The Megyn Kelly Show - Prosecuting O.J., Misogyny in the Courtroom, and Race and Justice, with Marcia Clark | Ep. 377

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Marcia Clark, best-selling author and former prosecutor, to talk about her role in the iconic O.J. Simpson trial, what it was like prosecuting the case in the media spotlight, the Bronco chase moment, the real O.J. Simpson, the relationship between police and O.J., the misogyny and sexism in the courtroom, the issue of race in the trial, the significance of the Mark Fuhrman tapes, trying on the "glove," how the trial changed Clark's life, O.J. Simpson today, prosecuting the case of Robert Bardo who was convicted of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer, the rape that led her to want to become a prosecutor, growing up and raising kids, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm so excited for this guest today. Marsha Clark is a name that many know very well from the trial of the century, a century ago, way back in the 20th century. In 1995, famed NFL player and actor OJ Simpson was tried for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The trial created a full-on media circus with around-the-clock coverage like this country had never seen before. At the center of it all was lead prosecutor Marsha Clark of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. Over the course of that eight-month trial, she and her fellow prosecutor, Christopher Darden,

gave their best efforts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of O.J. Simpson in committing these two murders. They faced off against a team of defense lawyers, including Robert Shapiro, Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian. Later, our pal Alan Dershowitz would join, known as the Dream Team. Dersh says he now refers to it as the Nightmare Team. Cochran was in the lead role, and he rendered this famous standout line in closing arguments. Like the defining moment in this trial, the day Mr. Darden asked Mr. Simpson to try on those gloves and the gloves didn't fit. Remember these words. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Amazing. So, so well done. I mean, even if you disagree with the verdict, you can't take that away from Johnny Cochran. And we all remember what happened next. OJ did indeed try putting on the glove. It did not fit acquittal, but the trial continues to capture the attention of the nation.

It lives on in pop culture through TV shows, music, movies, documentaries, and many are still asking questions on the result of the verdict, intense media frenzy, and what life was like for those involved after the trial and what the trial and our obsession with it says about us. Marcia Clark has a fascinating life story, one that goes well beyond her role as lead prosecutor in that case. There was her role as a working mother. She became somewhat iconic for pushing back on, remember, Lance Ito, the judge who was trying to shame her for her refusal to work after hours, and she was not having it, and life now, including her career as an author of successful crime novels. There is so much more to get to, and I'm thrilled to have her on the show with us today. This is my first time meeting and talking to the one and only Marsha Clark. Marsha, welcome to the show.

Hi. Nice to meet you. It's a pleasure. Oh my gosh, you have to understand. I'm sure you've heard this many times. But to me, you really are a heroine. I was in law school while you were trying this case. I was in my third year of law school watching you and dying to be a prosecutor. And I had this weird thing at the time, as I've had it ever since. I don't know, there's something there's like a weird theory on the internet that somehow Nicole Brown Simpson and I are the same person or that I'm her reincarnate. I don't know what their theory is. But there's just weird tentacles between me and this case. But I was obsessed with you. I was

like, I want to be just like her win or lose. You were amazing. So it's truly thrilling to meet you. Oh, thank you so much, Megan. I'm a big fan too. So mutual society here. But yeah, that's crazy. You were in law school at the time and yet you finished law school and became a lawyer anyway. Well, you know what? I wanted to be a prosecutor so badly. I never went to law school thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. I just wanted to be a prosecutor. That's all. And it wasn't until I amassed my hundred grand in debt and saw what they pay you in the New York City District's Attorney's Office. I was like, oh, man, because I know it doesn't pay well and it's scary and you take a lot of negative incoming, but you believe you're on the side of the angels when you take a job like this. And one of the fun things in reading your book and getting, you know, sort of boning up on your backstory is a lot of people go to the DA's office and then leave and go make a bunch of money in the private sector as these white shoe criminal defense lawyers. You actually started as a defense lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer. And I love the story. Basically, after not too long, your boss was like, you might consider joining the other side.

You seem a little better suited. So tell us about that. So it was a double murder plus attempted murder case involving a pretty well-known criminal, head of a gang. And there were flaws in the evidence. And I had to write the motion to dismiss at the preliminary hearing. And I thought, you know, if the judge actually follows the law, this case gets dismissed.

And I thought, but, you know, it's a preliminary hearing. The standard of proof is low. We'll probably get through, be fine. And so I didn't even want to go to court with my boss. He presented the motion and came back and said, Marcia, congratulations. We won, case dismissed. And I went, oh shit. He looked at me and said, said okay we can refile uh and maybe you want to be a da right right you can come back as the prosecutor on this case yeah because it's one of those things where i don't know you now you get shamed for being a da and putting people in jail like it's somehow inherently bad but i remember being in law school and even then not understanding how criminal defense attorneys could do what they do. Now I have a better appreciation. I see very

clearly their critical role, but I couldn't do it. I could not do it. I'm much more prosecution oriented like you. So you wind up, what was it, three years out of law school working for the L.A. district attorney or how many years of law school? Yeah. Uh-huh. No, more. Let me think. Hold on. Yeah. No, no. About two and a half, three years out of law school. Went to the DA's office and remained there until, you know, after the trial. Yeah. Now, before we get to all that, let's talk about a little bit of backstory because it's interesting to get to know you. I understand you were born in California, but you were raised kind of all over. Tell us a little bit about how you bounced around. Yeah. So I was born in Berkeley and then we moved all over the place pretty much until I was a senior in high school. And so we lived in

Tacoma, Washington. We lived in Texas. We lived in Michigan. We lived in Maryland. We lived in New York. Why was that? Pardon? Why was that? Oh, my father was the director of the Food and Drug Administration. So he kept getting promoted and every promotion came with a transfer. So we bounced around a lot and then wound up back in Los Angeles so and then I stayed here you know I actually really loved New York I did not want to leave um and I really thought I would move back but then I went to college and then I got you know what I mean life kind of took hold and life was here and so I stayed here, there was something in your past that you revealed in your book that I didn't know about. And I do think it had a role in you becoming a

prosecutor. And it must have made the trial of OJ just to have a few more stakes for you personally than the average prosecutor. And that was you yourself became a crime victim at age 17. It was a pretty violent rape. And that was, I remember walking into the ocean and thinking I was going to kill myself because I didn't think I could stand myself. You know, there was a way in which I was so devastated and felt like I had been used up and thrown out. And it was pretty bad. And the very last moment, water up to here, I said, wait a minute. And I got mad. I'm not doing this. And for the longest time, I actually, it was almost immediately thereafter, blocked out the memory completely and pretended it never happened. But I kept having horrible dreams about it. And it didn't go away but ultimately I did wind up

dealing with it very shortly after I became a prosecutor so none of this was conscious but what happened was I was just joined the office I was had been a DA for what maybe three four months and I was handling preliminary hearings and a woman who was a rape victim came in, and she only wanted to have a woman prosecutor. And so I took the case, and I remember her sitting outside and talking, and she was just a wonderful person, wonderful woman, and I felt so badly for her. Within, it's weird, it must be just a coincidence, but within hours, I was so sick. I had a fever. I had the shakes.

