Diverse Legal Team’s Task: To Prove Simpson Guilty

He knows more about contract disputes than autopsy reports. More about employment law than DNA. And while he’s defended the kick-boxing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, he’s no expert on assault.

Yet Daniel M. Petrocelli insists that years of defending corporate clients like Guess Inc. and Occidental Petroleum have positioned him perfectly for his latest task: proving O.J. Simpson a killer.

“In the final analysis, trials all involve putting on evidence and proving what happened,” Petrocelli said. “This case is no different from any other.” (Like other plaintiffs’ attorneys, he spoke about the case before a gag order barred all participants in the Simpson trial from talking to the press.)

Petrocelli, 43, is determined to hold Simpson responsible for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Experienced prosecutors couldn’t do it.

Simpson said he was innocent and a criminal court jury backed him up. But now Petrocelli is leading a fresh attempt in a new arena, trying to make the charges stick in a civil court trial scheduled to begin Sept. 17.

To be sure, he’s not doing it alone. Relatives of Goldman and Nicole Simpson have hired at least nine attorneys among them.

There are two former New York prosecutors. An appeals expert. And a criminal defense lawyer whose client list includes Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of orchestrating genocide. There are business litigators, too, who have built their careers on unraveling securities fraud and sorting out real estate feuds. The lone woman on the team is a former scholar of Chinese culture who speaks fluent Russian and specializes in representing rape victims.

From their diverse backgrounds, the plaintiffs’ attorneys must pull together to craft a cohesive, persuasive case.

While Petrocelli has taken the lead in the case so far, he represents only one of the three plaintiffs pushing claims against Simpson. Together with three partners, he will be arguing on behalf of Ron Goldman’s father, Fred. Another attorney will represent Goldman’s mother, Sharon Rufo. And a team of four will advocate on behalf of Nicole Brown Simpson’s estate.

Each plaintiff retains the right to make an opening statement and a closing argument; each can question and cross-examine witnesses. The overlap creates opportunities to drive points home with skillful layering--but it also opens the plaintiffs’ teams to definite risks.

The lawyers could easily bore, confuse or annoy jurors with repetitive presentation. And there’s always the danger that one attorney could blow another’s strategy by posing a question that was better left unasked or by trumpeting a surprise revelation prematurely.

“No matter how well coordinated the plaintiffs’ lawyers are, [three parties in one case] is bound to be disruptive as they’re attempting to tell a story,” civil litigator Douglas E. Mirell said. “You want to establish a rapport with the jury, so you don’t want to have lawyers jumping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes.”

Larger strategic questions are also complicated by the triple-teaming of Simpson.

What if Rufo’s lawyer wants to start the case with a bang by putting Simpson on the stand first off, while Goldman’s team insists on saving him until the end? What if the Browns demand to keep out evidence that stains their daughter’s image, while the Goldmans want to show jurors a complete picture of the bruising relationship between Nicole and O.J. Simpson?

“It’s always a complication to have more than one law firm on a case,” acknowledged Thomas P. Lambert, who represents Goldman. Still, he thinks the three-pronged attack will pay off: “There’s plenty of work to go around.”

Goldman’s four lawyers have already parceled out the case among themselves. Petrocelli will handle the questions of motive and opportunity, Lambert will take on the blood evidence and Peter Gelblum will deal with the forensic witnesses such as police criminalists and coroner’s officials. Edward Medvene, who has the most trial experience in the group, will help out where needed.

Prosecutors in the criminal trial split up the work load in a similar fashion--and drew heavy criticism for doing so. Analysts complained that no one prosecutor had a chance to build a relationship with jurors. Instead of a dramatic, impassioned story, the government’s case came off as a disjointed patchwork of evidence--a few days of bloody gloves, a few days of wailing dogs, an endless lecture on DNA.

The plaintiffs in the civil trial say they’re sure they can put together a more coherent and persuasive case than the prosecution in the criminal trial. And they insist they’re not worried about losing rapport with jurors.

Still, Gelblum, at least, said he saw a risk in handing each attorney a discrete component of the case. “The main danger with our approach is that people will not be objective about their part of the case” and might be tempted to dwell too long on an insignificant point, he said. “That happens not because of ego, but because everyone’s convinced they’re dealing with the most important part of the case, convinced we can win it on that part alone.”

Well aware of the potential pitfalls, the lawyers vow to coordinate.

“Everyone understands what the goal is here,” said Michael A. Brewer, who represents Rufo. “We have the same interest, absolutely, in presenting a meaningful and powerful case.”

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The job of focusing everyone on the common goal will fall to Petrocelli.

In front of jurors, Petrocelli projects a warm, compassionate image, according to lawyers who have seen him in action. One described him as a tad too self-righteous. But others praised his low-key, matter-of-fact style. A stickler for preparation, Petrocelli knows all the details of his case and always comes across as “extraordinarily confident,” said Della Bahan, a labor lawyer who frequently opposes him in court.

Like most attorneys, however, Petrocelli reveals a rougher style out of jurors’ view.

His nasty letters are legendary. A fax from Petrocelli is like an assault weapon, one adversary said. “He must have it set up on his computer,” Bahan speculated. “It’s like Alt-F10, spit out bile.”

