In the Simpson Drama, No Witness Is a Minor Player on the Stage

If O.J. Simpson were just another accused double murderer, Allan Park would have been just another routine witness for the prosecution.

But in this case, there’s no such thing as a routine witness. Every bit of testimony is magnified by the presence of the insistent mass of media, by the relentless television cameras and the insatiable appetite of the public.

Every witness becomes a featured player, the focus of close-ups that exaggerate nervous glances, dry lips, hesitations and minor memory failures. These perfectly normal occurrences, common in all our lives, have become the subject of instant analysis by journalists, lawyer-commentators and the millions watching on TV.

In an ordinary preliminary hearing, the testimony of limousine driver Park would have been just one of several building blocks in the prosecution’s effort to establish a timetable for the killings.

The average preliminary hearing, if it were covered at all, would merit just a short story. Park might have been worth a mention, along with the prosecution witness who followed him, Brian (Kato) Kaelin, who lived in Simpson’s guest house and who also bolstered the prosecution’s contention that Simpson was not home when the killings were apparently carried out in front of his ex-wife’s nearby condo.

Deputy D.A. Marcia Clark, who has handled many low-profile preliminaries, is experienced enough to understand the changed circumstances. That’s why attorneys in a hearing such as this one don’t put witnesses on the stand unless they’re well coached.

*

Allan Park looks like the kind of limo driver you could trust to drive an important client around town or to meet the company president at the airport.

In court Tuesday, he told his story simply and wasn’t shaken under defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro’s cross-examination. And, in addition to the details of his time with Simpson the night of the murders, we learned something about his character.

When Park talked to someone about the Simpson case, for example, it was with his mom and his boss--not a free-spending supermarket tabloid. That meant stability. So did his going home for a snack when he had time to kill between driving jobs that fatal night. Punctuality seems important to him. He said he checks his watch frequently and compares it to clocks he encounters during the day. He said he arrived early to pick up Simpson.

As I watched Park on television, I thought his appearance was perfect for our system of media justice. I wondered how it happened. The man is a limo driver, not an actor. How did prosecutor Clark make sure he was such an asset for her side?

Even if the prosecutor had time, I doubted whether she’d share such information. So I called up a couple of criminal defense attorneys.

Most of the process of witness preparation is common sense. Lawyers tell witnesses the questions they’ll ask and prepare them for the kind of grilling they can expect from the opposition. Keep the testimony simple, the witnesses are told. If you can’t remember, say so. It’s not a big deal if you don’t remember whether someone was wearing green or blue socks.

“You want to be sure they recall what they saw and heard,” said Los Angeles attorney Angela Oh. “You want them to be truthful, but sometimes you want them to be circumspect.” In that case, she said, you tell them “just answer the questions.”

Another lawyer told me that the live televising of Park’s appearance presented the prosecution with additional problems. “You want to make sure he is not responding to the media,” he said. “You want to make sure he goes through his chronology of events and not try to embellish anything. There is a tendency for someone like that, who’s just a limo driver, to think this is his five minutes of fame. You want to get him out of that posture.”

*

Five minutes of fame. Some people love it. Others wilt under the glare. Whatever the reaction, the possibility of fame or embarrassment has changed the process of preparing witnesses, made it more important, extending the process beyond the courtroom, perhaps changing the dynamics of the criminal justice system.

Witnesses have been coached probably as long as there have been trials. Anyone who’s been in a lawsuit or had the misfortune to be a crime victim or witness knows that.

If this had been just another murder case, the prosecutor would have sat down with Allan Park and rehearsed his story. Park would have been shown diagrams of the crime scene and would have marked them confidently, as he did in court yesterday.

But if he had made a mistake, if his memory had slipped, if he had become confused over the location of the Simpson garage, nobody would have noticed except a few people in court. It would have made no difference in determining the outcome of the case. Judges don’t usually decide the outcomes of preliminary hearings based on minor mistakes.

But in the Simpson case, the principals are not just playing to the judge and a small courtroom audience. They all understand that the vast television audience likely includes a dozen or so potential jurors and alternates who may encounter Allan Park in a court one day, should a full trial take place. Both sides are already are shaping his image.

Thus the importance of a routine witness is exaggerated and the criminal justice system is distorted.