I was a mess. And the defense attorney looked at me and said, you better go home. I went home. I was sick. But then realized that it was stirring up a memory and it was the memory of my own rape. And so, you know, finally dealt with it, finally acknowledged what had happened. And her case went well. As far as I know, I finished the preliminary hearing. Certainly he was held to answer. I believe he was convicted. And I do think that impacted my ability to emphasize and understand.

I think especially back then, which was the Stone Age, rape was still something they looked at the woman and said, what did you do? What were you wearing? What did you say? How did you act? The ability to look back at my own life and what did I do and realize I was blaming myself for simply saying hello to someone, being nice to someone, and realize that this is bullshit. And I think that did help add a layer of empathy and understanding that I might not have otherwise had. Certainly it made me even more proud of being a prosecutor, being able to help people that way. Yeah, I understand. I feel like looking at the arc of your career, I mean, not to be brazen about it, but I feel like your own experience as a crime victim

made you somewhat of a warrior for other women who have gone through that and worse. You joined what I understand is essentially kind of like a special victims unit at a special trials unit or describe the unit that you were in for 10 years. So that was my goal was to get into the special trials unit. Very, very. So the DA's office had several units, hardcore gangs, sexual violence. Now they had, they had family violence. Um, uh, each one was a different, you know, specialty, but there was one very small unit of only about that time, five, uh, attorneys, five DA's that handled all the high profile cases. So the, um, night stalker was there. The Onion Field would have been there. It's just all the high profile, you know, pretty much all murder cases.

That's the A-team. I'm sorry? That's the A-team, for sure. And it's also people who have to be able to take the scrutiny of the media watching every single move little did you know just how much that's for sure right you're like oh sure that might be fun no oh wait but back then megan the media scrutiny was nothing i mean it was nothing they would show up maybe the when we say the press then we're talking newspapers, physical newspapers. And they would show up with maybe a camera and your picture, the DA's picture would never be in the frame ever. It was just the defendant.

And if they spelled your name right, it was amazing. If they spelled your name at all. So that was the media coverage back then. They'd show up at the arra then. They'd show up at the arraignment, they'd show up maybe in somewhere in the middle, and then at the verdict. And that was that. And so there was no worry about media scrutiny. It was just, you know, you're just doing these big cases. And the real challenge of them was that they went so long. I mean, we're talking one of the trials took two years and being in trial for

two years straight was so intense and crazy. It was really weird at the end of the case. Within about a week of it finally being over, I was, I realized I was losing hair and I was freaking out like what's going on. Oh my God, we, find hair on my pillow. And one of the other lawyers in the unit said, it's stress. It'll come back. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I remember when I was practicing law, which is an incredibly stressful profession, unlike media, which is a walk in the park. But I remember when I was practicing law, hearing the stats about like the average life expectancy in America. And it's still that women are expected to outlive men for the most part. Women have a longer life expectancy. And I remember thinking, these are not lawyers. These

women are not lawyers. Like, there's no way we haven't worked our way over into the short lifespan category as female lawyers. It's just too stressful. And I didn't have anything like the law career that you had. So I can only imagine. And in the meantime, you're trying to raise two kids and you're going through a divorce and all that would come out and a mental facility for a decade for what he did to me. And so I boned up very quickly on stalking and stalking cases. And when does one get a restraining order and what are the risks of doing that and blah, blah, blah. And that's when Gavin DeBecker first came into my life, who I know you talked to on this case I'm about to get to. And we just had him on the show a couple of months ago. And the case was the prosecution of Robert Bardo, who killed, stalked and killed a famous actress at the time by the name of Rebecca Schaefer. And this did make national headlines. It was horrific. For those who aren't familiar with the case, let me just show you Rebecca Schaefer. She was starring in a show called My Sister Sam with Pam Dauber of Mork & Mindy fame. And she was young.

She was like 20, 21 years old. I'm going to show you the clip and then Marshall Clark will tell us what happened. Here it is. What's wrong? Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody thinks I can solve a complex emotional problem. Okay, I have a problem you can solve. My apartment looks like Macy's in hell.

You just hate my stuff, Sam. Oh, here we go. What? I have learned to live with your stuff. You think it's fun living with someone who saves jars? So there actually was kind of a resemblance between the two of them. And I know Pam Dauber took this whole what happened to Rebecca very hard personally. So tell us what happened with Robert Bardo, the man who killed Rebecca Schaefer. So that I did not know until a couple of days.

I didn't immediately know it was a stalking case. It was a murder case that I was given to try. And it was my first introduction to this kind of stalking where it was the kind of stalking I had heard of and knew about as a DA was boyfriend stalking ex-girlfriends you know and and it was a personal connection that had gone sour and then they were doing what they could to pay back the other side but this notion of stalking a celebrity you've never met or maybe only met in a crowd of fans was something new to me. And so fairly early on in the case, as I was investigating, Gavin DeBecker called. And I did not know him other than I had heard about his name and connection. I believe it was with the Teresa Saldana case.

She was another actress who had been stalked and he attempted to murder her, did not. She survived. And so I had, I had some idea that he was an expert in this field. So we started to talk and it was revelatory. I mean, I think Gavin's a genius and we spent hours and hours and hours and hours on the phone as he was traveling and doing all kinds of different cases and working, answering my questions about stalkers, about their mentality, about what, why this happens, how this happens. And how do we prevent it, by the way? And how do we keep people safe in addition to of course um what the prosecution the shape of the prosecution because he went to park deets who used to work with gavin

who is a psychiatrist psychologist now i can't remember but that was his point of view was going to be that robert bardo did not premeditate the murder that that he did not intend to kill, that he, it was a rash impulse, et cetera, which I knew I believed to be bullshit. So there was a lot of discussion and a lot of preparation with that in mind. But I learned a great deal about the stalking mentality as a result of my collaboration with Gavin during that case. It was one of the most incredibly tragic circumstances where you have the entirely innocent victim who did nothing but be kind to someone. And this was what happened.

This was her reward. She opens the door and he shoots her. It was horrifying. He shot her through the heart. She truly had had no contact with him. He hired a private investigator to track down her address. He got it. He showed up there.

She answered her own door. She, I think, gave him an autograph or something to that effect, like on the spot and then closed the door. And then he came back and knocked again and she opened the door again and he shot her through the heart, killing her. They call this kind of stalker an erotomaniac. And it's somebody basically who has no connection with you, but in his head believes that you have some sort of essentially a love connection. In my case, the guy thought that I was sending him messages because the number one rule is don't communicate with your stalker. Do not communicate with your stalker. And so even signing the autograph is potentially dangerous. And I've heard you say you learn from Gavin saying anything more than the autograph isn't the next level of danger, you know, like all best or love, you know, whatever, just, just, just your name is sufficient. Um, but, but if you,

if my stalker believed that he, I was communicating to him through the president's ties, through my hand motions on television, through things that Sean Hannity was saying on his show, like I had nothing to do with me, even if I had gone off the air, he was believing that I was sending him messages. So it was constant contact quote, you, from Meade to the stalker. And that's terrible and it's dangerous. And it's why we took it so seriously and it did escalate and it was bad. But in her case, she signed an autograph. The guy got it in his head that there was some connection between them and he shot her and she died. And so you had to prosecute this guy with his team being like, look, he didn't form premeditation.

