More Ambiguity Than Answers

Don’t expect closure--an end to the argument over whodunit--if O.J. Simpson’s first feverishly hyped day on the witness stand Friday means anything.

Those who felt Simpson got away with murder didn’t get their long-anticipated payback time. There was no confession, no humiliation, no blockbuster disclosure. But Simpson didn’t come away unscathed, either, so intense and pointed was the questioning of attorney Dan Petrocelli, representing the family of the slain Ron Goldman.

Only an innocent man or a pathological liar could have withstood the torrent of questions by Petrocelli, accusing Simpson of killing Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. To each accusation, Simpson replied in a strong, clear, deep voice: “That is absolutely not true.”

So, as has been true of this double murder case from the beginning, the day ended with ambiguity rather than answers--and a strong feeling that the arguments over this case will never end.

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It was a contest between the lean, cool Petrocelli and the practiced Simpson, who has told his story to interviewers, in depositions and in countless mock examinations. He has told it with the confidence acquired in years of live television as an NBC sportscaster.

Would Petrocelli break Simpson down? That was the question raised the day before when I talked to Simpson confidant Lawrence Schiller. Schiller put together Simpson’s book during the criminal trial, functioned as a Simpson family spokesman and then wrote an account of the case, “An American Tragedy,” which quoted some Simpson intimates as having doubts about his innocence.

Schiller told me there are two Simpsons--the nonstop talker who thinks he can charm himself out of any mess and the restrained, on-target, controlled businessman. If the talker takes over, Schiller said, O.J.’s in trouble.

On Friday, Simpson was the man of few words at the beginning, with yes or no answers. There was no trace of hours-long monologues and explanations described in Schiller’s book. At one point, he gave 11 straight one-word answers.

Under control, well rehearsed, warned against his penchant for saying too much, Simpson was doing well.

But Petrocelli was good too. It wasn’t as bad as Captain Queeg’s collapse in the movie “The Caine Mutiny,” but Simpson started talking too much, doing what his lawyers feared most, trying to talk his way out of a jam.

It happened when he was trying to explain how Nicole Simpson ended up battered, bruised and cut from their 1989 battle, after which he pleaded no contest to spousal abuse. “I physically tried to impose my will on Nicole,” he finally admitted. “I shouldn’t have done so.”

Petrocelli continued to draw him out. Pretty soon, he sounded like every other self-justifying wife-beater. The district attorney, he said, pressed charges against him to make him a scapegoat. “I still believe that,” he said.

All of Simpson’s admissions added up to a portrait of a sick marriage. But was it the portrait of a killer?

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The unsatisfying day was reflective of this entire civil trial, which, itself, is an oddity, incompatible with many people’s ideas of justice.

The man, after all, has been acquitted of the murders. Why must he be tried again?

I know the answer: You’re entitled to damages if you can prove someone’s guilty of wrongful death. Still, it’s hard to understand, and I know the many callers who have asked the same question on talk radio remain puzzled.

After all, how can money replace a life? It can’t.

Nor, as it seemed at day’s end, can a trial over money provide the answers to the lingering questions of the Simpson case.

Simpson-haters wanted him broken, financially and spiritually. He drove away Friday, head high, in an expensive black utility vehicle.

Simpson is scheduled to testify Monday and Tuesday, but as it stands now, too much has been expected of this trial. The media exaggerates its importance. The Simpson-haters expect vindication. The Simpson-lovers expect injustice in a white-dominated Westside courtroom.

Don’t count on either one.