "That's all I wanna do." "Provide for them." "My family, my kids, and give me the opportunity and a fair shake." "Fuck you, O.J.!" "But I swear to you, before my God," "I did not commit these crimes." "Thank you for taking the time to listen to me." "The easy answer is to say that people were indignant that O.J. got away with murder, but the level, the scope of the reaction, my sense was that there was a lot of racism in it." "(man shouting)" "He wanted the love back." "He wanted to be loved again." "(singing) O.J.!" "He is our brother." "C'mon, you can clap on that." "We have never believed that he was guilty." "He wanted acceptance from the community." "He knew that he was ostracized by a whole number of people." "Don't take a step back, you just get with God and you get ready for your comeback." "I think he felt a sense of deliverance, and maybe he felt that God delivered him." "I'm not trying to restore the image." "I'm not trying to get back with God what I've lost." "I'm trying to do one thing." "I'm trying to go to Heaven." "But I got criticized." "How can you accept someone who is a murderer?" "Well, the court didn't say he was a murderer." "Court said he was innocent, and Jesus accepted all people." "(cheering)" "(crowd chanting "O.J.")" "This is like a dream come true for me, to meet Mr. O.J. Simpson." "Hug me, darling, I love you." "This is something, let me put it on, man." "He said he was trying to thank the people that stuck by him, but that wasn't O.J." "To me it didn't ring true." "This thing ain't close to fitting me." "We'd go to Roscoe's too." "Go down and eat chicken and waffles." "I remember telling him, "When in the hell" ""did you ever eat chicken and waffles before?"" "But that's where black America went." "You would hear people, "Oh, so now you're black." ""Now you're black."" "C'mon up here, African." "We appreciate you coming out tonight." "(applause)" "I grew up in the projects, you know." "No one has to tell me, you act black." "I grew up in the projects, I know if I'm being black." "I am black." "But once I started getting over at the end of the 60's, what I'd done is something that's happening with a lot of black men in America." "You find yourself protecting your place in society." "You tend to think that you're immune to something." "You know what's happening out there is still happening, but you're hoping to change and you're really fooling yourself." "But at this point I'm in the community." "I'm trying to hang around people that I think can better educate me." "I think I have a unique opportunity here." "I'd like to be able to take advantage of it, and I'd like to not possibly once again let you down." "Thank you." "(applause)" "I was at home in New York." "The phone rang." "And a voice said, "Hey, it's O.J." ""I'm not done talking to you." ""I don't know why, but I talk to you" ""like you're my shrink or something."" "He said to me, "Let's say I committed this crime." ""If I killed her, it had to have been" ""because I loved her very much, right?"" "Every time he spoke about Nicole it was this mix of affection, irritation, indignation and kind of wanting to prove to the person he's speaking to that she was impossible." "He's not wired like everybody else." "He never wept for Nicole or the kids." "Like, my kids are gonna have to grow up without their mom." "The Browns had Sidney and Justin." "We'd have to transfer the kids, so they could go and spend the weekend with their dad." "It's their dad and I'm respecting that." "Before, we were talking about a conversation you had with Judy in the last month or so down in Laguna." "O.J. told the psychologist that Justin had been calling him, for him to come down to watch him play basketball." "And the psychologist said, "Well, if that's the case," ""you should go."" "I did not know until after all this happened that the Browns didn't know that O.J. was coming down." "We walked into the gym and we watched Justin warm up." "Judy walks in, she sits behind me, and she says, "I want to talk to you."" "And I think she referred to me as a coward or gutless or something like that." "She said something about O.J. controlling me, then Lou walked up." "He started in on me about nobody wants you down here." "He said something about a scene." "I said, "There's no scene, here."" "I said, "If anybody's making a scene here it's Judy." ""O.J. hasn't done anything."" "The kids were taken away from my mom on Christmas Eve." "That was devastating." "Sydney would say, "I wanna go."" "to her grandparents, and he said, "They don't want you." ""They want you for the money." ""They want you for the child support." ""That's why they want you."" "It was strained." "One night, I went to Rockingham, and we're drinking Rolling Rock beer outside," "and he was smoking pot." "He was looking around the backyard, reliving all the different events that had happened there." "And I just asked him, what happened June 12th?" "And he asked me what I thought happened." "I said, "I have always thought you probably did it."" "I said, "I know what you told A.C.," ""that you went there," ""but you just went to see what was going on," ""but you didn't take a knife."" "He shook his head and he said, "Yeah."" "And he said that if she wouldn't have opened the door with a knife, she'd still be alive." "I believed that for the longest time." "And then I..." "He went there to kill her." "He went there to kill her because of how she made him feel, being rejected." "That she didn't need him." "And then, of course, the Marcus factor." "I'm better than you." "He was seeing Marcus was him 15 years younger." "And I guess the part that bothers me about it, is he left the kids upstairs" "to walk out." "They could've walked out and found their mom like that." "If died tomorrow, I would know without a doubt that he did it." "Not even a slight maybe that he didn't." "We had a year to file the civil suit." "We wanted a court of law to say, "You did it."" "O.J. Simpson is back in the news this morning." "He wanted his deposition in the wrongful death lawsuits kept secret but a judge in Santa Monica ruled Wednesday that his testimony will not be sealed." "The judge also ruled it will be video taped." "Present is plaintiff