You know, he showed up there. Obviously, there's something wrong with Robert Bardo. Come on. Everybody can see that. And you managed to get around that. As I understand it, like you, he sort of submitted some demonstration of how the alleged encounter actually happened. And you saw holes in that demonstration that nobody else saw. Yeah. So what happened is they videotaped his session with the doctor, with Park Dietz, in which the doctor asked him questions about his state of mind and then asked him, how did it happen? Show me what happened. And so I'm watching him reenact and it's like something bumped me that that's weird. Rewind.

What's bothering me? Rewind. And then I realized what it was. He was showing that he approached her door and he, he, as he opened the door, he pulls out the gun and then shoots her. And I thought, oh my God, that's an ambush. That's premeditation. He came to the door prepared. He had the gun behind his back.

And so I was able to prove that this was a killing by means of lying in wait which is a special circumstance and gets you life without the possibility of parole so the argument was no he wasn't hiding behind the bushes but my argument legally was you do not have to hide behind a door behind the bushes and be physically obscured as long as your purpose is obscured and that you lure somebody in by appearing to be harmless and then, but you're prepared to kill. And the judge bought it, the court of appeals bought it. And he is now doing life without parole. Good. You know, this reminds me of something I moved last year, my family and I moved from New York where I've spent my 51 years to Connecticut. And I got a driver's license. And, you know, they ask you if you want to register to vote when you get your driver's license. And I said, Sure, yeah, of course. And so you had to put down your address. And my registration,

right, and I hadn't, I've never done this, because I since I became a public figure. And because thankfully, for me, my stalker came very early in my television career. So I learned very quickly, holy crap, you really have to bend over backwards to protect yourself. So I wasn't about to put my home address on my license because very easily discoverable. And then I, long story short, was rejected. My registration to vote was rejected because I had put down a P.O. box and they were like, you can only register to vote if you put down your home address. I said, well, what if my P.O. box is, you know, nearby my home? It'll make sure I'm not in a different jurisdiction. I understand that. Nope. We need your

actual home address for you to vote in Connecticut. I'm like, this is insane. There are forget people who are well-known thanks to television like me. There are all these billionaire hedge fund, you know, movers and shakers who bad guys want to kidnap. They want to kidnap their kids who have serious concerns about letting their public address get out there. And it's not just Connecticut, Connecticut, LA and California are leading the pack and protecting public figures from this because of people like you, because of cases like this, you know, because there's a lot of celebrities living there. But the average state is like mine, where you lose your privilege to vote

unless you're willing to reveal exactly to the world where you live, your exact home, where your children are, where you... It's really wrong. Yeah. Yeah, it is really wrong. And they need to find a way... I mean, consider someone who's not famous, who's not rich, who doesn't have the means even to explore how to do this. I mean, if it's just a woman whose ex-husband is going after her and she's moved to be safe and to keep her children safe, she doesn't have access to whatever it takes to do this extra layer of confidentiality. It's not so easy. So, I mean, California does have these means and they have special means of registration so that you can vote, but a lot of places don't. And I really think this should be a national thing that is required because

in order to vote, you should not have to surrender your safety in order to vote. That's just ridiculous. And think about it. So you're basically legislating crime victims out of the voting rolls by having this policy. It's like, what sense does that make? Well, I'm going to call you one of these days to get you to help me to change the law in Connecticut because it's ridiculous. And they really just... I'd be happy to. Yeah. Thank you. I haven't... How could they resist the two of us? Good luck. I don't know. But you know what? Here we come. That's right. That's right. So all of this is just by way of background to show you you had had a young lifetime of understanding crime from both sides of trying to do what's

right against very bad actors and being fearless in the face of massive challenges and putting them behind bars. And then along comes the O.J. Simpson case. And I love the fact that, like me, you're not really a sports person, apparently. And so when you first got the very first call about this, they said, do you know who O.J. Simpson is? And your answer was no. Oh, I did. No, I knew Naked Gun. Oh, you knew Naked Gun. You didn't know like the Bills or the 49ers or the Heisman Trophy. Oh, no. What are those?

That's amazing. Yeah, I didn't know any. So can I tell you, in advance of this interview, I watched a little bit of the people versus OJ Simpson, you know, with Sarah Paulson as you. And I was trying to explain to the kids, they don't know who OJ Simpson is. little bit of um the people versus oj simpson you know with sarah paulson as you and um i was trying to explain to the kids they don't know who oj simpson is and um i said this would be kind of like if tom brady got arrested tom brady's in a loving marriage with his wife giselle but i'm just saying this would be like somebody like tom brady got accused of murdering his spouse or somebody very close to him. Like that's how famous OJ Simpson was. And the other thing, Marsha, you tell me, but like the other thing I

see similarity between those two guys, with all due respect to Tom, please, is beloved, almost universally beloved, of course, not by sports rivals, but just as a personality in America. Oh, yeah. OJ Simpson actually had another layer to it that I learned throughout the case or learned very early on in the case. He was somebody who came up from very hard scrabble life. You know, I mean, this was a very rough childhood that he had for many, many reasons. And so he's a success story in the sense that he overcame huge odds to become as famous as he was. And I mean, as incredibly accomplished and talented as a sports figure as he was. I mean, I ultimately came to wound up watching the footage of his early career when they came out with the 30 for 30 piece.

I don't know if you got to see that. That was a great piece. Yeah. I thought it was amazing. And watching him play and like, holy shit, he's a, you know,

phenom. He's a phenom. So there was this kind of, and then of course there's the racial aspect where, you know, I mean, he's overcome the odds of being a black man in a, in a world that

made it a lot harder to be than I think it is today, though it's far from perfect. So I think it was really, there were so much to his persona and what he achieved that made him an incredible icon for so, so many. And he was a very charming guy. I mean, he really had enormous charisma. You know, you watch him in the 30 for 30 as he's talking straight to camera and so self-deprecating and so charming. I get it. I get why he was as big as he was. Even in the, you know, the docudrama People vs. O.J. Simpson, they're showing like after the

white Bronco chase, he's getting out and the first thing he says to the cops is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And he's saying to them on the phone, I know you want to go home to your kids. You know, that was most of America's impression of him. Kind, about others like you say self-deprecating you know this sort of gentle giant who overcame incredible odds to become America's hero and and unlike some of these celebrities no drunken tapes that we knew at that point of him being belligerent or an ass or saying a bunch of terrible things, you know, thinking like Mel Gibson, nothing. It was just universally beloved guy. So you go into this thing as the audience, as the people, as the jury pool thinking, nah, nah, not this guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting back then. Um, there were still not the ubiquitous

iPhones and, you know, cameras that people had in their pockets and, you know, abilities to record. And so there were quite a few celebrities who were not all that they seem and they could be not all that they seemed, um, and get away with it without people finding out that they were actually behind the scenes. Not so great, as we later learned way too many times since then. So people didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know the good or the bad. Honestly, I came into it so very neutral.