Petrocelli can also be stubborn--his colleagues prefer “tenacious”--in his zeal to root out every nugget that could help his client.

During a deposition, Petrocelli hit Simpson with 248 questions in a row on one topic: how he broke a drinking glass and cut his finger after hearing of his wife’s murder in a Chicago hotel room. Midway through the barrage, Simpson asked for a break. When he came back, Petrocelli tried to make an issue out of the pause. “You requested the break because you were uncomfortable with the subject matter?” he asked. Simpson’s lawyer objected, but Petrocelli persisted, twice more asking Simpson why he had broken off the questioning.

“He’s almost indefatigable,” said Arthur Groman, the senior partner at Petrocelli’s firm, Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp.

Even Simpson’s lawyers have joked with Petrocelli in good-natured astonishment at the time he puts into preparation.

“I will tell you, this firm is unbelievable the way they organize,” defense attorney Daniel Leonard commented when Petrocelli produced a color-coded log of phone records while questioning Simpson’s longtime personal assistant.

Measured against Simpson’s lead counsel, Petrocelli’s weak spot may be his comparative inexperience with jury trials.

Others on his team have argued plenty of cases before jurors. But Petrocelli deals mainly with complex business litigation--the kind of practice that rarely includes more than two or three jury trials a year.

Petrocelli, 43, boasts a glittering client list. He has resolved contract disputes for Saban Entertainment, creator of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He untangled the contested will of billionaire oilman Armand Hammer. He’s helping jeans manufacturer Guess Inc. fend off allegations that it hired illegal sewing contractors. The other day Lisa Marie Presley called up, requesting his advice on a confidentiality clause.

Despite his experience with big-name, high-stakes litigation, Petrocelli acknowledges a flutter of nerves as he prepares for the Simpson trial. It is, after all, a case propelled by raw, wrenching grief.

“I have a natural apprehension and a nervousness about this case because there’s so much at stake for our client in a way that’s far deeper than any other case I’ve had,” Petrocelli said. “My client lost his son, and this is his last chance to secure some measure of justice. We all here at the firm feel an awesome responsibility because of that.”

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Brewer says he has felt that responsibility since the day he picked Rufo up at the airport and accompanied her to her son’s funeral.

“When I try cases, I look for a feeling in my heart, my soul, my stomach that I’m on the right side,” Brewer said. “I’ve never been more confident of that than I am in this case.”

Brewer sat in on Simpson’s preliminary hearing and learned enough about the evidence to take immediate action: He filed a civil lawsuit on Rufo’s behalf in July 1994, just a month after the murders.

When the civil trial begins, Brewer will face a dual challenge. First, of course, he will have to undermine Simpson’s story. Yet he will also have to rehabilitate his own client’s image.

Throughout the saga, Sharon Rufo has kept a deliberately low profile. She has not taken to the airwaves to proclaim her anguish, has not given interviews about her pain. Criticized as an estranged, out-of-touch mother, Rufo has been tarred as an opportunist, latching onto her ex-husband’s lawsuit in hopes of making some easy money. Brewer will have to persuade jurors otherwise.

He’ll have plenty of fodder: In her pretrial deposition, Rufo said her third husband abused her when she tried to get in touch with Ron. Brewer believes that sympathetic story will rehabilitate Rufo’s image--at least within the courtroom.

“My job is to present her not to Santa Monica or to California or to the United States, but to the 12 jurors hearing the case,” he said. “That’s what I’ll be doing--trying to explain her circumstances.”

Brewer, 39, has handled several wrongful-death cases--but mainly from the defense side. Once, he defended Otis Elevator against a wrongful-death suit filed by the family of a man who perished in an elevator during a building fire. In another case, he defended a manufacturer against allegations that it failed to install a basic safety device in a trailer that backed into a loading dock, crushing a man to death.

Brewer said his experience defending wrongful-death cases should help him predict--and counter--Simpson’s strategies. “I know what kind of issues are going to come up,” he said.

While Brewer touts his record as a civil litigator, two of the attorneys representing Nicole Brown Simpson’s estate boast that their years prosecuting homicides will help them tear into the physical evidence implicating Simpson in the murders.

Lead Brown-family attorney John Q. Kelly, 43, launched his career as a deputy district attorney in Queens County, New York. After three years, he quit public service to take up criminal defense work, defending former Yankee star Joe Pepitone against narcotics charges and the Scripps publishing family during investigations into the murder of heiress Anne Scripps Douglas.

More recently, he has taken up civil litigation, gravitating especially toward cases with criminal implications, where he can use his knowledge of ballistics and forensic science.

His friend Paul F. Callan, another former prosecutor, joined the team just a few months ago. Callan said his experience supervising evidence collection in homicides could help him in the Simpson trial: “It gives you a clear idea what the police confront at murder scenes and is an enormous help in explaining the details to the jury later on.”

During his four years as a prosecutor, Callan said he also encountered evidence of “domestic violence as a prelude to murder”--a topic that the plaintiffs will undoubtedly play big in the Simpson trial.

As the trial date approaches, Petrocelli said he and others on the plaintiffs’ team are logging up to 75 hours a week. “I can assure you,” he said, “that we will not be unprepared or out-worked.”