Frederick Goldman." "Swear the witness." "Would you raise your right hand please?" "I wanted to be in the room when the deposition was being taken." "...so help you God?" "I do." "To be able to say, "We're after you."" "Do you recall an incident when you chased her?" "No." "Grabbed her?" "No." "Threw her into the walls?" "No." "Threw all of her clothes out the window into the street?" "No." "And bruised her?" "No." "You don't recall any of that?" "No." "Listening to him was everything from disgust to astonishment." "Excuse me?" "I said don't answer." "But, he whispered something, Mr. Baker." "No, I did not." "You mouthed something." "I think I'm allowed to mouth something to myself, aren't I?" "What did you mouth?" "He was cocky." "He was never forthcoming with anything." "(O.J. laughing)" "We are back on the record now." "He'd be smiling, like the whole thing was a joke." "What is that paper there for?" "I designed a golf hole that he's gonna play." "The course he's gonna play, and I was just telling him about a hole that's on that golf course." "And that's how seriously he was taking it." "Did you ever buy shoes that you knew were Bruno Magli's shoes?" "No." "How do you know that?" "'Cause I know if Bruno Magli makes shoes that look like the shoes that they had in court that's involved in this case," "I would have never worn those ugly-ass shoes." "He'd lied about everything." "There's not an honest bone in his body." "You were sort of obsessed with her having that relationship with Keith, right?" "No." "Didn't bother you at all?" "Her with Keith, with Marcus, with any of 'em, didn't bother me at all." "Not at all?" "No." "He's lived a life of fraud and being a fake for God knows how many decades, to a point where I think he just believes his own bull." "I gotta take a leak." "Mr. Cowlings, I'm going to ask you to look at this picture." "It's been previously marked as exhibit number 45." "Ask if you recognize that picture." "45." "Yes." "And who do you recognize that to be?" "Nicole." "And does that appear to be the way that Nicole looked when you went over there that early morning time" "Hey man, you give me a break." "The O.J. Simpson civil case gets under way today." "The families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are suing him." "This time the judge is keeping cameras out of the courtroom." "I truly, truly, truly wish it had been televised." "It was a totally different dynamic." "No longer the killer and his attorneys in charge of the courtroom." "It was the system at work." "Meanwhile, the jury's going to look very different in this case." "You're coming out of a different area." "You're coming out of the Santa Monica area, instead of downtown Los Angeles." "Obviously, the makeup of your jury pool is gonna be different." "Basically, they just repeated the case that we presented, but they had Simpson." "They could call him to the witness stand and cross-examine him." "One of the things that came up was if he owned the shoes." "Bruno Magli's." "Because of the footprints of those shoes were at the crime scene." "You thought those were ugly-ass shoes?" "Yes." "Really?" "Wrong, liar." "Not only did we see photographs of him wearing the ugly-ass shoes, we were then able to compare it to the footprints at the crime scene." "And we're right back to done." "Rare shoes." "Only 299 pairs sold in this country." "O.J. Simpson said that he'd never own the shoes, and yet he was forced to admit that that was him in the picture." "It was like watching a little child getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar." "All it did was reaffirm what I knew, in my heart, and that was he was a murderer." "Time to turn our attention to the O.J. Simpson civil case." "The jury is expected to begin deliberations today." "In a civil trial all you have to prove is that they're guilty by a preponderance of the evidence." "That means more likely than not." "51% is enough." "It's a very low standard of proof." "Completely different than the criminal trial." "A very brief interruption, everybody." "In case you haven't heard the news until now, there has been a verdict in the O.J. Simpson civil trial in California." "Between 35 and 45 minutes from now, everybody will be back in the courtroom in Santa Monica to hear the verdict." "Just to remind people, we are in Washington today." "Helps our audience." "My employers have decided that some time ago, that the President's address to the nation is what's important to the future and as fascinated, I guess to be honest, as we all are about the O.J. Simpson verdict." "Our bosses have made the decision, so let's go back." "(applause)" "We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China." "I'm told people are assembling in the courtroom and that they expect to be able to read this verdict within moments." "O.J. looks straight at the court and she read the answer, yes, that Simpson was liable for the death of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman." "This jury was unified in their decision." "There was no question that he had committed these acts, and he was totally responsible beyond any doubt." "It was amazing." "Finally had a court say you're responsible for Ron's death." "Our family is grateful for a verdict of responsibility which is all we ever wanted, and we have it, thank God." "(cheering)" "Simpson was found liable to the tune of $8,500,000." "and the jury isn't finished yet." "On Thursday jurors will return to hear testimony about additional punitive damage." "Guilty!" "Total $33,000,000." "We were so shocked at the figure, it was astonishing." "But what people don't realize about a civil trial is that a judgment is a piece of paper, and that is what you get." "Then, it becomes the creditor's responsibility to figure out a way to collect on it." "Do you have a moral obligation to pay any of that?" "I don't feel I have a moral obligation to pay, because morally, I've done nothing wrong." "I think I have a legal obligation when I have money to pay." "I wish I could sign a $50,000,000 contract and give them whatever they have to give, if I knew I could get it back on appeal." "Oh, he knew he'd never pay." "Because the system wanted to make certain that they got