But I just didn't know enough about him to know that I should feel one way or another. So when, you know, when all of this started coming out, it was a revelation to everyone, a bigger one for those who had this really great impression of him that they defined, they discovered for the first time he'd been beating Nicole. He had, there were, some reports did come out about beating his first wife that he was actually kind of a boorish guy. Really, and treated Nicole very, very badly.

In very ugly ways. A spousal abuser. He was, you know, a classic spousal abuser. And then the tapes came out that you could hear him yelling at her. She's pregnant and he's calling her a fat pig. I mean, it was just disgusting one thing after another. But it all got it was all remained very quiet because she didn't want to.

She really didn't want to prosecute. The only one time she did, the National Enquirer reported it, but no one else picked up the story. So no one really knew. And all of this just started to come out because of the criminal because of the murders otherwise no one would ever found out yeah i mean tell the audience what denise brown her her sister said when she found out that nicole had been murdered oh she said he did it i knew it he did it and she was like right away, right on top of it. And she saw it coming. But she was behind the scenes with them. They would have dinner together, spend time together. She had reason to know that he was not the 911 calls that if you followed this trial at all, you you've heard. That's how she began the case. The people versus O.J. Simpson on the on the subject of his domestic violence against his wife of seven years.

Here's one of those 911 tapes and then we'll go to break and have more with Marsha right after this. Listen to this 911 call as we go out. 911 emergency. Can you get someone over here now to 325 Gretna Green? He's back. Please. Okay. What does he look like? He's OJ Simpson. I think you know his record. Could you just take somebody over here? Okay. What is he doing there? He just drove up again. He just drove up. Wait a minute. What kind of car is he in? He's in a white Bronco, but first of all, he broke the back door down to get in. Okay. Wait a minute. What kind of car is he in? He's in a white Bronco. But first of all, he broke the back door down to get in. Okay.

Wait a minute. What's your name? Nicole Simpson. Okay. Is he the sportscaster or whatever? Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Wait a minute. We're sending the police. What is he doing? Is he threatening you? I'm going nuts. Okay. Has he threatened you in any way or is he just harassing you? You're going to hear him in a minute. He's about to come in again.

Okay, just stay on the line. I don't want to stay on the line. He's going to beat the shit out of me. Wait a minute. Just stay on the line so we can know what's going on until the police get there, okay? We'll be right back. Don't go away. More with Marsha Clark. So, Marsha, the L.A. D.A. and the police were investigating O.J. Simpson. There was a line to the effect of we went over there to notify him that his ex-wife had been murdered. We didn't expect to watch him become a suspect before our very eyes. It was a trail of blood leaving, leading from Nicole's house to his house. I mean, the truth is OJ was a terrible criminal. He really did leave. And I obviously I'm showing my bias. I 100% believe that he did this. But he left a trail of blood from the murders back to his own house. And the only

way this was discounted at trial was, well, there were a couple of different ways. The defense got up there and tried to suggest the L.A. cops had planted the whole thing. There was some chemical in the blood. They said show the L.A. police had had to have manipulated it. And they played the race card. And as as I think it was, Robert Shapiro would later say they played it from the bottom of the deck. So before we get to all that, you say, all right, let's get him. We're going to arrest him. We have plenty. And then he flees. He flees. Robert Shapiro says, I'm going to bring him in. Fear not. He doesn't bring him in. He goes with his friend A.C. Al Cowling in a different white Bronco. O.J. owned one. So did his friend A.C. And before we knew it, 100 million Americans at a time when, as you point out, like we didn't have an iPhone that could just pop up and beep and say, oh, my God, turn on your TV. Somehow we all just got word to get in front of your TV. Oh, my God.

A hundred million Americans watched this. This is sought for. No report on anything other than police staying, keeping a clear distance behind. There's no rule book on this because right here, Pat, this hasn't happened yet. It seems to be that way. And the traffic up above is still. In fact, I'm trying to look down through my lower window. It appears that CHP has stopped traffic on the on rampramps coming onto the 91 westbound just to let the officers proceed at a nice pace coming through here. Again, they don't want anything to happen to this suspect vehicle. They want to try to keep it as safe as

possible. But there's definitely a crowd growing on every overpass that we see, vehicles and people that want to get a glimpse and see if this is in fact O.J. coming down the freeway. 9-1-1, what are you reporting? This is A.C. I have O.J. in the car. Okay, where are you? I'm coming up the 5 freeway. Okay. Right now we're all okay, but you've got to tell the police to just back off.

He's still alive, but he's got a gun to his head. Is everything else okay? Everything right now is okay, officer. Everything is okay. All about he wants me to get him to his mom. He wants me to get him to his daughter. Okay. So that's all we ask.

He's got a gun to his head. Okay, and what's your name? My name is Ace. You know who I am, goddammit. Oh, my God. What did we learn from the slow-moving white Bronco chase? Oh, man. So.

Trigger. Yeah. I don't know why. A little bit triggering. So the 911 tape from Nicole was more triggering, let me tell you. That's just harrowing. That's just heartbreaking. But watching that again, I'm struck by a few things.

Number one thing, I'm talking to the two lead detectives in the case. They have just arrested him, as far as I know. They contacted him as he came home from the airport. And as far as I knew, he was in handcuffs and he was at the station and they were interviewing him. And then they came in to talk to me and I was going to ask, and I wanted to find out, what did he say? You know, and how did he react? And they told me basically it was a non-confession it was kind of a sliding all over the place which you know happens um it's actually pretty rare that a defendant says uh you got me i did it so okay i said okay so where'd you book him and he goes well we didn't

what do you mean you you didn't well they booked him but they released him you released him what why would you what why would you do that we have we by even by then had a mountain of evidence i mean it was insane the amount of evidence as you put it so rightly megan he was a terrible criminal he did not do a very good job of this he left evidence everywhere leading right up to his bedroom. I mean, inside his bedroom. It was ridiculous. How could you possibly let him go? And they said, oh, where can he go? He's OJ Simpson. Everybody's going to recognize him. And I was flabbergasted. And of course, then that allowed the Bronco slow chase to happen, which I think was a galvanizing moment for a lot of people.

