Is Simpson’s Co-Author Really a Material Witness?

Jail isn’t the ideal place to write a book, but our legal system did all it could to ease the creative efforts of the Los Angeles County Jail’s most famous author, O.J. Simpson.

Simpson has signed a contract with Little, Brown, one of the nation’s best-known publishing companies, for a book based on his replies to letters sent to him in jail. Little, Brown is planning a press run of 500,000 books, selling at $17.95 each, plus an undisclosed number of audiotapes at $9.95.

Book contracts are complicated and vary from one author to another. But figuring a low 10%-per-book royalty, Simpson would get $897,500 if all the copies were sold, plus a cut of the audiotapes. The proceeds will be used to pay the “dream team” of lawyers defending him on charges that he murdered his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Book writing is a commendable activity. What’s questionable is the way his co-author, Lawrence Schiller, was put on a special “material witness” list that gave him lengthy access to Simpson and permission to tape-record his meetings in the privacy of the attorneys room at the jail.

Simpson’s attorneys have tried to justify their seemingly endless list of material witnesses who receive special access to the defendant by saying that many may be summoned to the stand as character witnesses. But The Times’ Ralph Frammolino reported last month that Simpson’s material witness list includes his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, who visits often.

Sheriff Sherman Block has called the list, the longest in recent memory, part of a defense plan to circumvent jail policy by allowing visits in the attorneys room at hours not available to other inmates.

Schiller made it onto this select list of friends and relatives through the intercession of one of Simpson’s lawyers, Robert Kardashian, a longtime confidant of the defendant.

“Mr. Schiller was contacted by Mr. Kardashian in early October about being a material witness,” a spokeswoman for Little, Brown told me. Schiller was then put on the material witness list and “he was there (visiting Simpson in jail) because he was a material witness,” the spokeswoman said.

I suppose you could defend Schiller’s inclusion in the material witness category, although it would be tough: He lived across the street from Simpson in Bel-Air in the ‘60s.

Perhaps a better explanation is that Schiller is a well known and successful literary collaborator who worked with Norman Mailer both on his prize-winning “Executioner’s Song” and his latest work, “Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery.”

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Neither Kardashian nor Schiller’s agent called back when I tried to find out the genesis of this literary collaboration. But I learned a lot about it from Maureen O’Brien, news editor and columnist for Publishers Weekly. She interviewed Schiller and will provide details of the book deal in her Monday column.

O’Brien said the author told her that he was placed on the witness list not only because he once lived across the street from Simpson but also because he and Simpson used to toss footballs in the street and Schiller’s daughter used to baby-sit for Simpson.

Simpson and Schiller both moved from Bel-Air and remarried. “In the late ‘70s,” O’Brien said, “Schiller’s new wife knew Kardashian’s wife and she got Schiller a free-lance job. Kardashian wanted a private music video made for a birthday. Schiller produced the music videos for the Kardashians, and Simpson was in it.”

The next time Schiller saw Simpson, O’Brien said, was last October when he went to the County Jail as a material witness. Kardashian was present. They met in the attorneys room. Kardashian watched the two men as they talked.

“Kardashian saw the chemistry,” O’Brien said. “When Schiller returned home in the afternoon, he got a phone call from Kardashian. They brainstormed the book idea.”

O’Brien said Schiller told her that neither he nor Kardashian intended to do a book when they first met. “But Schiller had read stories about letters Simpson was receiving and he thought this would make a good idea for the book.”

She said Simpson had received 300,000 letters. Kardashian selected 5,000 of them, and Schiller, with the help of volunteers, narrowed it down to 100. The book consists of Simpson’s answers to these letters.

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Put all this together and it sounds like this literary deal was orchestrated by Kardashian, who then arranged the working conditions needed for speedy production of the book. The first draft was sent to Simpson on Dec. 12, less than two months after he and his co-author first met.

I said at the beginning of this column that the arrangements were questionable.

They are not questionable because Simpson wrote a book in jail, or got paid for it. Great books have been written in prison.

Sheriff’s Deputy Fidel Gonzales, a department spokesman, said Los Angeles County Jail inmates are permitted to write. In fact, their right to do so is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.

What’s out of line is the way Simpson’s co-author was accommodated by being added to the material witness list, which gave him plenty of time and permission to use the tape recorder.

Most material witness lists are short--four or five names, a tenth the size of Simpson’s. For most writers, a jailhouse visit with a tape recorder, while possible, takes a lot of arranging.

You need a court order or permission of the Sheriff’s Department. You have to persuade a judge to grant the order, often a difficult task. Or you have to make arrangements with the sheriff’s office for each visit. It may take time for the office to put it together.

The writing team of Simpson and Schiller were spared all this red tape. They can thank an accommodating judge, Lance A. Ito, who has let the material witness list grow to the size of a comp list at a Las Vegas casino.