everything he had, they brought in the guy that handles the estates of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and James Dean, to say that O.J. was in that same class," "that he would make that kinda money for the rest of his life." "As his agent, I'm sitting there, not gonna happen." "Those people didn't murder anybody, or at least in the perception of America, he didn't murder anybody." "It became our goal to be after him for the rest of his life." "He's gonna always know that we're right behind him, looking over his shoulder, trying to figure out a way to get him." "In other news this morning," "O.J. Simpson has been ordered to turn over some precious belongings to satisfy the judgment against him in his civil lawsuit." "The half million dollar inventory includes" "Simpson's golf clubs and his Andy Warhol silkscreen of himself." "Simpson will have seven days to turn over the items to be sold." "We had received a fax in the office." "Sheriff's department needed to know where to park these two giant moving trucks." "So, we knew the day before that they were coming to seize these various items." "There was quite a few people." "His family and friends moving stuff out and taking it to different homes." "O.J. was out playing golf." "Deniability." "Sheriff's department, they were coming through the gates at 8 o'clock or 7 o'clock or something." "As they were coming in, I was leaving." "Literally, gates were open at the same time." "I left." "I had his collectibles, personal items," "Tiffany lamps, carpet." "A bunch of stuff went out to a storage unit in south San Francisco, but it was scattered." "I mean, just all over." "It was like a biblical flood carrying away everything." "He lived a materialistically lavish life, but that wasn't what was most important." "When they wanted his mother's piano, that rocked his foundation." "They wanted her house up in Potrero Hill." "Those things bothered him." "It bothered me when they started taking things that I didn't think was just." "O.J., the congratulations of all of us for your impeccable character." "Thank you, Mr. Cosell." "Thank you, Mr. Simpson." "How do you take away his Heisman?" "That was who he was when I was innocent and he was innocent." "Was that Heisman given to you?" "No, it wasn't given to me." "I basically just took it." "I had an arrangement with Mr. Simpson, where I would be paid X amount of money or I could take it out in memorabilia." "So I took the Heisman and a few other items" "I figured were mine." "The IRS has filed a lien against O.J. Simpson's" "Brentwood mansion." "It says he owes more than $685,000 in back taxes, interest, and penalties." "I haven't made any payments in quite awhile." "I love the house, my kids were born there." "I lost a daughter there." "We had some great times there but it's gone, and now I gotta find some place else to have some great times, you know, move on." "The last day at Rockingham, it was kind of an odd, surreal day." "For me it was emotional, and for O.J., I guess he had kinda mentally checked out, where it wasn't." "Hey, Mike." "I want you to go over there and shoot over the fence, walk through the gate, so I can give you the old..." "He's like, "Okay, now go outside of the gate."" "Like I'm a tourist, and I'm sneaking in through his gate, filming him taking the flag down." "Because the tabloids were paying like 150 grand, 200 grand, crazy money." "Hey, this is private property." "C'mon man, look." "C'mon man, gimme a break." "C'mon guy, c'mon." "Putting the flag up, taking it down, putting it up, taking it down." "Him folding it and trying to get emotional, where he's tearing up." "He's really working it, tearing up." "Oh, man, that's real classy." "Take care." "Everybody's chasing O.J. for a story today." "Do an interview, do an interview." "I need you to do an interview." "I'm gonna dog you out bad, too." "I'm gonna pimp ya." "I needed a challenge." "I can promote anybody, anything, it doesn't matter." "So, my attorney came back and he said," ""I got just the thing for you, it's O.J. Simpson."" "I'm like well, that's a challenge." "I'm like "Hm."" "I put him in a world where he was happy again." "Then, when I saw what happened," "I said we should just get a camera and film this." "Cheers, O.J." "Cheers." "I think that there were people offended now that you're here." "You know, I would think that the ones who were offended may be tuned into another channel." "I don't know, that's just a guess of mine." "I would like to think that the majority of your listeners would not be offended." "I know you'd like to think that, O.J., but I'm not sure." "First, I just wanna say, it's interesting to have you here." "Thank you." "He was still famous and fame, infamy..." "O.J., I was told not to ask you about the incident." "Is there any reason why?" "What incident?" "The incident with Nicole." "'Cause there's nothing to talk about." "'Cause you were proven innocent" "Because I was innocent, I was proven innocent, and once we open that we're back into the..." "It's what, seven years now?" "It's over and over and over, ya know?" "I mean they tell you life goes on." "We talk about O.J." "as though the story is O.J." "So, when you travel and when you're walking down the street and things like that, what type of reaction do you get from people?" "The story is O.J. and us." "The exact reaction, maybe a little more emotional, that I got 15 years ago." "If you took a walk with me down the street, you'd be amazed." "I don't care where I go, white, black, wherever I go." "Everybody's terrific." "The different people, watching their reactions was quite amazing." "That's where I played football." "I wore number 32." "Hey, you stay gorgeous." "Precious?" "Spell it for me." "Oh my, God, it's really O.J. Simpson." "In our town." "He's really here." "He was addicted to fame, and the reality is the music didn't stop." "Where do you want to do this?" "I don't know, you're good with the white women, now I see black women." "Hey, I'm good with the sisters too, baby." "If you didn't already have a kid and a man out there that's bigger than me." "Oh please, O.J." "Oh, you're here." "See, he's in here." "Forget what I just said." "But you know what, O.J.?" "Not