It became kind of this rolling snowball effect of people watching and jumping on and then going out to cheer and go, you know, it just kind of this mania took hold. And it became a cause to stand up for don't squeeze the juice kind of thing, which I don't know would have happened had he gone into custody as you would have with any other person, any other defendant, you name them, they would have been in custody after all the evidence that we had. He knows how much evidence there was. There's all kinds of news reports. People are talking about it endlessly. It was hard to miss. So that they let him go at that point for reasons I still don't understand, but and then let him stay out for as long as they did. Again, I think a lot of that had to do with the Michael Jackson case and the beef that the police department had with our office for not filing charges and for endlessly investigating him up in Santa Barbara and convening the grand jury for as long as we did and then never bringing charges. And I think they were afraid that might happen here, although the difference between the two cases was so stark it was ridiculous yeah nevertheless it caused this kind of feeling of mistrust and so they didn't want to they didn't trust us to file um as soon as we we could again i don't know why but anyway that's in the oj case and so literally had him

red-handed i think it was a turning point in the oj case you literally had him red-handed you caught him red-handed he was bleeding from his knuckle with a bandage wrapped around his left hand, one of the fingers of his left hand. I mean, you literally caught him red-handed. There was one bloody glove at her house, Bundy, and one bloody glove at his house, Rockingham. There was blood all over his white Ford Bronco, which had been parked back at his house, Rockingham. You could see it smeared inside and outside. The limo driver who'd been waiting to take him to the airport that night didn't see him. He rang the doorbell. Nobody was there. Then suddenly saw a figure that looked just like O.J. Simpson

running in the back of the house. His his tenant, Kato Kaelin, heard three thumps, very loud thumps, which is clearly O.J. reentering the property right after the time of the murders. You know, the blood evidence in his bedroom of hers and his. I mean, it's like you couldn't have asked for, you know, a stupider criminal. But again, they played the race card. And I feel like now in 2022 America, don't we have a better appreciation for how that can work, how powerful it can be, and how people can use it to completely ignore seemingly unignorable facts. Oh, absolutely. I think everybody's a lot smarter, but I will say this. Back then, I was trying cases downtown for about 10 years. And in the downtown court, as opposed to the branch courts that were in the suburbs, we were used to seeing the race card being played.

That was a very common tactic. And it worked. It worked more often than you want to know. So it was not unfamiliar to me. But this was a level beyond because he was so famous, because he had the imprimatur of this wonderful icon, this amazing guy. We were fighting against that as well. And then there was also, I think, a sense of, we're not going to let you take him down because he is a symbol of success. He is a symbol of overcoming all the obstacles that minorities do and have to, to succeed. So there was a huge, like this impenetrable wall of,

we don't want to, we just don't want to yeah and i think you know it also had to do with the rulings in court look i think in another with another judge with a different set of circumstances where you really enforce the law as it was written you wind up with a hung jury probably probably but i don't think anybody in the da's office even most of us knew at best we'd get a hung jury. That was the most that could be hoped for and probably if we retried it, hung again and then dismissed. So I mean, I think that was kind of in the cards from early on and became

more and more apparent as time went by. Was there a change of venue, right? Because this happened was her house on Bundy in Brentwood? I know he lived in Brentwood. Was she in Brentwood? I know he lived in Brentwood. Was she in Brentwood? Did the murders happen in Brentwood? Yeah, well, yeah, I think she was in Brentwood or on the border of, but the problem was we could never have taken the case to Santa Monica because it was earthquake damage and it was a security risk. And people were escaping from Santa Monica, like the custody bus would pull up and the beach was right there. And so it happened more than a few times that they would get out the

bus and run. And so if you can't secure a building when you have a high profile case like this, you have to bring the case downtown. And they had a special floor, the ninth floor, that had surveillance cameras in the ceiling that were being monitored by the sheriffs inside the courthouse constantly. And in a case like this, that was going to be high profile and going to be such a security risk, which it really was, there was never a chance of filing it anywhere but downtown. So there was no, it wasn't even a discussion. It wasn't even a thought. Different jury pool when you go to L.A. Harper. For sure. No question.

Just a couple of years after Rodney King, the beating of Rodney King, which was very public, and the white officers were acquitted in that case, which led to the riots and a lot of bad blood. And I think most people have acknowledged that at or around this time, and certainly around the Rodney King beating, there was a serious problem of racism within the ranks of the LAPD. So this was not imaginary, and the Black community had every right to be distrustful, angry. There's a second question about whether OJ was really part of the Black community, which we can talk about, but just dealing with the actual community, they did have very good reason to distrust the cops. Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. When the Rodney King verdict happened, it was somebody I was friendly with who was trying that case. And he was devastated. And it was shocking. It was a shocking verdict to me.

And it was to all of us in the office. I mean, and I actually reminded the jury, you know, we lost that case. We tried that case. We meant to put, you know, and unfortunately, the sentiment was at the time, and this had, I think, a lot to do with the feelings among the jury pool at the time we were picking a jury for the Simpson trial, that, yeah, you can't trust the police and they band together. And then you have the kind of the us versus them mentality because the white jury acquitted these officers who were shown on videotape. It was one of those situations where it couldn't have been stacked more terribly in terms of polarizing the community. And it was a very tough thing.

The irony, of course, was that in the OJ Simpson case, the police officers were the ones that had the hardest time believing he was guilty. One of the reasons I think they didn't want to bring him in for me to file the case and didn't want to put him in custody is they were still having a hard time. They were still struggling with the belief that he could have done this. And so when it came out with the theories of conspiracy and planting evidence, et cetera, these guys, are you kidding me? It's the last thing they wanted to do. They didn't want to believe it was true. He was their hero too. So it would, there were ironies. He used to have them over to his house. Like he was chummy with the cops. Like

they, they knew him as a celebrity and a great guy and not they had to disbelieve their lion eyes when they saw all the blood evidence and so on. But yeah, so that was a major factor for you. Ultimately, at trial in L.A., it would be, as I recall, nine black jurors, one Hispanic or two Hispanics and one white. Am I correct? Didn't start that way. We lost jurors. So we had, it was a, it was a more balanced jury in terms of white and black and whatever. Um, it was, but, but they dropped like flies under the pressure of being sequestered and all the pressure of don't watch TV and don't read the book and don't do, you know, it was

very hard. And so, yes, ultimately i think that was the makeup of the jury as you've described it it wound up being yeah so that was boy you can see the setup for an uphill battle for you and chris darden and indeed it was despite massive evidence um and of course now we have a civil jury in a separate case saying indeed indeed, he murdered them both, as any sane person knows. OK, stand by. We have much, much more with Marsha Clark ahead. We're going to get into the trial. We're going to get into Chris Darden, Johnny Cochran, the gloves. If they don't fit, you must acquit and all of it. And then we'll talk to her later in the show about what she thinks about crime enforcement today in L.A.

