Sources Tell of Rifts in Simpson Defense Team : Lawyers: Cochran is seen as taking a greater role, but Shapiro remains lead attorney. The two downplay discord.

O.J. Simpson’s defense team, a celebrated collection of lawyers and investigators from across the country, is wrestling with communication snafus, strategy disputes and a shifting balance of power among the football great’s leading lawyers, according to sources in and close to the Simpson camp.

With jury selection set to begin in less than three weeks, Robert L. Shapiro continues to serve as the lead attorney in the case, handling most news media requests for interviews, supervising the lawyers assembled to fight for Simpson and affixing his signature atop most of the motions filed by the legal team.

But Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. is the team’s premier trial lawyer, and sources close to the case say he increasingly is asserting himself as the trial draws near. According to friends and associates of both lawyers, Cochran has been critical of several moves by his colleague, and it is Cochran, not Shapiro, who has the closest relationship with Simpson.

“They’re the ones with a bond,” one source said. “O.J. feels comfortable with Johnnie.”

Cochran and Shapiro are among Los Angeles’ best-liked criminal defense lawyers and are widely considered two of the city’s most impressive legal talents. Shapiro is best known for his deft handling of cases involving celebrity clients, and Cochran is famous for his courtroom skills. Those who know them believe that they will subordinate any personal disagreements to their common goal: winning an acquittal for Simpson.

Still, the picture painted by people in and close to the Simpson team is a far cry from the defense camp’s official pronouncements. Shapiro--who built a star-studded defense team that includes respected legal scholar Gerald F. Uelmen and such well-known attorneys as F. Lee Bailey and Alan M. Dershowitz--has compared the group to “the three tenors” and has raved about its smooth coordination, calling it a “well-oiled machine.” Taking that cue, some journalists and commentators have dubbed it a “legal dream team.”

In fact, sources say, the team often has been subject to tense contests of wills and a babble of conflicting strategies. And the disagreements, while mostly confined to the privacy of Shapiro’s and Cochran’s legal offices, have sometimes flared in public.

At a recent Bar association conference in San Diego, for instance, Cochran was asked what recommendations he would have for criminal defense attorneys handling high-profile cases. His response--”You never sign autographs, and you never let your client talk to police,” audience members recall him saying--was an obvious dig at two of Simpson’s other lawyers.

Howard Weitzman accompanied Simpson to police headquarters the day that Simpson agreed, to the amazement of criminal defense attorneys nationwide, to be interviewed by investigators. Shapiro, who took over for Weitzman after that fateful meeting, has occasionally stopped at the courthouse to sign autographs.

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Cochran also has told friends that he thinks that Shapiro was too quick to make public statements about the case, speaking to the press before consulting with Simpson at length and announcing that his client was at home when the slayings were committed. Those comments echoed earlier ones by Weitzman, and Cochran has complained that they locked Simpson into an alibi before his attorneys could thoroughly review the case.

In an interview this week, Shapiro conceded that there have been disagreements and that, on occasion, “we yell and scream at each other.” But he downplayed the significance of those disputes, comparing them to arguments between a husband and wife.

“Are there disagreements? On almost every issue,” Shapiro said. “But a lot of this is like a jazz group playing together. Sometimes it’s time for someone to play a solo. Sometimes the whole band plays together. This band plays together very well.”

Nevertheless, associates say Shapiro has complained privately that Cochran is trying to wrest control of the high-profile case and capitalize on its publicity. According to several people, Shapiro was angered that news of Cochran’s appointment to the defense team leaked out before Shapiro could announce it--a fact that Shapiro is said to attribute to Cochran telling reporters.

Those same people add that Shapiro did not initially set out to hire Cochran but instead was concentrating mostly on lawyers outside of Los Angeles to bolster the trial team. According to several people, Simpson and his family felt comfortable with Cochran and urged Shapiro to turn to him.

“There was some concern in the Simpson family circle that Shapiro seemed untested,” one person familiar with the case said. “The family felt strongly about that, and Simpson insisted that Johnnie be part of the team.”

Shapiro denies that. “My condition of employment in this case and every case is that the client is responsible for the fees,” he said. “I am responsible for tactics and strategy. It was my decision as to what lawyers would be on this team, 100% my decision.”

Choosing his words carefully, Cochran tells a different version of his entry onto the team. According to him, Simpson called Cochran’s law office from jail almost daily after his arrest--failing several times to reach Cochran himself. The two have known each other for years, and when Simpson finally spoke to his friend, he asked Cochran to join the growing defense team, Cochran and others said.

