THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Bailey Offers Props and Theatrics, but No Smoking Gun

In show business, they’re called “props,” and the person who finds them is called “a prop master.” In the courtroom, they’re referred to in a more refined way--as “visual aids”--and the prop master goes by the title of lawyer.

From the earliest days of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, both sides have turned to props to give more punch to their many words. Who can forget, for example, the famous mystery envelope, produced by the defense with great fanfare and intrigue during the preliminary hearing. To this day, it’s never been opened, even though we know there’s a knife in there.

But props, like testimony, can sometimes go awry--which is what happened with Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark’s Friday Surprise last week. Clark likes to send the jurors off on their weekend sequestration with a sensational and provocative climax to the week’s activities. Just as the session was ending, she had Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman dramatically unwrap a big shovel and a large plastic bag found in Simpson’s Bronco. The detective displayed the objects without explanation, and court adjourned on a tantalizingly mysterious note.

Sources, presumably with access to the prosecution, offered an explanation to the press after court that Simpson may have intended to use the items to dispose of the body of his slain former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson--a plan he allegedly abandoned after Ronald Goldman happened upon the gory scene.

But this theory was rendered farcical Monday when the prosecution learned from Ford Motor Co. employees that the plastic bag is standard equipment for a Bronco, used for the spare tire. While there’s still no explanation for the shovel, with Clark’s luck Simpson’s attorneys will produce testimony that he was using it to plant vegetables in his community garden.

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Props enlivened Tuesday’s session, too. This time, it was Bailey who pulled them from his lawyer’s bag of tricks. It seemed that he wanted not only to impress the jury but to needle his opponents.

As the trial opened, the defense attorney had lined up in front of him three criminology texts by Dr. Henry Lee, a well-known forensic scientist who is consulting for the defense. When she noticed the books, Clark heatedly demanded to know the passages to be cited by Bailey so she could study them in preparation for her own questioning of the detective.

His gravel voice full of the satisfaction of the successful needler, Bailey replied, “Ms. Clark always leaps before judging the size of the chasm. These books are way over Fuhrman’s head. They are not to be used on him. They are for my own edification, should the reason arise.”

After riling Clark and insulting Fuhrman, Bailey moved on. At no time during the proceedings did he refer to the books.

Later in the morning, Bailey turned to some other well-planned props.

He lifted up a box from the floor and slammed it down on the table in front of him. He pulled from the box a loose-leaf binder and announced, as if it were a matter of overriding importance, that it was a transcript of Fuhrman’s testimony during Simpson’s preliminary hearing last year.

Then, his voice taking on a tone approaching awe, he informed Judge Lance A. Ito that he was going to distribute nine binders with the transcripts to Fuhrman and the other lawyers. He made it sound as though it were the text of a secret agreement between nations.

For the rest of the morning, Bailey leafed through the transcripts, citing page and line numbers as he poked for inconsistencies. He pointed up a few, but the exercise didn’t live up to Bailey’s introduction.

Even so, the visual aid drew attention to what would have been a dull and generally unproductive line of questioning. “It was wonderful theater,” said retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Burton Katz, who once was a deputy district attorney. “It points up the transcripts’ importance. It tells the jurors this is important.”

All these props would have been considered small-time by the greatest prop-master in Los Angeles legal history, Earl Rogers, the most famous lawyer of early 20th-Century Los Angeles.

In 1915 , Rogers was defending Police Chief Charles Sebastian, a mayoral candidate who was on trial for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Edith Pratt, the 16-year-old sister of Sebastian’s girlfriend, had said she had accompanied the couple to the Arizona Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles and watched them “dally sexually.” Police detectives said they watched through a peephole from an adjoining room and saw Sebastian and his girlfriend having sex.

The brilliant Rogers had the wall removed from the hotel and brought to the courtroom.

Dramatically pointing to the peephole in the wall, Rogers convinced the jury that it would have been impossible for the cops to have seen the couple from the police vantage point. Sebastian was acquitted.

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So far, Bailey has not been another Earl Rogers.

Despite all of the lawyer’s theatrics and props, Detective Mark Fuhrman survived the day, looking as cool and collected in the afternoon as he had been when court began in the morning. Bailey had no smoking gun--or hotel wall.

We’ll see what he comes up with today.