for nothing, good black don't crack, and you certainly do look good." "You wanna catch yourself, right?" "I don't know, O.J." "I don't know." "Something takes over when you're in his presence." "He's taking you away from the sordid dark reality that you're sitting across from somebody who probably committed murder." "(advertisements drowning out conversation)" "All that goes away and there's just this sense of wanting to believe him and go with him to this place where everything is still okay." "The truly righteous are not the self-righteous." "Just remember that." "I read that in the Quran." "O.J., I wanna say I don't like you, I can't stand you." "I wanna call you names, I wanna throw you right out of here, but, ya know what?" "Your husband's watching, you better watch." "You've done it to me." "Can I invite you to a party?" "Sure, I'll be there." "His friends would call it the O.J. effect." "They would say "Yeah, you got O.J.ed."" "Being O.J.ed is being charmed." "The confusion that you feel after you've been in his presence." "I don't think he was not guilty, but I was in touch with the fact that I wanted to think he was not guilty." "O.J., damn you, I like you." "Thank you." "Damn you." "Damn you." "Damn you." "No!" "Oh my gosh, he hugged me!" "(O.J. laughing)" "Damn you, O.J." "Damn you, O.J. Simpson, you're charming." "Well, thank you." "He can get into your head and you'll like him." "There's no way around it." "I didn't know O.J. the murderer." "I was in jail at the time when the thing happened." "I remember O.J. the hero." "Playing football as a 10 year old, saying I'm O.J. Simpson running with the ball." "I remember O.J. the charming movie guy." "Police, throw down your guns!" "The mega hero growing up." "O.J. crashed the national baseball card show in Chicago and was sitting at a table signing autographs, and there was a line around the aisle for him until the promoters came and threw him out." "He was charging, I think, $150 an autograph." "So, that's what made me think, you know, hey." "This could be worth it." "We'd hire him to sign 200 autographs." "What do you got there, you got another 80 items?" "You know, put the TV on the USC game and I'll take care of them." "I liked the guy." "Public appearances, he'd get 50 to 100 grand." "It was a matter of him hiding from the Goldmans." "He had a team of people to make sure that any money he could get was gonna be protected." "They would form some phony company and funnel the money through that." "Then he moved to Florida." "His home suddenly became untouchable." "His pension was untouchable already, by law." "South Beach, Miami." "Nobody judges you there." "Nobody said murderer." "They just wanted to touch him." "So, he was living large, living large." "You rolling?" "(news intro music)" "♪ Right now, O.J. Simpson is a fugitive of justice" "♪ O.J. Simpson, football legend, has just become" "♪ the prime suspect in a double murder." "Oh God, Florida was just like a nightmare." "I hate everything about Florida, everything that's happened in Florida." "♪ In the trial of the century" "♪ Lies a hero's destiny" "♪ Tell me O.J., what's it gonna be" "♪ Every man wants to be made" "♪ In the trial of the century" "♪ Lies a hero's destiny" "That's my drink." "Whose drink is this?" "That's yours up there." "Motherfucker." "That motherfucker had the nerve..." "In Florida, his group of friends was much different." "Did you get that set up?" "We gotta get some more money outta them." "Week before Christmas." "They weren't the Lynn Swann's and the Rosey Grier's" "Yo, fucking with our game, man." "He hung around with anybody that was more thuggish." "The lower people." "But to the lower people, he was like the Godfather." "You fucking with our golf game, okay?" "We out here to have a good time and you fucking with our game." "Because of that, his head grew." "When O.J. crossed over into the dark side," "I guess that's probably where I came in at, you know?" "Because I'm no celebrity." "I'm not football star or baseball star." "I was a regular guy, but he seemed to like me." "I started liking to hang out with O.J." "because of the perks." "We went to strip clubs, went to night clubs." "We'd drink and check out the girls, and there was always an ample amount of women around." "He said, "You know what's crazy is" ""I'm getting more girls now." ""Now I got a bad boy image and I was never a bad boy." ""I have to wonder, what are they thinking," ""because I was accused of murdering my wife."" "Since I've been in Miami, I've gone out with a Cuban girl, a Venezuelan girl, and a white girl." "You only see the white girl in the media, and they all look like Nicole from what they say." "At the time I started chronicling him, he was involved with his girlfriend, Christie Prody, and the first time I saw her drive in in a convertible" "I know, baby." "...I did a double take, because from a distance, she looked like a spitting image of Nicole." "He's fine, he's fine." "I believe in this man." "He was going down, and what I mean by that is he had no interest in getting to either safer ground or higher ground, if it existed." "He was gonna go to, essentially, decadence." "(laughter and reveling)" "They're talking about me, baby!" "Christie Prody, the cocaine and then she'd get clean, and then he couldn't get her coked up enough." "I asked him why." "You know she can't stop." "You can do coke for a couple of days and then stop." "She can't." "She will keep doing coke." "I say damn." "He said, "Yeah, but when she does this she gets me more girls" ""than I get myself."" "We gotta get some closeups of the crotch, can't be pimpin' without some crotch shots." "The only crotch that matters around here, that crotch right there, ya understand what I'm talking about?" "Gotta hide this here." "I gotta big sheet of paper here, so don't even worry about it." "Ya know, the public has to identify with an athlete." "You can be in awe of an athlete, and there's many athletes out there that you're in awe of, but you wanna feel a part of that person." "I think people view me as a certain way, and I don't wanna let them down." "Are you any different than you were ten years ago?" "20?" "30?" "I'm just the way I've always been." "I