Double Standard for Simpson at Jail Charged : Custody: Lawyers for other inmates complain about apparent special treatment. Shapiro defends decisions.

Inside the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, both of them were on the books as K-10s--”keep-aways”--inmates considered too dangerous or vulnerable to mix with the general population. Both were locked into one-man cells. Both had their movements restricted, their actions closely watched.

Yet in a jail that operates with such anonymity that guards refer to their jobs as “grabbing bodies” for the next scheduled activity, Derrick Nelson, 22, onetime gang member of Pasadena, had quite a different life in custody than his famous jail mate: Orenthal James Simpson, 47, former football great of Brentwood.

Through a combination of court orders and administrative decisions, Simpson is receiving benefits that Nelson and most other inmates could only dream of, interviews and court records show.

Simpson is allowed to shower more often, sleep later before going to court and make use of more than 10 additional hours outside his cell each week to stretch his legs, ride an exercise bike provided for his use, talk on the phone or watch TV.

But the biggest difference is in the area that prisoners care about the most--contact with outsiders. As he left the jail recently after charges were dropped, Nelson said that as a keep-away he was allowed only an hour a week in the regular jail visiting room, where he was locked in a cage in the midst of as many as 240 other inmates talking to friends and relatives across a glass barrier and over phones.

Simpson, meanwhile, has been allowed unlimited non-contact visits with girlfriend Paula Barbieri and others while sitting at a desk in a private glass booth located in the jail’s less crowded attorney visiting room. Not only has Simpson recently been given exclusive use of the attorney visiting area on weekends, his arrangements also allowed him to see outsiders on Christmas, when jailhouse visiting was suspended for all other inmates.

What appears to be a double standard has some in the criminal justice system grumbling.

“The rules have been bent beyond recognition in O.J.’s case,” complained one defense attorney, who asked not to be identified.

The deference shown to Simpson, he added, even extends to the attitude of the guards, who he said are normally aggressive with other inmates but are “very solicitous of O.J. . . . almost to the point of toadying to him.”

In a recent interview, Sheriff Sherman Block said any apparent favoritism actually is geared to making the jail run more smoothly. “Those things we are doing that seem to give O.J. special treatment are being done for our benefit,” Block said.

Putting Simpson into the general population would create chaos because of his celebrity status, he said, and would open him to attacks by any inmate with designs of grabbing a piece of the spotlight in the highly publicized case.

Yet Block acknowledged that Simpson’s incarceration has been a “great inconvenience,” complicating the administrative routine at a 6,000-inmate facility that transports a third of its inhabitants every weekday to courts throughout the county. And records show that keeping Simpson in jail just through October has cost Block’s department more than $232,000, much of it for deputy overtime at the jail and courthouse.

“I get letters all the time from citizens out there who complain and ask why he is getting special treatment,” Block said. “Now, everything else he gets outside of these visits is what everybody else gets, but in his case it’s a one-on-one basis. He eats the same food as the rest of the inmates eat but instead of going to the dining room, it’s brought to him on a tray.”

Robert L. Shapiro, one of Simpson’s lead attorneys, bristles at the suggestion that his client is getting favored treatment. Shapiro said he has asked for and been granted after-hours visitation rights because of the extraordinary complexity of the fast-moving trial, which has Simpson and his defense team tied up in court during the normal visiting time for attorneys at the jail.

He added that Simpson may be worse off than other high-security inmates because he is being kept in isolation--where he is monitored via video camera, has little contact with guards and prisoners and is not taken to the jail roof for exercise.

Now, Simpson is the only occupant in a seven-cell wing of the 1750 unit, which is reserved for high-security inmates such as accused drug dealers, bad cops and ranking gang members.

“I keep hearing this bull---- of ‘special treatment, special treatment, special treatment,” Shapiro said. “The whole place sucks.”

Simpson, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman, is not the first inmate to receive individual attention in the jail. Mass murder mastermind Charles Manson and 1970s revolutionaries-turned-kidnapers William and Emily Harris were isolated, as was Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s assassin. But in Sirhan’s case, jail officials were so worried that someone would poison him that they built a kitchen next to his cell to prepare his meals, Block said.

Even in isolation, Simpson is not immune from discipline. Deputy George Ducoulombier, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said Simpson had his privileges taken away for three days when guards once discovered contraband--a yellow high-lighter used to mark documents--in his cell.

However, interviews and records indicate that in general Simpson is enjoying some important benefits afforded to few, if any, inmates.

