THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Prosecutor’s Added Opening Statement

Transcript of added opening statement remarks delivered for the prosecution Tuesday by Marcia Clark in the O.J. Simpson murder trial:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Cochran made some comments about a . . . first of all, I’m going to talk about a videotape that has outtakes of the defendant making an exercise video, and Mr. Cochran made some comments to you about the defendant’s alleged arthritic condition. According to him, the defendant’s arthritic condition became acute sometime after he played golf and after he’d been swinging the golf club on the evening of June the 12th about 10 p.m. . . . at some point after that the arthritic condition became acute.

Mr. Cochran told you that the defendant’s physical capabilities are very limited as a result of that condition. The prosecution will show you evidence to the contrary. We will show you outtakes of an exercise videotape which was made by the defendant only two weeks before the murders. We will show you a portion of that videotape to demonstrate just what the defendant’s physical capabilities really were on the evening of June the 12th, 1994. In it you will see the defendant just two weeks before the murders, and he weighed 212 pounds, which is what he weighed 15 years ago, that the defendant prided himself in that tape on being in good physical condition. You will see him doing pushups, you will see him lifting his arms overhead, you will see him stretching, reaching, throwing jabs and uppercuts, and he does that for several minutes in this tape. You will see him doing trunk twists, and this tape took hours to make, and that he came back after that day and went back the next day and spent a lot more time doing that very same thing. We will show you that tape during the course of this trial.

Second of all, counsel made reference to the fact that, to statements that Howard Weitzman, who was then the defendant’s attorney, was not permitted to be present during his interview with the police officers on June the 13th. And you were told by counsel that they refused, that the police officers actually refused, to allow Mr. Weitzman to remain with the defendant during that interview. That is completely wrong, and in fact what the evidence will show is that the detectives asked Mr. Weitzman to stay for the interview, but that he declined to do so, stating that he would prefer to go out to lunch. And that prior to that interview, he had had approximately half an hour alone with Mr. Simpson to talk to him--after which he said, “Go ahead,” and went out to lunch, and that’s what the evidence will show. And that was after the detectives invited him to come in and sit during the interview with them.

Now, last week you heard Mr. Cochran talking about a witness named Mary Anne Gerchas. Now he told you about this witness. He said it was a very important witness. He discussed at some length what she would testify to, telling you that she claimed to have seen four men on the night of the murders, at least two of whom were Hispanic, at least one or two were wearing a knit cap, and that she thinks she saw them possibly running from the area of Nicole Simpson’s condo on the night of the murders. And you’ll be hearing a lot more about Ms. Gerchas in the course of this trial, but right now I’m just going to address a few points that the evidence will show that Mr. Cochran didn’t tell you about. For example, she spoke to her friend, Sheila Carter, the day after the murders of Ron and Nicole.

She told her friend, Sheila Carter, that she was not even at Bundy on the night of the murders. Mary Anne Gerchas had planned to look at an apartment in Brentwood on the night of the murders on June the 12th. The next day she spoke to Sheila Carter and said she did not go to Brentwood on that night and she was glad because there had been murders committed there the night before.

But Ms. Carter is also going to tell you something else in addition to the fact that she will tell you that Ms. Gerchas did not go to Brentwood on the night of the murders. She’s also going to tell you something very important about Ms. Gerchas’ credibility. She will tell you about a statement which proves that Ms. Gerchas is one of these people who comes out of the woodwork in high-profile cases so they can get involved.

Here’s what Ms. Carter will tell you: Ms. Gerchas was obsessed with this case and she talked as if she knew the defendant personally. She said that (Ms. Gerchas) would send her to the store to buy every Enquirer, every Star and every tabloid pertaining to this case--anything that talked about the Simpson case. She would read it all and she would save it and talk about the case constantly. But she somehow never told anyone that she had been on Bundy on the night of the murders until the time that (defense attorney) Robert Shapiro started the hot line requesting that anyone with information come forward and call that hot line number.

And it was right around that time that he put out the hot line number that Mary Anne Gerchas started to say, “Well, maybe I was driving by that area. Maybe I did see something.”

Mr. Cochran accused us of not telling you about her, and we didn’t because we didn’t know about her. And if you believe her, she asked the defense attorneys if they would tell us about her, and they said they would. She spoke to Robert Shapiro and Shapiro’s people told her not to talk to anyone about her statement. And when they finished taking her statement, they told her they weren’t going to use her as a witness. They spent hours interviewing her back on July 10th and July 12th of 1994, and they never told us about her. And that jury instruction counsel showed you about credibility of witnesses applies to all witnesses, ladies and gentlemen. The evidence will show that Mary Anne Gerchas is a known liar and a Simpson case groupie.

Thank you for keeping an open mind and listening to all of the evidence.