look at myself and think I'm a good guy." "I truly believe, in the most part, that you get what you deserve in this world." "If you allow things to happen to you, they will happen to you." "You think O.J.'s a good looking guy?" "If I liked guys, I'd do him." "Oh, God." "(speech drowned out by laughter)" "He would go in makeup and spoof people, like you've been "Juiced" or whatever the hell it was." "Oranges from O.J." "O.J., right here." "C'mon, help the Juice, I'm kinda down and out." "It was like going and seeing the two-headed cow at the circus or something." "The freak show." "♪ Why do people wonder about my intentions" "♪ Why do people ask me so many questions" "♪ 'Bout how I made it to the top" "♪ 'Bout all the times I made those defensive stops" "♪ See the only way I live my life is large" "♪ And I got the most game with 200-plus yards" "O.J. said, "if 90% of America thinks I'm a killer, who gives a shit what else they think?"" "♪ I got Juiced" "And I said, "Well, what about your kids?"" "Living your life like some 24 year old multimillionaire punk ass, hit every strip club you can, have all the threesomes you can." "Don't care about what lives you're ruining." "What your kids are seeing." "What they're experiencing." "You don't care." "Because it's all about you." "I finally walked away after the last time" "I saw how he treated his kids." "And when I really started looking back on everything..." "I said, "What in the hell did I do?"" "And with somebody that I grew up admiring and idolizing." "O.J. may not have a conscience." "He may not pay for killing two people, but I sure in the hell pay for helping him get away with it." "I pay." "New outrage tonight over O.J. Simpson." "Simpson is trying to sell books, and he's doing it in ways that have vividly revived memories of the murders and his acquittal." "Judith Regan, a sort of powerhouse publisher, told me about this project." "It's O.J. Simpson and we're gonna try to get a confession." "How could I not do it?" "They were willing to give him 700-plus thousand dollars as an advance." "At that point he not only needed the money, but thought in a while people would be less interested." "You know, on some level he felt he was being forgotten." "Like the years had gone by." "Fame's a terrible beast." "When you get a taste of that and people forget you, it's very hard." "I needed to sit down with him and get his story, and it was emotionally difficult for him." "He goes, "I'll tell you this." ""If I did it, I couldn't have done it alone."" "So there was someone else there." "He said, "There might have been."" "And it was like he was playing this little game with me, but it wasn't a particularly clever game." "Then he told me about the ride home, up the alley." "I assumed he made a right and stopped at the traffic light, because I'd heard that somebody saw him." "He said, "No, no, I didn't stop at that traffic light." ""I went up the alley and took a left," ""and went up Grut and Green to San Basini" ""and on home."" "And then he saw the look on my face." "He says, "That's the way I would have gone," ""you know, had I done it."" "To me there was no doubt about it." "He wasn't making this stuff up." "I got there thinking he was a murderer, and I left there more convinced than ever that he was a murderer." "To give a voice to a murderer is beyond imagination." "Everybody is more than willing to jump in and play his game." "Because it's money for him and then it was gonna be money for them." "Well, we wanted to put an end to it." "Disgusted by money for blood, millions pressure publisher Rupert Murdoch, who fires the executive in charge and kills the book." "As the largest debtor we got the rights to the book." "So we read it and we were shocked." "It was as close to the confession as you could ever get." "We made one change and one change only:" "The title of the book." "We took the word if and made it very small, and laid it into the letter I." "So it was If I Did It." "We were hearing all over the place, we were wrong for doing it." "You know what, it was, okay, you think we're wrong, so what?" "It's all about money." "How much money is it gonna take to make you guys happy?" "It's not gonna bring Nicole or Ron back." "That book was inexplicable." "He was thinking, I'm not gonna say I did it, but I'm not gonna not say I did it." "So, it's this whole kind of striptease that goes on, and everybody's complicit in it." "Like any murder story, a few more twists." "Then a twist." "In a bizarre twist the Goldman..." "What I think I found most disturbing... (newscasters repeating O.J. Simpson)" "It's the audience and our appetite for that kind of stuff." "Unlike most murder stories this one still lacks the chapter everyone expects:" "Justice." "Elvis, get your pelvis away from me." "The Vegas chapter is where everything just gets so damn sordid." "I can't sit here and authoritatively tell you what went down in Vegas, because it's too convoluted." "Mike Gilbert had been pilfering O.J.'s stuff throughout." "You know, Mike's got his eye on the memorabilia, the historical value, the money, and O.J.'s just running." "That's what O.J. does, right?" "He runs." "And in his wake, there's all this stuff, and all these people are picking up the stuff." "I got a call." "It was Al Beardsley." "He's this six foot six, 300 pound O.J. fanatic, saying "Tom, I saw you on TV with the Anna Nicole Diaries." ""I got something even better." ""I have all the stuff from O.J.'s trophy room." ""He didn't pay his bills, his agent stole them."" "Beardsley told me that a majority of the stuff was in Vegas." "Called O.J." "O.J. said, "Look Tom, this is not memorabilia." ""These are personal artifacts that were stolen from me." ""My football that I was holding in my arms" ""when I rushed for 2,000 yards." ""The ring from my wife who died," ""that I was gonna give to my daughter."" "He kept talking about a photo signed by J. Edgar Hoover." "J. Edgar Hoover said he was a big fan of fine young men." ""Everyone thinks nothing bad happens to me." ""Here I am being robbed." ""Why don't we show the world that I have to go" ""by myself to get my stuff back?"" "He says, "I was invited to a wedding in Vegas." ""I can be in Vegas."" "If