This guy Gascon not going to get recalled after all. Does she have thoughts on that? Stand by as we go deep with Marsha Clark. Don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. We're almost to 500,000. Please help us get there. If you prefer an audio podcast, you can follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you get our full archives with more than 375 shows. When we watch the O.J. Simpson white bronco, slow-moving white bronco, we see people cheering him from the overpasses. That was one of the shocking things. You know, you got two people dead. Nicole Brown Simpson was nearly decapitated. Ron Goldman had nothing to do

with this. He was there to drop off sunglasses that she or her family member had left at his restaurant. He was a waiter and it appears to have just showed up wrong time, wrong place. And they're cheering him. They're cheering OJ's fleeing the police with a gun to his head. I mean, it's just something sick about America with our obsession with celebrity, I guess. I don't think they would have been cheering some random, some random Joe Simpson. What do you think? I agree. I agree. I think that's exactly right. And it's, it is kind of, I found myself very shocked and, and very upset at seeing it. It's like, wait a minute. He's not, you realize we didn't just announce that he rejoined the NFL. You realize that he is actually being accused of a double

homicide, a hideous double homicide. Why are you cheering? You don't even know what the evidence is. And it did strike me that it was just, it was really kind of a mentality of, I don't care. He's famous. I like him. I love him. I remember all the great things he did as a player. And I remember naked gun. And I remember, you know, that sort of thing. And they didn't care. And it felt that way to me largely throughout the trial that these two poor victims were basically dismissed, ignored, and thrown away by so many who just, who only cared about the celebrity. And now don't get me wrong, there were millions who did care and came out to show their support and, you know, wore the angel pins and really understood that they were, this is a homicide case. This is not about the hall of fame for the NFL player of the year, but there were

many who didn't see that there were two victims involved here. And it felt like we were always pushing that boulder uphill to try and remind people of what this was all about, why we were here today. The cameras are not in the courtroom because he just scored the winning touchdown. You know, and that it felt very hard to keep people focused on that. Again, let me say, not all people by any means and many, many who understood the difference, but there were quite a few who didn't care. But a shocking number who were against the prosecution. And I know you wrote in the book about how your lines were ringing off the hook at the DA's office from people supporting him, mad that you brought the prosecution. It's just like, it's so crazy to think about it. But yeah,

I mean, that we're still divided on the verdict. We certainly were divided on, you know, black and white reaction to the verdict and so on. That became a part of the case as well. Meanwhile, O.J. had been accused by Nicole of domestic violence in the past. He had one sort of slap on the wrist encounter with law enforcement as a result. As I understand it, that's where Mark Furman first had his encounter with O.J. He had been called to the house on one of those. And as you say, one of the 911 calls reflects an angry O.J. This is how you guys chose to open your case to

try to convince the jury to try to shake some of this imagery loose. He's not just the juice from the Hertz commercials and the Heisman and all that stuff. This guy has a very violent side and it tends to get unleashed on his wives, his domestic partners. And here was evidence of that. Okay, the kids are with you. Did you hear about the kids when you were starting to sit in the living room? They were here. Did you hear about the kids, kids? Oh, it's different now. I'm talking to you in silence. If you go and shake their heads, you'll be in silence. Just stay on the line, okay?

Is he upset with something that you did? It's terrifying. Horrifying. And think about this. This guy is big. Mr. Simpson is over six foot, you know, burly, big muscles. I mean, this is somebody who is a very powerful, very imposing figure. And this is the guy who's yelling and screaming at you and raising a fist. And the fist is as big as your head. And I hear Nicole in there responding to the dispatcher,

who's saying, stay on the lane, stay on the line. And, you know, all she wants to do is run and hide, which, by the way, she frequently had to, to get away. And what a terrifying situation. She's, as Gavin put it, Ron Goldman was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Nicole was in the wrong place for a long time. And, you know, she kept getting kind of short trips from law enforcement. You know, she would call the police, they would show up, he'd sign a football and they'd walk away. And even Mark Furman was called to the house because she was sitting in the car and OJ Simpson took a baseball bat to the windshield and smashed it in front of her. Terrifying situation. And Mark Furman showed up and saw the smashed windshield and simply it in front of her. Terrifying situation. And Mark Furman showed

up and saw the smashed windshield and simply wrote him what we call an FI card, field identification card, no arrest. You know, this happened again and again and again. And the reason was because he was a beloved figure by the police as well. And they didn't want to believe it either. And of course, domestic violence was not taken seriously back then. Crimes against women not taken very seriously back then. And in that sense, I think things have gotten better. Not perfect, but it's getting better. But back then, it was very easy for people to sweep things under the rug. And so women frequently did abandon the case and recant their statement because they couldn't expect to get justice in the courts. And you're poking the bear.

So you're not going to get a result and you're poking the bear. You know, we were talking about earlier my own research and does one get a temporary restraining order? Because I remember reading a case where a woman got a temporary restraining order against her stalker. And again, to your point, your stalker can be your ex-husband or it can be a stranger. And the next thing you know, he stabbed her and the TRO was in between the knife and her chest. And so it can be very aggravating and it's dangerous for a domestic violence victim of any kind to bring law enforcement in. Sadly is it's dangerous for them it has to be a calculated decision and so she's done it a number of times she hasn't no real result has happened it infuriates him more um and so you can you can understand but but she did she did more

than just that the pictures i will never forget you saying to the jury what you'd shown them her her bruised face um and this is before the iphone i know people think about the johnny depp amber heard thing and they think amber may have faked those photos i have no idea what amber heard did but nicole brown simpson didn't fake those photos of her bruised and bloody face and there wasn't even a suggestion otherwise and she i'll never forget you saying to the jury about her will her her will. You were saying, who does that at her age? Who goes and does a last will and testament and puts it in a safe box in the bank with her bruised face photos? Like she's trying to tell us something from the grave.

Yeah, exactly right. And as a matter of fact, we have now changed the rules of evidence to allow for the admission of these kinds of statements that are, you know, I know he's going to kill me or writings that are, you know, in a journal. I know he's going to do this. She had written quite a few things in her journal about the abuse that she suffered and about her belief that he was going to kill her. She was aware of it. Denise was aware of it. Now we do get that kind of information before the jury. But yeah, I mean, it was a very telling thing. It was very clear to me she was writing her own epitaph. My God. One of the unfortunate pieces of the trial, and you made a reference to it earlier, was the judge. Judge Lance Ito was a disaster pretty much on every front. I mean, he became a national laughingstock afterward for good reason. And one of the things that was rather irritating, I mean, it wasn't his main failure,

we'll talk about his main failure, but one of the things that was very irritating about Judge Ito was his treatment of you versus his treatment of all the other lawyers in the courtroom who happen to be male. And I'm not somebody who's constantly waving the feminism card. And you are never somebody to play the victim. I've read and seen your interviews for years now. But there's no question that he was a prick to you. And I, you know, without evidence of what the other reason was, I think I think he was a misogynist. Yeah, I agree. I do agree. Well said, Megan. I have to say, it was, you know, it was a remarkable thing.

It kind of made me laugh because I'm bigger fish to fry, right? I mean, really, we have two victims here. But it was one of those ridiculous and very obvious things. Mr. Cochran, Mr. Darden, Marsha. What? Wait, what? And, you know, the remarks about my hair and skirts and whatever. It was a horrible, you know, example of a male on the bench. There are so many good judges and there were, you know, I was really hoping to get one of them. And it was unfortunate that we wound up, and this is the hard part, when you, what we call lay paper, when you peremptorily challenge a judge, you only get one.

And there were others who could have been worse. So when we talked, when Bill and I talked about, well, what do we do? Do we accept Lance Ito or not? He said, well, I think he's okay. And he had Lance on his case against Keating. Well, Bill's a man. Keating was kind of the devil. It was not the same case, not the same situation as the Simpson trial. So there was that. But really far and away, what was worse to me was the manner in which he ran the courtroom, which is to say he did not.

