NEWS ANALYSIS : Trial’s Crucial Phase to Link High Drama, Logic : Simpson case: Theatrics expected in closing arguments. Both sides also must tie up complex evidence.

Now is the time for high drama to mesh with cool logic.

In closing arguments starting Tuesday, with 12 jurors and a worldwide television audience looking on, O.J. Simpson’s prosecutors have to pull it all together. They, and the defense lawyers who will come after them, face the formidable task of linking in narrative form the broad themes, fragmented pieces of evidence and powerful images that have turned the case into a national obsession.

In a murder trial that long ago went over the top with hyperbole and passion, no one should expect restraint in this phase of the case where virtually no holds are barred and extravagant rhetoric about justice--or the lack of it--is commonplace.

“Johnnie Cochran will give the performance of his life. It will evoke memories of Martin Luther King,” predicted Theo Wilson, for many years the premier trial reporter in the United States.

Wilson said Marcia Clark has a tougher task because she must persuade all 12 jurors that Simpson is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “She’s a smart lawyer with good evidence. The question is: Can she put it together brick by brick for the jury?” said Wilson, who covered the trials of Sam Sheppard, Jack Ruby, Charles Manson, Angela Davis and Patty Hearst, among others.

In an unusual bookend to her shared opening statement, Clark will be aided by her colleague Christopher A. Darden. Cochran, who delivered his opening statement solo, will be joined this time by his colleague Barry Scheck. The four attorneys, who thanks to this trial are among the best known lawyers in the world, spent the weekend in their respective camps, writing, reviewing exhibit boards and snippets of videotape and mulling over how to deal with the key elements of the trial, including the racial fissures that have come to play an increasingly important role because of the now infamous Mark Fuhrman tapes.

The lawyers also conferred with colleagues on how best to appeal to the hearts and minds of the 10 women and two men, including nine African Americans, who will decide if Simpson goes free or spends many years in prison for murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.

Neither side would say much about its plans. But in characteristic fashion, lead defense lawyer Cochran fired a warning shot when asked about the unexpected courtroom speech delivered by Simpson on Friday: “You think he was emotional--wait till next week!”

Although the jurors who will decide Simpson’s fate may be exhausted and exasperated, and in some instances even may have already made up their minds, closing arguments are of paramount importance in a trial of this duration, legal experts say.

“In a long circumstantial evidence case with no eyewitnesses and no murder weapon, each side must bring together the many diverse pieces of evidence that the jury has probably forgotten and explain their significance,” said Gerald L. Chaleff, former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.

Just asking a lawyer about closing arguments is enough to prompt a flurry of metaphors.

“In a case where jurors may have forgotten the first witness, it’s like an archeological reconstruction,” said Wyoming trial lawyer Gerry Spence.

It’s a time for both sides to “harvest the seeds they’ve been sowing throughout the trial,” said defense lawyer Gigi Gordon.

It’s “a theatrical art and a logical science,” which “must blend emotional and rational arguments into a seamless presentation,” veteran defense attorney Rikki J. Klieman, one of Court TV’s anchors on the Simpson trial, wrote in a legal journal.

Although closing arguments are often remembered for great rhetorical flourishes, Klieman stresses that to succeed, the argument’s logical component must sustain itself throughout the jury deliberations.

But above all, Spence said, the argument must be presented in a way that conveys “the music of sincerity,” and to be heard that way the lawyer must have developed a bond of trust with the jury long before the argument is delivered.

If possible, an advocate should attempt to place an image or transcendent idea in jurors’ minds that crystallizes the entire case, said San Francisco attorney Peter C. Lagarias, author of “Effective Closing Argument,” a scholarly tome of nearly 1,000 pages.

Among the more memorable moments from the annals of closing argument lore:

* Federal prosecutor Barry Kowalski characterizing L.A. cops as “bullies with badges” when securing a conviction in the 1993 Rodney G. King civil rights trial

* Defense lawyer Michael P. Stone describing the same officers as “a thin blue line” protecting society, as he secured an acquittal on excessive force charges in a 1992 trial

* Plaintiffs lawyer Spence persuading jurors in the 1979 Karen Silkwood case that when Kerr-McGee Corp. exposed its workers to plutonium, it was just as responsible as a circus ringmaster whose lion has escaped and hurt people: “If the lion got away, Kerr-McGee has to pay.”