I Did It was due to be released on the day of the wedding that he was there." "So I said, "O.J., great." ""Sign 200 books for me."" "He goes, "Fuck, no."" "I go, "Dude, you're asking me to help you with this shit."" "And he says, "I'm gonna write on the books" ""I didn't write this and then I'll sign it O.J. Simpson."" "I said, "That's good enough for me." ""I'll take that."" "A free inscription, too." "I met him at the Palms, at a pool party at the Palms." "O.J. was wearing sunglasses and he was every bit the celebrity you would think he would be before the murders." "Girls were coming up to him, like young girls." ""Are you O.J.?" "Can I take a picture?"" "Sitting on his lap and he had his own cabana, with a dozen people in it." ""Hey, Juice."" "Like, weasely guys like "Hey Juice can I get you a drink?" ""Hey, Juice."" "He was sitting there telling stories and joking around, and we were all laughing." "I ended up going up to his room." "He said, "Listen." ""These people stole my stuff," ""and they know they stole it." ""We're gonna shock the hell of those guys." ""I'm gonna have my buddies coming over," ""and man, they're gonna shit their pants" ""when they see us."" "Know what I remember about that?" "I'm up in his room, watching on TV." "There's this pretty, beautiful brunette that comes out." "He said, "That's my goddaughter." ""Her name is Kim."" "I am so excited to do my reality show." "She said, "I have a show about my family."" "It's me and my whole family." "What's it called?" "It's called Keeping Up With the Kardashians." ""My dad was such a great lawyer." "He got O.J. off the hook for murder."" "O.J.'s like, "That's bullshit." "He was a family friend."" "He's yelling at the TV." ""Baby, your dad was shit."" "I'm like, this is weird." "I didn't know what the hell a Kardashian was." ""That show ain't gonna last two weeks," O.J. goes." "We get to the Palms." "Simpson's there." "He started talking about some guys who stole from him, and he wanted to show some strength." "He wanted to be intimidating." "He wanted me to come along with him as security since I was a licensed firearm holder, and because I considered him a friend," "I decided I would help him." "At that time I had a lot of O.J. Simpson memorabilia." "Thousands of pieces." "Al Beardsley said, "Hey, I've got a buyer" ""that wants to buy O.J. Simpson memorabilia," ""and he wants to buy a lot of it." ""He'd like to meet at the Palace Station."" "I think a lot people go there for quick fixes." "You don't spend a lot of money, but you can get a lot done." "I loaded everything into my truck." "I was transporting over $100,000 worth of memorabilia." "Beardsley met me, took me inside," "I meet Tom Riccio for the first time." "He says, "Yeah, my buyer will be here in a little while." ""Can I see what you got?"" "I show him photographs, footballs." "This is all the stuff I've paid O.J. to sign over the years." "He says, "Is this all there is?" I said, "Yeah."" "He said, "I thought there was gonna be" ""a bunch of O.J.'s personal memorabilia."" "I said, "This is all there is."" "Along with that I brought along some other stuff." "He was pushing Pete Rose stuff." "Joe Montana lithographs." "I'm like, "Dude, he's not interested." ""He's an O.J. fan." "He wants O.J.'s personal."" ""Yeah, but if he's interested in O.J., he's gonna want Joe Montana."" "A lot of the things that O.J. thought that I had were actually in the storage unit in San Francisco, that was lost to an auction." "But we had several lockers." "The one in Hanford, Bruce emptied it out, and he's been selling it for like 10 months." "Mike took it from O.J.," "Fromong takes it from Mike." "Now, it turns into the Marx Brothers." "Everybody is now acting like a lunatic." "I'm alone in the room with Bruce Fromong, and Al Beardsley." "Beardsley is a bit of a nut." "He went to prison for stalking." "O.J.'s crony calls." "They're like, "All right, we'll be there in 15 minutes."" "After about an hour, they're all getting antsy." "They're like, "What's going on?" "This is bullshit."" "Blah, blah, blah." "It really seemed like a drug deal." "We got to the hotel, we had to wait for some more guys." "When all the other guys showed up, they didn't look like the most ferocious men." "It was a mismatched bunch." "One of them was a frumpy looking white dude, which like, what the hell's he doing here?" "One of them was an older black guy that looked like he could have been a librarian." "I never met so many con-men at one time, but everybody was trying to get money." "Everyone of them guys had something up for Simpson." "Them guys got confused where the room was." "They was on the elevator going up and down." "The room was like 12 something, but it was on the bottom floor." "It wasn't on the 12th story." "It was like a weird maze." "It was dumb." "This whole situation was a very dumb situation." "At the final stage, everyone met at that hallway where the room is." "They said, "They got guns?"" "I go, "No." ""You guys got guns?" ""Dude, do you guys got guns?"" "Room 1203." "I don't think I'll ever forget that room number." "Simpson asked me to look menacing, so I had my gun out." "And he was getting angrier and angrier." "Riccio pulled the key out, opened the door, and we walked in the room." "I'm on the phone talking." "The door opens very quickly." "The men that were in the room were pretty damn surprised to see us, and they were even more surprised to see Simpson." "I'm seeing O.J." "It had been quite awhile since I'd seen O.J." "He had always been friendly, but this guy had a face on him that was just a rage." "He's yelling and screaming, I'm yelling and screaming." "I'm telling the guys to move over, do this, do that." "I had no idea who was in the room, then." "No one briefed me on anything." "I pushed one of the guys into the bathroom, and told him not to come out of it." "It was a crowded room." "I guess there was a guy in the bathroom." "One or two of them were over by Beardsley." "Beardsley is like in love with O.J., so he seems almost happy to see him." ""Hey, O.J."" "And O.J. looks at him." ""O.J., I thought we were friends."" ""I thought we were cool."" "The guy with the gun, he hits me in the shoulder and it knocked me