He handed the reins to Johnny Cochran and Johnny ran with it, which is to say he did not. He handed the reins to Johnny Cochran, and Johnny ran with it, which is why when people say, aren't you angry with the defense and the way Johnny ran the case? I said, no, I'm not. The defense will always take advantage to the greatest extent possible. They're representing their client. And if you have a judge who's inclined to let the defense rewrite the rules of evidence and the rules of trial procedure, you're screwed because the judge is the final arbiter. He had the power to prevent it. He didn't. Not only did he not, but he encouraged it. And he made some of the most outrageous rulings I had ever seen. Eventually, I did call him on it at the very end when he was going to allow the defense to comment

outrageously on Mark Furman's taking the fifth, which is a known thing you're not allowed to do. It's been established. This is what we call Hornbook law from centuries ago. You do not get to comment on someone who invokes his Fifth Amendment right because you could do that and say, hey, he invoked his right to remain silent. Doesn't that make him sound guilty? Then why have a Fifth Amendment at all? So they were going to allow him to them to capitalize on his invoking the Fifth before the jury questioned him about it. And I said, this is just too outrageous. It doesn't matter anymore. The case is lost, but I can't stand it. This is your final bad ruling. And I took it up on a writ immediately, which he tried to prevent and tried to deny us the time. And at

which point I said, you're denying the people the right to a fair trial. He eventually capitulated and the court of appeal wrote back immediately and said, you will not allow this. You will stop this trial because Johnny kept extending and extending and saying, we'll never rest. We'll never rest. No other judge would put up with that nonsense. Look, no other, most judges would never have allowed race to be made a part of the case to begin with because it had nothing to do with never rest. No other judge would put up with that nonsense. Look, most judges would never have allowed race to be made a part of the case to begin with because it had nothing to do with this trial. He didn't kill her because she was white. It had nothing to do with anything. And yet they were allowed to completely subvert justice by bringing in an issue that had nothing to do with the

evidence, nothing to do with the motives of the real parties involved. So it was the worst possible situation because he himself was, as they say, a star fucker. And so he was much more wedded to the side of the case that was famous. And it was a bizarre thing to watch a judge abdicate completely his role as the the the captain of the ship. Yeah. And the neutral arbiter, you know, calling balls and strikes and not not keeping the captain of the ship. Yeah, and the neutral arbiter, calling balls and strikes and not keeping the thumb on the scale. Before we get to him and the race ruling, because that really is, that was critical.

Just a moment on you and your experience before him. You think back on how sexist we were and just openly, openly sexist, judging your looks at every turn. The CNN nonstop coverage, Fox News was around, MSNBC had just launched. All these 24-7 cable channels, CNN and Court TV in particular, went wall to wall with it. Huge numbers. That's, of course, what you're going to do. You get huge numbers. Made stars out of people like Greta Van Susteren, Geraldo, my pal Dan Abrams was covering. A lot of lawyers up and coming became stars as a

result of this Jeffrey Toobin. That's where we first started really hearing about him. Anyway, so your hair, it went from curly to straight, right? I'm trying to think we're going from straight to curly, right? That's in the middle of the trial. No, curly to straight. Okay, guys, I get it confused. But it caused the thing. It caused the thing. And I think we have a clip from the, again, this is Sarah Paulson portraying you in the people versus OJ.

Yeah. Here, here's a little soundbite reenacting what happened. Soundbite six. You're walking in. Curly. early. Good morning, Ms. Clark, I think. ah so annoying so that's judge ito choosing to sort of mock i mean he was obviously he's trying to mock your hair like you're unrecognizable and not in a fun playful way just in a you know look at you i think it's you.

Yeah, snarky. While all the defense lawyers are staring at you. It must have felt terrible. It was ridiculous. That's really what I felt. It was one of those, actually, they kind of flipped it in that clip you saw. What really happened was,

I had two little kids in diapers. I was, I decided to do a perm because I wanted to wash and wear hair. I didn't want to have to blow it out. I didn't want to be bothered. And then it grew out. The perm grew out. And the media coordinator at DA's office said, you need to get your hair cut. And my hairdresser said, stop with the perm already.

You have straight hair. Stop perming it. And I said, I can't stop now. I, all I want to do is make it easy to deal with. He said, okay, then I'm going to cut it. So it got shorter, but the change came and he made, you know, made the remark that he did because at some point I didn't have time to go to the hairdresser to re-perm my hair. It's growing out. It's naturally straight. I had no choice but to then blow it out and just let it be straight because I couldn't go back and get another perm. So I go into court thinking, ah, no one will notice. And who cares?

Like, what judge thinks? And who cares? Yes. Yeah. Who cares? And then that. In the middle of a double murder trial. I mean, I will say for our listening audience,

because we're airing live on SiriusXM Triumph channel right now, Marsha looks amazing. She's got her hair as long and it's beautiful and it's straight right now. And it is impossible that you're 68 years old. It is impossible. I don't know what you've done, what kind of magic juice you're drinking, but I want it. I want it tomorrow.

We'll talk later. So in any event, that was just one example. But I do want to mention this. You became a hero to a lot of working moms, single moms. You're going through a nasty divorce, custody dispute. Your husband ratchets it up while he sees you on trial in the most stressful trial of your life, of any prosecutor's life ever. So he wasn't being very kind to you. You did not want to lose custody of your two young boys and you had told judge ito at the beginning of the trial i this is what time i can work until i'm a single mom i work very hard but this is what time i need the trial to wrap i was like four o'clock or five o'clock in the afternoon and one day he was gonna let it go late into the

evening and here again is um this is the actual you i I think, right? I'm asking my producers. Yeah, this is the actual you because Johnny Cochran later convinced you because you went to him and you're like, I'm leaving. I'm leaving at four as we agreed. And he's like, okay. And then Johnny Cochran accused you of using your children as an excuse the next week. You didn't like how the ruling had worked out

and he thought you were manipulating the court. And boom, here's Marsha Clark soundbite five. I'm offended as a woman, as a single parent and as a prosecutor and an officer of the court to hear an argument posed by counsel like that, Mr. Cochran today. Some of us have child care issues and they serious, and they are paramount. Obviously, Mr. Cochran cannot understand that, but he should not come before this court and impugn the integrity of someone who does have those considerations. And I'm deeply offended. That is ballsy in 1994 and 95. That was a ballsy thing to do. You know, I mean, I think I was just so pissed off, Megan. There were moments during

that trial when I said things that I really meant. And, you know, which is rare, you know, on a personal level, you know what I mean? But I mean, that sounded so bad. Please cut that. It's a bad soundbite. But what I meant is, you don't talk about yourself on a personal level when you're in court, in terms of how you feel about the case. You talk about it legally speaking. I think he's guilty. I think the evidence shows this. I think this is irrelevant or this is relevant.