* Defense lawyer Leo Branton successfully exhorting an all-white San Jose jury to “think black” to understand why black militant professor Angela Davis fled right after a gun she had purchased was used in a courthouse raid that left three men dead in 1970. Davis was acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges.

In the Simpson case, the galvanizing image could prove to be the defendant’s apparent struggle to fit into blood-caked gloves during a stunning courtroom demonstration. Or it could be brightly colored DNA charts pointing toward the former football star as a brutal killer.

While considerable leeway is allowed during closing arguments, a prosecutor cannot comment on a defendant’s failure to testify and neither side is allowed to make personal attacks on their legal adversaries.

Still, analysts said both sides are likely to remind jurors that the other side broke promises made in opening statements. For example, the prosecutors failed to provide evidence that Simpson stalked his ex-wife Nicole after they separated. The defense did not put on touted alibi witnesses such as Mary Anne Gerchas or offer any proof that Simpson was home chipping golf balls at the time of the murders.

The defense, however, is not legally obligated to prove anything, as Cochran no doubt will frequently remind the jurors. And because prosecutors bear the burden of proof, they get the last word--a rebuttal argument after Cochran has his turn.

Clearly, through all the invective and minutiae, central themes have emerged and will be aired again this week.

“The prosecution’s theme is that all the evidence points to O.J. Simpson and only O.J. Simpson. The defense’s theme is that all the evidence is the product of contamination, conspiracy and corruption,” Chaleff said.

Prosecutors are likely to focus on the physical evidence, particularly DNA results, Simpson’s history of domestic abuse, his demeanor at his daughter’s dance recital a few hours before the murders and a timeline making it feasible for him to have committed the crimes.

Cochran and Scheck will counter each of these points by contending: The science was corrupted or bungled; there is no linkage between domestic abuse and the murders; the timeline is too tight for Simpson to have committed the murders, disposed of key evidence and made it back to his house to meet a limousine driver; his demeanor was not abnormal before or after the murders. They also will continue their attack on the police in general and former Detective Fuhrman in particular as symbols of racism and possible frame-up.

Defense lawyers contend that he planted a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate that matched one found at the crime scene. While they have not proved that allegation, they have badly bruised Fuhrman’s credibility by showing the jury that he lied about using the word “nigger.”

Fuhrman presents significant problems for the prosecutors, according to legal analysts. They have to disavow him while trying to keep the jurors’ minds focused on the mass of evidence--blood, hair, carpet fibers and shoe prints--that the government contends all point to Simpson as the murderer.

“If I were Marcia Clark I’d tell those jurors, ‘Don’t let the actions of a corrupt cop free a killer,’ ” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Harland W. Braun.

Most legal analysts said the prosecution faces a tougher task than the defense. “The prosecutors have to build the whole house; the defense only has to tear down part of it,” said Cornell law professor Steven D. Clymer, who was the co-lead prosecutor in the 1993 federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King.

Still, several analysts said that despite all the problems the prosecutors have encountered, including some of their own making, Clark and her colleagues could still win the case if they put all the pieces together for the jury and turn their evidence into a Mona Lisa, rather than a piece of abstract art simultaneously zigzagging in several directions.

“I think the prosecution can pull it out with a close that is commanding and persuasive because the evidence is there. I don’t think the evidence has been made comprehensible so far,” said veteran Miami defense lawyer Albert J. Krieger.

To supply the jury with an easy pictorial guide to what the evidence means, Clark should use an unorthodox but highly theatrical technique, Krieger suggested: She should place in front of the jurors a huge blank board and a series of shapes cut like a jigsaw for the key points she wants to make. “Each time she makes a point, she should put one of the pieces on the board. And then when she has filled in all the pieces, she should turn the board around and there’s a picture of O.J. Simpson!”

Krieger said he believes such an approach would be much more effective than “a series of discrete charts and discrete photos that would require jurors to remember a whole bunch of segregated facts.”

Defense lawyer Leslie Abramson said the prosecutors have to do something else they have failed to do so far--articulate for the jury how the killings were done.

To date, the prosecution presentation of Simpson’s actions the night of the murders stops with the former football star and Kato Kaelin parting about 9:40 p.m., after going out for hamburgers, and then resumes just before 11 p.m., when Simpson emerges from his mansion and apologetically tells limousine driver Allen Park, there to take Simpson to the airport, that he overslept.