backwards against the chair." "Then, he put the gun in my face, you know, kinda gangster style." "I said something to the effect," ""You guys are lucky we're not in LA," ""or you'd all be laying down."" "I'll shoot your ass." "I couldn't believe I said it, but it was just something that I said." "Then I started saying bag stuff up." "What O.J. called his stuff, everybody called his stuff," "I called it junk." "Boxes of pictures, some ties." "They're pushing the stuff back to him." ""Here, O.J."" "What do you think you can do, stealing my shit, blah blah blah blah, and they're all apologizing, pushing it back." "Then, the guys started taking pillow cases and stuffing Pete Rose stuff and Joe Montana." "Like, wait a minute." "That's not your stuff." "So, the first minute went exactly as O.J. scripted it." "The next three or four turned into an armed robbery." "He took my phone and I had just gotten it." "I go, "O.J., don't take my phone." "I just got it."" "He takes it, he says, "I'll leave it at the desk."" "And O.J. left." "I went up to the front desk, and I said," ""I need security, I was just robbed by O.J. Simpson."" "And they started laughing." "911 emergency." "I was just robbed by O.J. Simpson and four other black men at gun point." "We need the police here right away, ma'am." "You don't have to keep telling me that." "That's why I'm needing the descriptions for the officers." "Four black men and O.J. Simpson is not enough." "I'm gonna need to know what they were wearing." "The cops showed up and they were really lax about it." "They were like, "So, you were robbed, O.J. Simpson." ""Who else was here, Al Cowlings?"" "Once we got back over to the Palms, first thing he said, "There was no gun." ""There was no gun."" "So, right then I knew he had some shit with him." "He's trying to get ready to set up all this good O.J. Simpson look to make himself look legitimate." "Hello, guys." "Hi, how's it going?" "All is well." "You're trying to put your actor face back on." "You're trying to put your pitch man face back on." "God bless, hey guys." "Take care." "Happy weekend." "But he's not fooling me." "When I got home that day," "I told my wife, "I think I just did a robbery."" "The first thing she asked me is, "Did you have your gun?"" "I was like, "Yeah."" "I was just fighting the reality of the answer, and I knew that the cops were gonna get involved, and I knew because it was Simpson that it was gonna get huge." "Later on, I went back to the Palace Station, back to the room where the recorder was." "You recorded that whole thing?" "I recorded it because there was a bunch of idiots going in a room and I didn't know what was gonna happen." "I wanted to make sure it was documented." "The police were searching the room." "The one six inch area where the recorder was, they didn't find it." "As I'm putting it in my pocket, the cop's like, "Get your shit" ""and get the f out of here, right now."" "If you woke up and heard that O.J. Simpson is back in the news and under arrest, rest assured it's not Ground Hog day." "This time though, he's in a jail cell in Las Vegas after a confrontation, apparently caught on tape." "No Johnnie to save you this time, O.J." "Two hours after the arrest, I got a hold of Harvey Levin." "I ended up selling the tapes for $150,000." "I was heartbroken by it." "O.J., what were you thinking?" "What were you thinking?" "Are you kidding me?" "Are you kidding me?" "You just walked away from a double murder and you do this?" "All rise for Judge Jackie Glass." "Nevada District Court is now in session." "The honorable Jackie Glass." "I was looking at 12, 13 years in prison, and I don't want any parts of that." "I wanted zero parts to do with that." "I started thinking, if I testify, I could clear myself up, and if I don't testify I'm gonna be a fool." "...tell the truth, so help you God?" "I do." "Have a seat please." "As far as a street code not to talk on a witness stand, there's a bunch of guys in prison right now, all over the country, behind the code." "They gave their life up for the code, but I wasn't going to jail for no O.J. Simpson." "Not me." "If I'd have went to jail from him, think he would have come to visit me?" "No." "You think he would have gave me commissary?" "No." "Excuse my expression but fuck him." "This case was something built from a grain of salt into a mountain of salt." "You know what I mean?" "Count two, conspiracy to commit kidnapping," "Guilty." "Count three..." "C.J. Stewart went to jail for not taking the deal." "Even though I think I did nothing wrong, and I still contend to this day I did nothing wrong with the O.J. thing." "Could I have spent the next couple of years defending myself against something that I don't think I did?" "Yes." "So, I told my lawyer before I do anything, get me immunity." "Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" "I do." "O.J. got duped." "O.J. got duped by Tom Riccio." "Tom Riccio lied to O.J. Simpson." "He said I know someone that's got thousands of pieces of your memorabilia." "He set O.J. Simpson up." "Oh yeah, Tom Riccio's a rat." "Who did I rat on, did I rat on anybody here?" "Name a person I ratted on." "Not that I have anything against ratting, if it would help the world, I'll rat." "But I didn't rat on anybody." "Riccio says that it was O.J. Simpson who was giving the orders in the room." "O.J. was definitely in charge." "I mean, I don't know what you'd call..." "Maybe I did rat out some people." "I don't know, maybe I did with the O.J. thing, maybe I did." "All right, so I'm a rat." "Thomas Riccio, their star witness, one of my favorite people ever." "I was in Las Vegas and I was reporting for Entertainment Tonight about the trial." "Such a weird confluence of events." "How does this happen?" "So I was watching the preliminary hearing and at lunch break we were in the cafeteria and he showed up there." "It's O.J. and walked by." "Mr. Simpson." "Ms. Clark." "It was weird." "13 years to the day after O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman," "O.J. was found guilty of kidnapping and armed robbery in a Las Vegas courtroom Friday night." "What happened to Mr. Simpson, to me..." "He was being selfish." "He's been in a lot of pain." "Pain