A Winner This Time : Marcia Clark Stars at Women’s Forum, Calls Self-Confidence Vital

Marcia Clark, who lost the O.J. Simpson trial but won a $4.2-million book contract, took the speaker’s podium to a standing ovation Tuesday and told her largely female audience that a year under the microscope taught her that she had been wrong in depending on the opinions of others rather than trusting her own instincts.

Clark, looking confident and relaxed as she told of life before and after the Simpson trial, used Gov. Pete Wilson’s Conference for Women in Long Beach as the forum to utter her first public remarks since the ex-football star was found not guilty of double murder Oct. 2.

Speaking of the trial as sometimes being a “realm of darkness,” Clark said it forced her to admit that she looked to others in making critical decisions--a trait she attributed to the difference in how men and women are raised.

“I’m talking about making a decision and never feeling quite comfortable with it without consulting someone,” Clark said.

But she said the trial “made me confident to pick and choose the advice I took.”

During the course of the speech, Clark cited as an example how she had been devastated by being overruled by a superior in the district attorney’s office about whether to file charges in a case. In the context of the speech, she seemed to be talking about the Simpson trial.

But the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office issued a statement, endorsed by Clark, late Tuesday saying the incident occurred two years ago.

At times witty and at others brutally frank, Clark said she chose the theme of confidence and self-esteem because it is an issue “of particular relevance and poignance to women.”

And she said she eventually was compelled to trust her own judgment because she was being second-guessed at every turn during the Simpson trial, often by people who had never tried a criminal case.

“I was forced to do this,” she said before the audience of more than 6,000 women and a sprinkling of men. “I was forced to be aware that I must trust my own counsel and instincts despite what others were saying.”

Clark also spoke about humorous experiences in the wake of the trial after being introduced by best-selling novelist Judith Krantz as the only person who had emerged from the Simpson trial “perceived as a winner and a hero.”

The prosecutor, who last week signed a $4.2-million book publishing deal of her own, described how she burst out laughing in a supermarket checkout line when she saw a woman reading a tabloid with a headline that she and Christopher A. Darden, another prosecutor in the case, were going to be married.

Clark said the woman reading the story exclaimed, “You mean it isn’t true?”

“Chris left me a message: ‘Where’s my ring,’ ” Clark said.

And she also drew laughter when she described “the ridiculous news coverage about my hair.”

Clark’s hairstyle was given much attention during the trial when she traded in her curly look for a straighter, more fashionable do.

And she also poked fun at her fame after a year of being on television from morning until night for months on end.

“Truly I am not extraordinary. I’m very ordinary. I do what you do,” she said. “You just got to see it, that’s all.”

In the end, Clark grew serious again, urging the women at the one-day conference not to doubt themselves.

“All you need to do is look at all you’ve done the next time you start to doubt yourselves,” she said. “And I will be there with you.”

Gov. Wilson also spoke at the luncheon but made no mention of his anti-affirmative action stance that had drawn fire from activist groups who called for a boycott of the conference. Instead, he talked about the need to avoid discrimination against women.

“It’s not just bad business to discriminate against women in the workplace,” said Wilson. “It’s against the law and we will not tolerate discrimination in California.”

Outside the convention center, a crowd of about 100 protesters angrily accused Wilson of offering the fourth annual conference as a false olive branch in the wake of his criticism of affirmative action policies.

“I think the governor has used this conference--every time--for political purposes,” said Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women. “While he mouths the words, he’s trying to slam the door of opportunity in our faces.”