“The prosecutors have failed to describe a murder,” Abramson said. Prosecutor Brian Kelberg tried to paint a picture of the killings in a demonstration with Los Angeles County Coroner Lakshmanan Sthyvagariswaran, “but that wasn’t a narrative with O.J. getting in the Bronco, arriving at Nicole’s condo, going down the alleyway, entering through the rear gate and then killing Nicole and Ron. In final argument, the prosecutors have to paint that narrative picture of O.J. doing things and then say that the circumstantial evidence proves that this linear story occurred.”

Abramson said a critical theme for Clark and Darden is “the inconceivability of the defense theory of conspiracy--not because people are incapable of conspiracy or because the police never plant evidence, but because the defense has not been able to explain away the circumstantial evidence by their contamination or conspiracy theories.

“Forget about the DNA. You still wind up with a guy with his blood type, his hair type, his shoe type, his glove type, and his ex-wife is the murder victim. What is the likelihood that another man on this planet committed the crime? You add in the DNA and the car fibers, you have so much it leaves the defense able only to argue coincidence--the lamest of all arguments,” Abramson stressed.

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said both sides are likely to focus on a key jury instruction that tells jurors that if there are two reasonable interpretations of the same circumstantial evidence, they must accept the one pointing toward innocence--but only if both interpretations are reasonable.

Indeed, what Clark considers “unreasonable” or “irrelevant” may be the guts of the defense case, explains John Burris, an Oakland lawyer who, like Cochran, has specialized in police brutality and criminal defense work.

He said he expected Cochran to argue in several different ways that the evidence was gathered in a corrupt or incompetent fashion, that the pieces don’t fit together and that there are too many unanswered questions to send a man to prison for a long time. Among them:

“Why was no vegetation disturbed in the area where the glove was found at Rockingham if someone jumped over the fence there? Why was no blood seen initially on the socks found in O.J.’s bedroom? Why was no blood seen on the rear gate at Nicole’s condo until three weeks after the murders? Why was Detective [Philip L.] Vannatter carrying around a vial of O.J.’s blood? Why was Ron Goldman’s blood not discovered in O.J.’s Bronco until months after the murders? Why did Vannatter make misstatements when the police got a warrant to search O.J.’s home?

“Johnnie can argue that anything the LAPD touched should be ignored because once the well is poisoned, you can’t drink anything from it,” Burris said. Just one misstep can be utilized to devastating effect, he said.

Federal prosecutor James L. Browning successfully used that approach in securing the 1976 bank robbery conviction of Patricia Hearst, the kidnaped newspaper heiress who turned would-be revolutionary. Hearst claimed that her abductors forced her to join in a commando-style bank robbery and her defense lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, now one of Simpson’s attorneys, said his client had a simple choice: “Join or die.”

But Browning, a considerably less flamboyant orator than Bailey, said Hearst had had numerous opportunities to escape and declined; her story was “too big a pill to swallow.” On the witness stand, Hearst alleged that one of her captors, Willie Wolfe, had “sexually assaulted” her in a closet where she was held captive and said she “couldn’t stand” Wolfe, who had died in a 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police.

After recalling Hearst’s testimony, Browning came to the linchpin of his argument. He reminded the jurors that when Hearst was captured in 1975 she had a little Mexican stone monkey--given to her by Wolfe--in her purse. That was more than a year after the alleged rape. “She couldn’t stand him, and yet there is the little stone face that can’t say anything, but I submit to you can tell us a lot,” Browning declared. Hearst was convicted the following day, and several jurors said they had concluded that if she had lied about the nature of her relationship with Wolfe, she had lied about other things too.

Like Hearst, Simpson is a celebrity defendant, although one clearly of a different magnitude. And like Hearst, his true nature is likely to be a key element in the closing arguments.

Burris said he thinks Cochran will concede that his client was not perfect, as he did in his opening statement, but tell the jurors that Simpson quite simply “is not a person capable of committing this kind of brutal offense.”

On the other hand, prosecutors are likely to return to a cornerstone of their case: That there is a stark contrast between the gregarious, affable O.J. that the public thought it knew and a private man capable of sinister deeds.

“I’d talk about celebrity if I was Marcia Clark,” said defense lawyer Abramson. “I’d tell the jury no man is above the law, even the President, and no matter how disappointed you may be, how terrible you may feel about it, that if the evidence proves guilt, justice must be served.”