Garcetti Praises Work of Prosecutors : Courts: D.A. admits that he wished trial had moved more swiftly. He predicts the defense will present a ‘very safe case.’

Although acknowledging that the prosecution case against O.J. Simpson took longer than he would have liked, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti on Friday praised his team of lawyers and said their final arguments could determine the outcome of the celebrated murder trial.

“You do have to tie it together for the jury,” Garcetti said in an interview as his legal team was finishing up its 24-week, 58-witness presentation. “It is now critical that whomever argues the case to the jury is able, in a succinct and very graphic way, to bring this all together so that there is in fact a picture that has been formed.”

Garcetti’s comments, made in an interview with The Times, reflected the district attorney’s desire to highlight the successes of the Simpson prosecution while trying to avoid being drawn into a specific discussion of the government team’s strategy.

In both the interview and a news conference, Garcetti deflected questions about certain decisions, such as having Simpson try on a pair of bloody gloves or electing to forgo testimony about Simpson’s failure to surrender to police on June 17, 1994. Instead, he answered that he could not address those matters while the trial was under way.

“There are many strategic decisions that were made in this case,” Garcetti said. “Those strategic decisions are not [things] I feel comfortable discussing.”

Garcetti said he expected that the defense would present a “very safe case,” one that will break little new ground and that ultimately will have no bearing on the verdicts.

Some analysts have faulted aspects of the prosecution case. They have suggested that slip-ups during the now-infamous glove demonstration and a set of mathematical miscalculations by a statistics expert robbed the evidence of some of its impact in the prosecution’s final weeks. And while many of those same experts say the prosecution amassed an enormous wealth of evidence against Simpson, some believe that the mistakes may undermine the prosecution’s chances for a conviction.

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Garcetti acknowledged that there were some aspects of the case that might have been presented differently. But he declined to point fingers, instead insisting that he was generally satisfied with the way the evidence unfolded. And he reiterated his deep admiration for the lawyers who litigated the case, particularly Deputy Dist. Attys. Marcia Clark and Christopher A. Darden.

“The world has seen first-class trial lawyers from the government, from the district attorney’s office, more than holding their own against the so-called Dream Team,” Garcetti said. “Forty-five dollar [an hour] lawyers can outperform $650- or $700-an-hour lawyers.”

Nevertheless, Garcetti acknowledged that he wished the case had moved along more swiftly. Originally expected to end in the spring, the prosecution case stretched into July, losing 10 jurors along the way.

The delays, he said, mainly were caused by the prosecution’s wealth of evidence. In the news conference he called it a “giant mountain of evidence”; during the interview, he extended the metaphor even further, referring to it as “truly a Mt. Everest of evidence.”

All of it required patient explanation, Garcetti said, and the result was that the case took far longer than predicted.

“I still would have much preferred that we finish the case in three months, but the nature of the evidence was just so overwhelming,” he said.

Garcetti denied that the defense’s aggressive questioning of early prosecution witnesses--former Simpson friend and former LAPD Officer Ronald Shipp, for instance--affected the pace of the government presentation.

Defense attorneys have credited their aggressive tone with putting the prosecution on the defensive, forcing the government to take more time laying out its case and muddling it in the process.

Although he insisted that the defense had not dictated that aspect of the prosecution presentation, Garcetti acknowledged that an early move by the Simpson team did affect the case. In a normal murder case, the district attorney said, the trial would not begin for a year or more after the crime. That allows one or two, or sometimes three, prosecutors to methodically pick through each aspect of the case before going to trial.

But the Simpson team, in a move that Garcetti acknowledged as “a smart strategy,” insisted on moving much more quickly, forcing him to appoint more and more lawyers, even at the risk of straining the jury’s ability to identify with one or two key prosecutors.

In contrast to his reluctance to discuss specifics of his team’s case, Garcetti was more willing to venture opinions about the upcoming defense presentation, suggesting that Simpson would probably not testify and speculating that jurors will never get to see the much-discussed videotape of housekeeper Rosa Lopez attempting to bolster the defendant’s alibi.

Lopez was subjected to a probing cross-examination by Darden, prompting her to repeatedly claim that she had forgotten details and to admit having misstated some aspects of her testimony. The jury has not seen that testimony, but it was captured on videotape so that the defense could introduce it if Lopez, a native of El Salvador, refuses to return to testify.

“It’s too bad that Rosa Lopez testified outside the presence of the jury,” said Garcetti, whose prosecution team successfully fought to keep her from taking the stand in front of the jurors. “I would like the jury to have seen that this is the caliber of defense witnesses.”

In addition to predicting that the Lopez tape would not be played for the jury, Garcetti said he expected Simpson’s lawyers to present a “very safe defense.”

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Many analysts have focused on the question of whether Simpson will take the stand. The defense has coyly stoked the debate for months by periodically telling reporters that the defendant wants to testify but that his attorneys were weighing the implications of him taking the stand.

“My guess,” Garcetti said, “is [Simpson’s] ego will say yes, his lawyers will say no.”

As for the balance of the defense case, Garcetti predicted few surprises and ultimately no impact.

“You’ll see [Simpson’s] mother testify, you will have some innocuous witnesses who saw him at some period in time who will testify, you may have some expert witnesses testify,” he said. “I don’t think there is anything that’s going to change the bottom line. The bottom line is that the evidence is so powerful, so compelling, and it only points to one person. Our office and the LAPD looked . . . and it always came back to one person. And I think when the defense finishes its case, the arrow is still going to point to only one person.”