For example, Ducoulombier said Block decided to give Simpson additional “freeway time”--the period during which an inmate can roam the corridor outside his cell--based on complaints from the former athlete about an undisclosed medical problem. With that extra time, about 14 hours a week compared to up to four hours for most inmates, comes more opportunities to watch TV, talk on the phone or take a shower, the spokesman said.

Block allowed an exception to jail policy against contraband when he permitted Simpson to have football cards in his cell, Ducoulombier said. Simpson was honoring a pre-existing contract calling for him to autograph 5,000 cards as part of a profit-making venture.

Although some attorneys say they admire Simpson and his lawyers for their gumption in extracting more “civilized” treatment from the jail, they lament the fact that their less wealthy and less prominent clients cannot do the same.

“The whole point is not whether O.J. should be getting the treatment he gets,” said Deputy Public Defender Casey Lilienfeld. “I think he should. I think it’s good that he’s getting a shower every day. The point is other guys should get the other benefits as well.

“There seems to be an inequity in the fact that he gets certain things that my clients don’t get,” he said. “They’re poor, they don’t have money to hire a lawyer, and they’re treated differently.”

Case in point: Simpson won a court order guaranteeing him a hot meal when he returns from court after dinner is served in jail, authorities said. Shapiro asked Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito and the Sheriff’s Department for the accommodation after complaining that his client was served “mystery meat” sandwiches.

“If our clients made that complaint, the sheriff would . . . tell them to shut up,” said Deputy Public Defender Russell Griffith, who works in the county’s Compton office.

Private defense attorney Barry Tarlow noted how quickly jail authorities complied with a June court order giving Simpson sleep medication and a cervical pillow, which fits around his neck. Shapiro said the pillow was needed because the hard mat that his client slept on aggravated an old football injury.

In contrast, Tarlow said it took him three court orders between May and August before deputies at the Wayside Honor Ranch in Santa Clarita gave a tube of skin cream to one of his clients with a severe infection near his groin. Sheriff’s spokesman Ducoulombier said he never heard of Tarlow’s case but added that jail authorities routinely comply with a multitude of court orders ranging from special medication to telephone access for inmates.

Yet what really sets Simpson apart--and sticks most in the craws of many attorneys as well as the sheriff himself--are the extra visiting privileges.

Jail policy gives lawyers Monday through Thursday to confer with inmates in the attorney visiting room, an area off the main entrance where lawyers and their clients can either address each other across long tables or at desks in one of eight private glass booths along the back wall. Sometimes the inmates are chained to the floor, but the only thing separating them from visitors are short, teller-like windows, over which lawyers can pass legal documents after they are inspected by a deputy.

When that room is closed, attorneys must stand in line with inmates’ wives, girlfriends and children to use the regular visiting room, a less private area open Thursday through Sunday where visitors face each other through a glass divider and use telephones to talk. There are no time limits on attorney visits, but inmates can only speak to friends or relatives for two half-hour sessions a week in the regular visiting room.

From the earliest stages of his case, Simpson’s attorneys have pressed for special arrangements. They have asked for exclusive use of the attorney room when it is otherwise closed on weekends and sought approval of a long list of “material witnesses,” people the defense say could attest to the former athlete’s character and may need to confer with him in jail to prepare testimony.

Because these witnesses are accompanied by an attorney, their visits do not fall within the half-hour limits for friends and relatives, jail officials say. And that loophole has allowed Simpson private, unlimited visits with girlfriend Barbieri, teammate Al Cowlings, his grown children and others, according to jail officials and attorneys on other cases who have witnessed the visits.

“What it looks like, to an attorney who goes down (to the jail) to see a lot of clients, is a scam,” said John Meyers, a Century City defense attorney for 25 years.

At most, he said, defense attorneys will identify five or six material witnesses for an unusual case. Simpson’s list includes 52 people--more than any in recent memory.

“We’re representing a man who is unjustly accused of two counts of first-degree, premeditated murder. We have asked for our constitutional right for a speedy trial,” Shapiro said, defending the special requests. “Since we’re in court Monday through Thursday till about 5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m., it is virtually impossible to prepare with our client under those conditions as would be with any other lawyer. If we had a man who was allowed bail, we’d be able to meet with him seven days a week.”

Shapiro said he filed a comprehensive material witness list because “we have a situation where at one point in time, some of the issues may involve character, may involve reputation, may involve life history. And I’m not going to take any chances in doing anything other than being totally prepared.”

The county has consistently opposed these defense requests, for reasons of cost and preferential treatment.

