THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Simpson Team Shows Us the Shadowy Side

Welcome to the other side of L.A. law.

It’s a world of criminal attorneys and private eyes, alibi witnesses, sometimes pushing the law to the limit in the fierce battle for acquittal or conviction.

It is also a dangerous world professionally, especially when its practices are exposed to the unrelenting publicity of the O.J. Simpson trial.

That’s where Simpson defense team member Carl Douglas finds himself today, the object of endless criticism by commentators, most of them fellow lawyers, for his role in the Rosa Lopez tape caper.

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It was Douglas’ difficult task Monday to tell Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito that the defense had come upon a previously undisclosed interview with Lopez, who worked as a housekeeper at the home next door to Simpson’s. She says she saw the defendant’s white Bronco parked outside Simpson’s home at the time the prosecution said he murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

State law, enacted by the people as Proposition 115, requires the defense to turn over the results of its investigation to the prosecution.

Seemingly taken aback by the attorney’s confession, Judge Ito asked Douglas if there were notes or tapes of the interview. No, said Douglas. Chief defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran echoed the affirmation, as a still-concerned Judge Ito pointedly noted later. But defense investigator Bill Pavelic revealed at the end of the session Monday that there was indeed a tape.

By the time court adjourned, Douglas was being hammered by the commentators, who were telling the portion of the world that follows the trial that Douglas and the other members of the defense team were either incompetent or had illegally or unethically withheld evidence.

Undoubtedly, this kind of situation wasn’t covered when Douglas studied at the University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley. He was admitted to the Bar in 1980. He served in the federal public defender’s office, and worked in private practice. One of his biggest cases was the defense of former California Highway Patrol Officer George Michael Gwaltney, who was sentenced to 90 years in federal prison in 1984 for the kidnap, rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman.

Douglas is a partner in the 10-attorney Cochran practice. In January, the Langston Bar Assn., composed of African American lawyers, gave him its Loren Miller Attorney of the Year award, named for a famed African American judge who was one of California’s earliest and most effective fighters for civil rights.

“He practices the kind of law that Loren Miller stood for,” said Alvin L. Pittman, Langston’s president. “I can’t believe the Carl Douglas I know practices willfully withholding evidence.”

But Loren Miller’s law involved ending segregation in neighborhoods, schools, shops and all of the other places it had taken root. Such advocacy is based on the Constitution, and the many precedents found in constitutional law.

This is not the kind of law practiced in the Simpson trial. Carl Douglas’ legal success in this case depends more on extemporaneous persuasiveness, a quick wit, luck and evidence gathered by his private eyes.

Private detective Pavelic, a critic of the Los Angeles Police Department in his days as a cop, was hired by Robert L. Shapiro of the Simpson team last summer, before Cochran and Douglas came aboard.

In addition to digging up leads to free Simpson, Pavelic did an internal probe for Shapiro. Shapiro had been accused by another defense lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, of selling inside information to a tabloid. But Pavelic turned up evidence that Shapiro said showed Bailey was the leaker.

Pavelic worked on the Simpson case with John E. McNally, a retired New York police detective who caught a famous jewel thief, Jack (Murph the Surf) Murphy.

McNally has a lot of admirers among lawyers and detectives, but they don’t include federal prosecutors who once accused him of working for the younger brother of New York mob leader John Gotti. McNally said all he did was recommend an associate for a debugging assignment.

But it was Pavelic who was sent to Brentwood to interview Lopez. Pavelic was sent back for a second interview, this time with McNally.

Did Douglas know about the first interview? Absolutely not, he says. It’s Shapiro’s deal, or Pavelic’s.

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The final answer may come from the historians. Today, in the middle of the fray, all parties have an explanation and they are available to you elsewhere in the paper.

The relations between a private eye and a criminal attorney are a murky area. A lot of alibi witnesses aren’t the kind of people you’d bring home to meet your family. Talking to them isn’t like interviewing someone for a job at the bank or the school district. But an alibi witness can save an innocent defendant’s life.

What the Simpson trial has done is expose to public view this often shadowy search for the crucial witness, the infrequently mentioned side of legal practice. Unfortunately, it has unleashed a barrage of criticism at the people who play the game.