A Bittersweet Return Home for Defendant

After spending eight months residing in a windowless space about the size of the shoe closet in his own bedroom, O.J. Simpson went home.

On Sunday, under a gloriously sunny blue sky, he stood in the front yard of his Brentwood estate, chatting amiably with the plainclothes sheriff’s deputies who never stood far away, as his jurors, his defenders and his prosecutors walked slowly through his house--his bedroom, bathroom, kitchen.

As he waited, he seemed to be proudly pointing out to deputies the features of the still well-kept property--almost more like a host than a prisoner accused of two murders.

For two hours he waited. He ate a brown-bag lunch under a clump of trees in the yard as sea gulls winged circles above him. At first, he smiled often.

And then Simpson got to do what most people take for granted: He walked into his house.

Simpson was already waiting at the Rockingham Avenue estate when the jurors, who first visited Nicole Brown Simpson’s condo, were escorted in small, silent groups of four and five through the gate on the Ashford Street side of the property.

In the mansion, fires burned in two fireplaces, flowers ornamented the rooms and a Bible lay on one table. Judge Lance A. Ito allowed those to remain in spite of prosecutors’ complaints, but a picture of Simpson’s mother--evidently put there after his arrest--was ordered removed from the defendant’s bedside table.

As jurors walked through his house, Simpson waited outside. At times he could be seen standing in the shade of a tree, his jacket flung back a bit as he rested his hands in his pockets. His gray suit and patterned tie were a striking formal contrast to the casual attire of the jurors.

Occasionally, over the ivy-covered brick wall that surrounds his property, he made eye contact with reporters, some of them standing on tiptoe on the running board of a van trying to get a better view into the yard.

As the day wore on, Simpson seemed to get a little anxious, and at one point rocked back and forth from one loafer-clad foot to the other.

After jurors had been through the two-story Tudor-style house, it was time for Simpson to see again what jurors had seen for the first time--the place he calls home.

Simpson was put at the head of a procession that included about half a dozen sheriff’s deputies and lawyers for both sides.

Like everyone else in the entourage, Simpson was forbidden to touch anything.

He walked past, but did not enter, the trophy room where mementos of his career are enshrined.

After only about eight minutes, he emerged from the home. By then, he looked rather subdued, no longer smiling.

The group then went around to a walkway behind the house, where, prosecutors contend, a detective found a glove linked to the murder scene.

Simpson, still leading the others, then walked down the Rockingham driveway to the sidewalk before turning around and returning to the center of the yard, near the children’s playground, where his lawyers say he was hitting golf balls at the time of the murders.

As he walked away, surrounded by deputies, he seemed to be calling instructions back to his maid, Gigi, who still works at the mansion.

For Simpson, guilty or innocent, Sunday’s visit must have been a bittersweet experience. He last saw the residence June 17, when he was led away from it under arrest, accused of knifing to death his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman five days before.

Since then, he has been held at the Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles, seemingly as distant from his upscale lifestyle--and his freedom--as he could possibly get.

His visit to his estate Sunday came about because Judge Ito took Simpson’s double murder trial on the road so jurors could see firsthand the two places that figure prominently in the prosecution’s case: the site of the slayings and Simpson’s property.

Simpson had waived his right to be on hand when, before they visited his estate, jurors toured the condominium on South Bundy Drive in Brentwood where Nicole Simpson’s and Goldman’s bodies were found. The Brown family had already objected to his entering the premises.

For more than two hours, sheriff’s deputies told reporters, Simpson sat in the back seat of an unmarked car on a side street while judge, jurors and attorneys trooped through his ex-wife’s residence, which is now for sale.

But the Heisman Trophy winner asserted his right to go onto his own property. And everyone from looky-loos to his own lawyer believes he did so eagerly.

“I imagine it would be great just to get out of jail” if only for a few hours, speculated Lucy Caruso, a 40-year-old Chicagoan who was in Los Angeles on business Sunday. She took a bus from Hollywood hoping to catch a glimpse of the caravan in which Simpson, his jurors and the other court players traveled.

Gina Syslow, a 38-year-old Santa Barbara nurse who also was in Brentwood to see the jury’s field trip, tried to imagine how Simpson must have felt while at his house.

“Must be bizarre for him not to be able to go in and relax,” she observed.

But Simpson did seem to relax a bit amid the scattering of bright flowers and the shrubbery in his yard. He stood with sheriff’s deputies, court personnel, prosecutors and defense lawyers nearby.

Asked whether the defendant had expressed any sentiment about the visit, one of his lawyers, F. Lee Bailey, said, “He mentioned the fact that he’d just as soon stay there.”

But minutes after Simpson left his house, he slid into the back seat of the sheriff’s unmarked car in which he had arrived. The dark blue sedan headed back to the Men’s Central Jail.

Andrea Ford was one of five pool reporters who accompanied the traveling courtroom Sunday.