In July, Block successfully fought a Municipal Court order requiring him to follow the list and open the attorney room for eight hours on a specific weekend, court records show. Block filed papers arguing that the material witnesses were friends and relatives and warned that the order would give Simpson “more rights than like inmates committed to the County Jail awaiting trial.”

Although Block prevailed in that specific case, Simpson’s defense team has since won a succession of sealed court orders from Ito approving the witness list and forcing the Sheriff’s Department to compromise on visiting arrangements by making available a rarely used third-floor infirmary visiting room, said James M. Owens, principal deputy county counsel. To accommodate Simpson, the department had to widen one of the booths and install a new telephone system that allowed four people to talk at one time, he said.

It was in this room that a guard said he overheard comments that an emotional Simpson made to football defensive lineman-turned-evangelist Rosey Grier on Nov. 13, a report that brought the struggle over visitation into public view during court hearings.

The renewed concerns over privacy prompted Ito to sign orders opening the first-floor attorney room to Simpson and his lawyers during recent weekends, Owens said. It also spurred the Sheriff’s Department recently to make $20,000 in improvements to the infirmary visiting area by adding plexiglass, drywall and sound-dampening carpet, officials said.

The cumulative effect of court orders and administrative decisions has been to make life easier for Simpson than for fellow keep-away Nelson, a self-described reformed gang member arrested Aug. 26 on suspicion of a parole violation--possessing a gun. Nelson was held on $65,000 bail but was released Dec. 14 after the weapons charge was dropped, according to records and interviews with his public defender attorney.

“It’s like a living hell in there,” Nelson said moments after he walked out, his possessions in two plastic bags and the red K-10 classification band still on his wrist.

Nelson said he earned the keep-away status after he got into a fight with a gang member; he was placed in a one-man cell in the 3100 section starting Sept. 1.

“They just messed me over, man,” he said. “But once you get in there, there’s nothing you can do but accept it.”

In some ways, Nelson and Simpson were treated alike. Both had their meals brought to them on a tray because their keep-away status made it impossible for them to go to the prisoners’ mess call.

Still, the former gang member described a very different existence on several points. Jail officials said the average inmate gets two to four hours a week in freeway time and keep-aways average 30 minutes every other day. Nelson said it was less in his case.

“If we’re lucky, it’s three times a week. . . . It’s supposed to be a half-hour, but they give us 20, 25 minutes.”

In contrast, Simpson gets two hours of freeway time a day--one in the morning and one later in the day--outside his 9-by-7-foot cell, Ducoulombier said.

Recreation for all inmates, Ducoulombier said, is supposed to be two hours a week on the jail rooftop, an open area secured by wire mesh where they can play basketball or volleyball. Keep-aways get the same but are usually locked into 64-square-foot steel cages.

Nelson said he never came close to getting his allotted time. “We went once a month--God knows, I’m not lying,” he said, adding that the guards used to wake up six prisoners at a time at 4:30 or 5 a.m. for the excursion.

Simpson is not taken to the roof; instead, the jail has provided him an exercise bike, which he can use during his freeway time each day. Shapiro said the lack of outdoor exposure is a hardship on his client.

“He has no roof time and hasn’t seen the sun since June,” Shapiro said. “We’ve asked for him to have exercise with the sun out, and they woke him up one morning at 6:30 a.m. and said it was time to go up.”

But Simpson declined. “He felt that his rest was more important so he could concentrate on the case,” Shapiro said.

Nelson was allowed to shower every other day, locked in a steel cage. “If I had to go to court when they ran the showers, I didn’t get a shower,” he said. “They don’t care.”

For their court dates, ordinary inmates are roused at 5 a.m. and are waiting at a downstairs holding area by 6 a.m. for their bus ride to court. Those who are considered the highest security risks are put in steel cages in the buses. All inmates get dinner in a sack--two sandwiches, fruit and two cookies--when they arrive back too late for the evening meal.

Simpson, meanwhile, has the opportunity to take a shower every day, Ducoulombier said. He is awakened at 6 a.m. for his private van ride to the Criminal Courts Building a few blocks away. When he returns late, he eats a regular prison meal kept warm from dinner.

It is not clear whether other inmates know about Simpson’s favored treatment. But Block said it has not dimmed an obvious admiration that prisoners have expressed whenever the former football great, accompanied by a special guard, walks through the general jail population on his way to court.

“I think he’s taken on pretty much of a hero status,” Block said. “It’s not unusual when he is moved through part of the facility where there are other inmates, they will cheer him and things like that.”

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this story.

The Simpson Case

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