Defense Opens by Assailing Nicole Simpson

O.J. Simpson’s lawyer launched his defense on Thursday with a stinging assault on the character of murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson before turning to a more familiar theme of police corruption and incompetence.

Jurors listened impassively--some with their arms folded--as defense attorney Robert C. Baker tried to wipe away the image the plaintiffs had drawn of Simpson as a brooding and violent man.

“Contrary to what my worthy adversaries have told you,” Baker said, the jurors would come to realize that Simpson never stalked, beat or was obsessed with Nicole.

Instead, Baker promised he would prove that Simpson was simply a concerned father, justifiably worried about his ex-wife’s wild mood swings, heavy drinking and frequent partying with an unsavory circle of friends. “She was bringing prostitutes and drug users into her house with his children there and he was very upset about it,” Baker said.

Defense lawyers in the criminal trial were careful not to trash Nicole Simpson for fear of sparking a backlash of sympathy among jurors. But Baker appeared to have no such worries. He said she drank too much, mentioned that she got into a “dubious” car accident in her Ferrari and implied that she was promiscuous. “She had many boyfriends,” he said. “Men loved her.”

He even divulged the most personal details of her life, telling jurors that she sought an abortion after getting pregnant by one of her many boyfriends.

Legal analysts called Baker’s tactics risky at best.

“Besmirching Nicole is possibly the most self-defeating strategy I can imagine,” civil attorney Brian Lysaght said. “Attacking someone who has been horribly murdered as promiscuous is absurd.” The jurors who watched with arms folded across their chest, Lysaght said, might have been signaling their disgust, since such body language is “a classic sign that they’ve turned off the radio” and stopped listening to the presentation.

But attorney Larry Feldman, a veteran litigator, said the defense might have good reason to resort to a dirty-the-victim strategy, even though he acknowledged that such an approach was “fraught with problems.”

Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki has blocked the defense from raising unsubstantiated theories about who may have killed Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Baker cannot suggest, as the defense did in the criminal trial, that Colombian drug dealers may have committed the nighttime knife attack. Nor can he imply, as Simpson has in interviews, that the crimes were somehow linked to Faye Resnick, an acknowledged cocaine user who lived at Nicole Simpson’s condominium for several weeks before the murders.

So offering evidence that Nicole Simpson indulged in a provocative lifestyle and hung out with criminals might be the only way Baker can prod the jury into thinking that someone other than O.J. Simpson might have had a motive for murder. “They’re doing it by implication,” Feldman said. “It may be that this is the only way [Baker] can give this jury a suspect.”

The strategy also allows Baker to “give jurors an excuse for O.J.’s behavior on the domestic front, showing that there are good, solid reasons for O.J. to be angry with Nicole,” Feldman said. And indeed, Baker implied that Nicole Simpson’s reckless behavior provoked one of the incidents that the plaintiffs hold out as a prime example of O.J. Simpson’s violent temper.

Part of that incident was captured on tape, as Nicole Simpson called 911 to ask for help as O.J. Simpson hollered obscenities and thumped on her door. Several jurors hearing the civil case remember that tape, and said the fear in Nicole Simpson’s voice stuck in their minds. But Baker described the dispute in the mildest of terms.

“O.J. knocked on the door,” Baker said. “OK, maybe he banged on the door. He was hot because he didn’t want the prostitutes and drug users in his house, and he didn’t want Nicole using drugs.” Although Simpson kicked in part of the door, Baker insisted that the episode was not violent.

Despite their frequent disputes, Baker said that O.J. and Nicole Simpson shared an intense love during their 17-year relationship, “a love that few people have known.” And he told jurors that Nicole refused to leave O.J. alone after their break-ups, sending him cookies, showing up at his golf club, following him to Mexico and pleading to get back together. “You’ve heard about O.J. Simpson pursuing Nicole Brown Simpson,” Baker said. “In fact, the exact opposite is true.”

Even when she was dating other people, Nicole continued to turn to O.J. for guidance, Baker said. She trusted him so much, in fact, that she told him--not her family--about her unwanted pregnancy and abortion, Baker added.

