Everyone Takes It Easier as the People Rest

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark leaned against a wall near the courtroom Thursday, looking unusually relaxed as she chatted with reporters.

Did you get fined? one of them asked.

A few weeks ago that would have been a sensitive question, causing Clark deep distress. She had used the word “match” while questioning a witness in the Simpson murder trial earlier in the morning. Judge Lance A. Ito had forbidden the prosecutors from saying various fiber evidence matched and had, in fact, threatened her last week with jail if she used the word again. For this one, the reporters figured, Clark might at least be fined.

The chief of the prosecution team tends to take such things personally. But on Thursday, Clark just looked amused, no more the tense and troubled prosecutor of an earlier period. Having finished with her last witness, she smiled. In fact, Clark practically laughed. “No, I didn’t get fined,” she said.

Clark had completed her case. She’d done it. She’d steered the ship through triumphs and screw-ups. Now it was the defense’s turn, and then the jury’s.

*

Clark’s demeanor reflected an overall change in the mood of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Gone is the hysteria of the opening days. In its place is a more businesslike pace, like that usually found in such long, legal battles.

The change in mood was apparent in court Wednesday when Clark and chief defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. put their arms around each other in a collegial manner during a discussion of a witness’s testimony. It was as if they were reminding each other they would both be in this town for a long time after Simpson, meeting on other cases, in other courtrooms.

Even the defense’s bellowing old lion, F. Lee Bailey, lowered his voice when he cross-examined the prosecution’s last witness, Douglas Deedrick, an FBI hair and fiber expert, Wednesday and Thursday.

Perhaps Bailey was intimidated by Deedrick’s straight-arrow, spare style and his mastery of his subject matter. Whatever the reason, it was a far different Bailey from the one who had thundered at Detective Mark Fuhrman in March, unsuccessfully trying to get the Los Angeles cop to admit to being a racist.

I saw the change again in one of the trial’s rituals, the almost ceremonial end-of-the-day departure of Cochran, Bailey and defense lawyer Robert Shapiro from the Criminal Courts Building.

I’ve been watching this daily event since it began months ago, either in the parking lot in back of the courthouse or at the main entrance on Temple Street.

In the winter and spring, the reporters, particularly those from television, hurled themselves at the lawyers, desperately shouting questions, trying to catch an elusive sound bite.

Late Wednesday afternoon, I joined the throng and found my colleagues relatively laid back as they awaited the procession of lawyers. Just four TV crews were there, a fraction of the winter turnout.

Hardly anyone asked questions of Bailey and Shapiro as they walked to their chauffeured cars--Bailey heading for a big, black Chrysler sedan, Shapiro to his gray Mercedes. Cochran’s emergence, as usual, was an event. But most of the noise came from his fans who await his departure each day. The reporters’ questions were desultory, as were Cochran’s answers as he put his briefcase and coat in the trunk of his metallic brown Lexus.

The Thursday afternoon court session was unexpectedly brisk. The prosecution and defense agreed on something that a few months ago would have taken weeks to settle--that Nicole Brown Simpson’s mother, Juditha Brown, would not testify about the phone conversation she had with her daughter before the murders. The two sides also agreed on the presentation of some death scene photographs.

In legal terms, such agreements are called stipulations and they are a routine part of most trials. But not in the Simpson case.

*

In midafternoon, Clark announced, “The people rest.” Those of us in the 12th-floor pressroom applauded for a moment, and then went back to our computers.

Out in the hallway, by the elevators, three or four television reporters were doing interviews, but the scene was a pallid version of January. Back then, at least six stations were broadcasting live there, along with Court TV and even ESPN. Some of my colleagues, deprived of their excitement fix, complained that the day ended with a whimper. I’d call it a dose of well-needed sanity.