THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella and Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson offer their take on the Simpson trial. They are joined by Santa Monica defense lawyer Gigi Gordon. Today’s topic: The defense launches a second front.

PETER ARENELLA

On the defense: Jurors are barking at seals and lawyers are spitting venom at their adversaries: just another normal day in The Trial of the Century. The defense team’s distemper is understandable. Instead of ending their case with unimpeachable tape excerpts that damn both Mark Fuhrman and the LAPD’s ‘code of silence,’ they must use witnesses whose credibility can be challenged. Johnnie Cochran wisely concluded that he needed the Labor Day weekend to regroup.

On the prosecution: Despite Chris Darden’s unseemly protest to the contrary, Judge Ito’s ruling on the tapes gave the prosecution a short-term victory. But their sanitized version of Fuhrman’s racism might come back to haunt them. Defense witnesses’ portrayal of Fuhrman might trigger the jurors’ imagination about the horrific content of the 39 other slurs. And there is always the inevitable ‘pillow talk’ that comes during jurors’ conjugal visits.

LAURIE LEVENSON

On the defense: They aren’t going to roll over and die. Ito may have ruled against the defense on the tapes, but they are trying to open any back door to show Fuhrman to be a liar and a racist. They’re even dragging the D.A.’s office into their ‘conspiracy of silence.’ The problem for the defense is that they must choose their witnesses carefully. At some point, Ito will cut them off and they don’t want that to happen before jurors hear from Fuhrman’s strongest attackers.

On the prosecution: Witness names were flying fast and furiously as the defense tried to recover from Ito’s tape ruling. Darden didn’t appreciate being sandbagged by F. Lee Bailey as to which witnesses the defense will use to attack Fuhrman. Ultimately he dared Bailey to call Roderick Hodge, a witness allegedly harassed when arrested by Fuhrman. Bailey balked. By the time they duked it out on the legal issues, it was time for jurors to go back into seclusion.

GIGI GORDON

On the defense: Before the sun rises on Tuesday, Cochran will have picked up the red phone and launched the attack. The gloves are off, the troops are massing and if I were the other side, I’d get in a bunker. They defense is on the march to the internal affairs unit of the LAPD and they’re not taking prisoners. Who will be next?

On the prosecution: Pyrrhic victory. The prosecution gambled that the defense would never be able to break the wall of silence on Fuhrman. They lost, but Ito gave them back their chips. They may have won the tapes battle in court, but while they’re celebrating their victory, the opposition is moving in behind them.

Compiled by Henry Weinstein/Los Angeles Times