medication, drinking, trying to control everything goes on in his life, in his relationship, his finances." "And it wasn't as good as it used to be." "You know?" "It wasn't as great." "The whole big picture, his life, he was just tired." "He's street, and O.J. regrettably reverted back to Galileo High School." "You know?" "He reverted back to Hunter's Point." "Sorry." "I feel like apologetic to the people of the state of Nevada." "I've been coming to Nevada since 1959." "I worked summer jobs here for my uncle in '60 and '61." "I've been coming ever since and I've never gotten into any trouble." "People have always been fine to me." "When I came here I came here for a wedding." "I didn't come here to..." "I didn't come here to reclaim property." "I was told it was here." "I called my kids and I told them I had a chance to get some of our property back." "We've called the police and asked what to do." "They told us what to try to do." "You could never find out who was selling it." "This was the first time I had an opportunity to catch the guys red handed who had been stealing from my family." "I wasn't there to hurt anybody." "I just wanted my personal things, and I realize now it was stupid of me." "I'm sorry." "I didn't mean to steal anything from anybody and I didn't know I was doing anything illegal." "I thought I was confronting friends and retrieving my property." "That guy, he should have been the model citizen." "Should have been in church every week." "Should have been helping kids." "Instead, he did more to hurt Africa-American young men and boys by putting on this charade." "He kept pushing the envelope." "You know?" "And why wouldn't he?" "I mean, if I got away with everything time after time after time..." "Hey, I'm a god." "All right, for Mr. Simpson." "All right, Mr. Simpson, I'm gonna sentence you as follows." "Count one, conspiracy to commit a crime, one year in the county jail." "Count two, conspiracy to commit kidnapping." "A minimum term of 12 months, max term of 48 months in the Nevada Department of Corrections." "Count three, conspiracy to commit robbery." "A minimum term of 12 months, max term of 48 months in the Nevada Department of Corrections." "Count four, burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon." "A minimum term of 26 months..." "I went to an inner city high school and our football team was terrible, but our fighters were good, and we might lose the 4th quarter of the ball game, but we were gonna win the 5th quarter after the game." "The fight." "So, it's called the 5th quarter." "Count five, the first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon." "A fixed term of 15 years, parole eligibility beginning after five years." "Count six, the first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon." "A fixed term of 15 years." "That was, at most, a two-year crime dripping wet." "The judge in that case held the jury out until 11 o'clock on a Friday night, 13 years to the day of O.J. Simpson's verdict on October 3rd." "That, in my mind, was not a coincidence." "Robbery with use of a deadly weapon." "A minimum term of 60 months." "A maximum term of 180 months." "Count eight, robbery with use of a deadly weapon." "A minimum term of 60 months." "A max term of a 180 months in the Nevada Department of Corrections." "The assault with a deadly weapon." "A minimum term of 18 months." "Max term of 72 months in the Nevada Department of Corrections." "And the 33 year sentence reflecting the 33 million dollars in the civil verdict was no coincidence." "That concludes today's sentencing." "And that was the 5th quarter." "They got back at O.J. for winning our case." "Thank you, thank you very much." "He didn't kidnap anybody." "Nobody was moved or tortured or hit and beat up." "There wasn't none of that." "He got played by the book." "In the legal term of the law, when he said nobody leaves this room, that is kidnapping." "That wasn't about justice." "They wanted the guy that got away with murder in 1994." "Here's the thing about it." "The guns are the thing about it." "They put guns to people's heads." "Someone could have died there." "The legal elements of the case were there." "Did the jury hammer him because of the murder trial?" "Wouldn't surprise me." "That is..." "That is white justice in America, man." "Listen, I think anybody who is happy that any human being is gonna be stuck in a cage is a horrible person." "This is not a happy day for anybody." "We're thrilled." "It's kind of a bittersweet moment, knowing that that SOB is gonna be in jail for a very long time." "And he's gonna be where he belongs, with others of his kind." "And he can complain there." "Look, I voted no then." "And he's a stupid ass to go out there and get into some more shit." "Somewhat." "But deep in my heart," "I done what I felt was right at that time." "(chanting "Free O.J.")" "Back then, we took care of our own." "Now, you're on your own, Joe." "A lot of people gave a lot." "(chanting "We want justice")" "But ultimately, it was all a waste." "He wasn't deserving." "My main concern is the black man's image and the beating that it's taken." "O.J. reached the top of the mountain and when he fell off, it should not reflect on black people at all." "It should reflect on O.J." "He had everything." "He had adoration." "Men loved him, women loved him, children loved him." "That's the way it should be." "I mean, how many people go through life like that?" "When you're running the ball, it's joy." "This is the natural state of things." "For somebody like O.J. Simpson, who came from where he came, to have accomplished what he accomplished, to have that brutal fall from grace." "It's really an American tragedy." "I don't know how I ended up here." "I just don't know how I ended up here." "I thought I lived a great life." "I thought I treated everybody well." "I went out of my way to make everybody comfortable and happy." "I felt the goodness in myself and the goodness I gave people." "I don't feel any goodness in myself right now." "I feel empty." "I feel totally empty." "I felt I have some last thing I gotta say to somebody." "Please remember me as the Juice." "Please remember me as a good guy." "Please." "(somber music)"