Baker acknowledged that Nicole and O.J. once had a “physical encounter,” which he termed “wrestling,” on New Year’s Day, 1989. But Baker emphasized that O.J. Simpson apologized and took full responsibility for his actions, even going so far as to draw up a legal document promising to void his prenuptial agreement and let Nicole claim half of his wealth if he ever again laid hands on her in anger.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys had described that New Year’s Day incident in much more graphic terms, relying on testimony from a police officer who has said he saw Nicole Simpson run out from some bushes dirty and half-naked, with a bruised face, a black eye, a split lip and a visible hand print on her neck. The plaintiffs plan to present three photos of Nicole Simpson’s puffy, black-and-blue face as evidence during the trial. But Baker suggested during the jury selection process that he might argue those disturbing images were at least partially faked, using makeup to simulate bruises.

Baker did not mention those photos during his opening statement Thursday. He did, however, launch a fierce attack on another snapshot--a picture that surfaced earlier this year in the National Enquirer showing Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes.

The plaintiffs had trumpeted that photo during their opening statements, saying it provided long-sought proof that Simpson owned the same kind of distinctive, expensive loafers that left size 12 bloody footprints at the murder scene. Baker acknowledged that the shoes in the photo were indeed Bruno Maglis, but he insisted that the photo was bogus.

“It isn’t real,” he said. Citing irregularities in the contact sheet containing the negative, Baker said “the earmarks of [forgery] are irrefutable.” Aside from the flaws in the negative, Baker said he could tell the photo was a fake because the shoe soles are dry--even though it had been raining heavily on the day the photo was allegedly shot, and Simpson had been walking on damp Astroturf for hours. “The photograph is a phony,” Baker concluded.

Baker devoted much of his opening statement to blasting the Los Angeles Police Department, reviving the themes of police bungling and tampering that proved so effective in the criminal trial.

Earlier, Fujisaki had ruled that Baker could not tell jurors that former LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman had pleaded no contest to a perjury charge stemming from his testimony in Simpson’s criminal trial. That decision had so enraged the defense that Baker called for a mistrial. Fujisaki swiftly turned him down.

But even without mentioning the perjury plea--which all jurors knew about anyway from questions raised during jury selection--Baker found plenty of ways to work Mark Fuhrman’s name into his opening statement. Again and again, he returned to Fuhrman’s role in the early investigation, making clear he did not believe the detective’s testimony. Jurors watched intently, some leaning forward in their chairs.

Baker never mentioned racism as a motive for a possible police frame-up. But at some points, Baker seemed to go further than Simpson’s criminal defense team in his allegations of corruption.

The criminal defense, for example, had elicited from expert witness Henry Lee the vague idea that “something’s wrong” with the blood drops the LAPD collected from the crime scene and later linked to Simpson’s DNA. Baker was more explicit. Without naming names, he told jurors that “somebody substituted wet [blood] swatches” for the real crime-scene evidence “and sent them along to the lab to be tested. That is corruption of evidence.”

Baker also told jurors he could prove that the nurse who drew O.J. Simpson’s blood as a reference sample the day after the murders did not properly seal the vial. That blood--which the plaintiffs contend was sealed and placed in an envelope--was transported across town by Det. Philip Vannatter, who handed it to a criminalist at Simpson’s estate instead of booking it directly into the LAPD lab.

When it finally landed in the lab, Baker told jurors the unsealed vial “was left out on a table in an unlocked room--the same room where all the other evidence was.” Some of the plaintiffs’ attorneys shook their heads at this sinister account of the evidence collection process, but none rose to object.

Throughout his opening statement, Baker told jurors to listen to one witness above all: O.J. Simpson. The other evidence, he implied, was unimportant compared to Simpson’s explanations. “If you believe O.J. Simpson,” Baker said, “you must find him not responsible.”

As a preview of Simpson’s testimony, Baker outlined his client’s alibi for the times the murders were committed. In a detailed, sometimes disjointed, recitation that took most of the morning, Baker said Simpson was hunting for a favorite golf club, chipping golf balls on his lawn, calling his girlfriend from his car’s cellular phone, watching television, packing for an overnight trip to Chicago and showering.

After hearing all the testimony, Baker told jurors, “I am sure you will conclude that Mr. Simpson was wrongfully accused, that Mr. Simpson could not and did not kill anyone.”