At first, Cochran said, he hesitated, worried that it would be difficult to represent a longtime friend facing such serious charges. But eventually Cochran relented, drawn by the lure of such a major case and by his friend’s pleas, which Simpson renewed at the end of the preliminary hearing. Cochran said he contacted Shapiro shortly after that hearing concluded, and the two discussed him joining the defense team.

“We agreed that we would set aside our egos and do what was best for the client,” Cochran said.

On July 22, Cochran made his first appearance in court, standing by Simpson’s side as he proclaimed that he was “absolutely, 100% not guilty” of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

The signs of discord within the Simpson defense team have caught the eye of prosecutors, who subtly are trying to take advantage of any possible rift. During one recent court session, they berated Simpson’s lawyers for failing to communicate with one another regarding evidence in their possession.

“Generally, when there is a problem, it is only because the various defense teams have lacked the coordination, the internal coordination to even understand what they have,” Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman said in response to defense complaints that evidence was not being turned over to them. Hodgman, a ranking member of the district attorney’s office, was hired by Cochran when Cochran was an assistant Los Angeles County district attorney.

Shapiro associate Sara Caplan denied that Simpson’s team lacks internal coordination, saying that the various defense attorneys “coordinate everything very well.” But sources close to the defense say Hodgman hit the nail on the head.

“There is some trouble communicating between Wilshire and Century City,” said one person inside the defense camp, referring to Cochran’s Wilshire Boulevard office suite and Shapiro’s Century City offices.

According to that person, all information about the case is first forwarded from government attorneys to Shapiro and only later passed on to the rest of the defense team. On occasion, the volumes of files have become difficult to keep track of as they are shared with the various lawyers and investigators, several people close to the defense said.

Cochran acknowledged that there have been problems but said the team is working to resolve them quickly.

“There is such an overwhelming amount of documents in this case,” he said. “They do have to be distributed to the various offices. We have to have a clearinghouse, and that’s been difficult.”

In some instances, the bevy of lawyers working on the case appears to have contributed to muddled messages being sent from the defense camp. At the same time Shapiro was insisting that race would never be an issue in the case, Cochran’s staff was preparing a motion that accused one Los Angeles Police Department detective of being a “dangerous officer with a propensity to create false information against African American defendants.”

In court, Shapiro has steadfastly denied that any member of the defense team has ever discussed evidence in the case, on or off the record. Outside of court, Bailey has discussed evidence on a number of television talk shows, denying an inaccurate story by KNBC-TV about clothes taken from Simpson’s washing machine, asserting that Simpson’s statement to police did not include anything that would implicate him in the crimes, and stating that a coroner’s report showed that Simpson could not have committed the crimes because they occurred after 11 p.m., when he was en route to the airport. That report later was found to be inaccurate.

And while Shapiro was insisting that Simpson was innocent of any involvement in the slayings, Dershowitz told an interviewer that Simpson might consider pleading insanity. Since then, Dershowitz has taken a lower profile. But his comments, according to insiders, infuriated some other members of the defense team.

As the trial approaches, more disagreements are not only likely but inevitable, sources in and close to the defense team concede. Who will deliver opening and closing remarks to the jury? Will Simpson testify? Who will question key witnesses such as the Los Angeles police detectives who investigated the case and the police personnel who collected evidence?

Most observers believe that Cochran, at the very least, will insist on playing a key role in each of those decisions. And Shapiro, who once proclaimed that he was the sole leader of the Simpson team, said this week that he and Cochran would jointly tackle those and other questions.

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“Everyone has a responsibility, whether it is for motions or strategy or whatever,” Shapiro said. “Johnnie and I oversee everything.”

Seeking to resolve any differences before the case moves to trial later this month, Shapiro summoned the entire defense team for an all-day meeting Wednesday that tailed into Thursday as well. The session was marked by disagreements, participants said, but also by a commitment to clarify responsibilities and to bury any personal conflicts.

Afterward, both Cochran and Shapiro downplayed any suggestion of dissension between them. Shapiro described Cochran as “one of the country’s outstanding lawyers” and said he was playing an important role in the Simpson defense.

Cochran also spoke glowingly of Shapiro and emphasized their joint commitment to working on Simpson’s behalf. But Cochran made it clear that the coming of the trial will thrust him even more into the Simpson spotlight.

“It used to be that Bob was in charge of all of this. He was involved in the case first,” said Cochran. “Now we’re sharing more and more. He’s been very good about sharing responsibility. I give him a lot of credit for that. And I’m doing more and more as we get closer to trial.”

* MORE ODD TWISTS: Investigator denies knowledge; porn star allegedly has information in the case. B3.