But to have to talk about yourself on a personal level is a rather uncomfortable thing. And I was never in the position to have to do that before. So I was kind of angry on both levels. Why are you doing this to me? And why that, that I shouldn't even be talking about myself as a person in this context, when we have two dead victims is outrageous and should not be allowed. And his comments should not have been allowed. I get why he did it. Um, I don't think it worked for him ultimately. I think that I think that he didn't do it again. But it was a very upsetting thing to be in the limelight in the crosshairs that way.

It's one thing to impugn me as a prosecutor and say, you know, she, she, the arguments lousy, it's weak, whatever, I don't, I disagree with her view of the law. But to go after someone personally like that, that was not kosher, to say the least. And just so the audience knows, in the midst of all this, the ex-husband's mother, your ex-mother-in-law, released topless photos of you. Now everyone's Googling it, Marsha, in Saint-Tropez, which is like years earlier, right? It's like, see Marsha Clark's breasts. The amount of shit being thrown your way outside of the courthouse is truly like, it's amazing. But I love it because you are so strong. And you never let him see you sweat. And you had a higher calling that you were devoted to. And I'm sure your sons are very proud of you. I think it's the two boys. In any event, I feel for you as a woman in today's day and age and who was coming up behind you. I appreciate how you dealt with it all.

Okay, let's get into the trial a little bit because you mentioned Judge Ito's ruling on race. And I think most people are like, why wouldn't we be talking about race? Furman was the lead cop, one of them. He's the one who found the bloody glove at OJ's house, which was a critical piece of evidence. And Furman got caught on tape saying the N-word a bunch of times. Why wouldn't that be relevant? The defendant's black. messed up horrifying things. No one knew about that. What we did know was that he was the one who found a very damning piece of evidence. He found the bloody glove that matched the one at Bundy under the air conditioner at, on the sidewalk of, at the side of Simpson's house. And I mean, that really tied him directly to the crime and to the murders. And so they were going to have to discredit Mark Furman somehow.

Well, it was very hard to do because the truth of the matter is there were about 15, 20 cops at the Bundy scene before Mark Furman even showed up because the patrol cops show up first. They come, they secure the scene and the detectives show up later and they start to guide things, you know, and decide what they want to look into and how to they want to gather, et cetera, et cetera. So by the time Furman got there, at least 15 cops had said, I was at Bundy. There was only one glove there, only one glove. And they were trying to sell the notion that Furman showed up, found two gloves and moved one of them to Rockingham to frame OJ Simpson. Okay, it's a crazy theory that makes no sense. There's no evidence to back it up, nor ever could

be. And so when they wanted to, I said, look, if you can prove that it's possible for him, for there to have been two gloves there, and for someone to have then secretly moved one of them, both of these things, by the way, impossible to prove because it never happened. But if that were true, then Furman's bias and inclination to try and frame someone that he arguably didn't like because of his race, I understand.

Okay, there's motive to do something terrible and frame someone. But if you can't, if there is no evidence whatsoever, no possibility that there was ever a second glove at Bundy that could have been moved, then what is the relevance of his motivation? There's none because he could not frame him. So no matter how he may have felt about Simpson,

it's irrelevant. That was true. And initially the judge ruled in our favor and said, no, there will be no evidence of race because there is no evidence that he could have, there was a second glove to move. And then the pundits came out roaring. I can't remember which ones, but, you know, screaming about how this is not fair. You can't keep race out of the picture. It's not, it's highly relevant you're trying to skew this in favor of the prosecution and the next day capitalizing on that tidal wave of media coverage F. Lee Bailey basically just got up and screamed at the judge adding no new evidence and of course not being able to prove anything like the possibility of a second glove existing at Bundy

never even came close and the judge just reversed himself and said, okay, I'm going to let it in. And that's where it stood. And was that the argument that you just described over the author who had Furman on tape? She consulted with him. She was writing a book about crime and she had Furman on tape using the N-word.

Was that argument, as you just described it, over her book evidence? I mean, her tape evidence? No. She came out way, way, way later. At that time, it was really only about a couple of people, not very many, one or two that were saying, I heard him say the N-word. When he arrested me, when he talked about something, one was an arrestee and one was not. It wasn't a whole bunch. It was that kind of thing. It wasn't until months later, and we're talking nearly the end of the trial,

that this woman came forward to say, I've been taping my sessions with Mark Furman, and here are the tapes. He was using the N-word and talking about abusing African-American men repeatedly in his exploits as a detective and as a patrol officer. And she never did. But her tapes certainly came into evidence, I will say that. And it was one of the most horrifying days I'd ever spent in court, listening to the filth that was on those tapes. It was just devastating, ugly, ugly stuff. Of a critical witness for your side. Critical. And with the racial charge already behind you, for all the reasons we've discussed, my God, this was the last thing you needed. So what do you make of Furman now? I knew him at Fox News.

We used him for commentary on the missing case of this baby Lisa. And I found his analysis. He was a Fox News contributor to be so insightful and so interesting. There was no racial element at all in this case. It was just a detective calling it as he saw it. And there was definitely some pushback. Some people didn't believe Fox News should have hired him as a contributor. But what do you what do you make of him? I have mixed bag that he's a good detective. He did good work. He he knew what he was doing. He knew how to guide an investigation. He certainly was telling the truth about his role in the Simpson case. And I and I say this because it was corroborated by at least a dozen other officers about what had happened that night, what they found, and how they found it. So there's that. And I would not ask anyone to take his word for it, having heard the tapes and heard what he has said and done. But his word was corroborated and he is smart. However, you know, the fact that he did not tell us that he had been recording these

tapes with this author and he knew, it's not something that he forgot. In fact, on those tapes was a meeting he had with her after the case broke, after he testified at the preliminary hearing on the Simpson case, talking about those tapes and talking about how he was going to capitalize on his role in the case. And she was going to write this book and that sort of thing. So it's not as though, oh, I made these tapes a million years ago and forgot. He was very well aware of it and it was ongoing. So I have to say the fact that he supposedly was involved in were never proven to have happened. And he was embellishing for the benefit of this author who wanted Lourdes' stories, and he gave them to her. So, you know, as a person, I don't have a

lot of respect for Mark Furman. As a person, I think his attitudes about African-Americans, about minorities, that was the gloves and the later. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. That wasn't your call. When we come back, Chris Darden and the role he had in forcing O.J. to try on those gloves, which was a move both members of the prosecution team would live to regret. You mentioned Bill. Bill thought Ido would be okay, but Bill wound up having a heart issue and taking leave from the trial. In came Chris Darden, the partner that we would all watch every day right next to you. And as has been documented and admitted by you and Chris, it was his call to have OJ Simpson try on the gloves. Now, I'm confused after having read about the glove issue.

When he put on those gloves, was he putting on the actual gloves from the crime scenes, like from Bundy and Rockingham, or was he putting on a model that the glove manufacturer had sent to you guys, like an identical model, supposedlyingham, or was he putting on a model that the glove manufacturer had sent to you guys, like an identical model, supposedly? Yes. So he did both. Um, so they did, they proposed the defense proposed that he try on the actual crime scene gloves. I objected on the record saying they have shrunk. They've been

tested. They've been frozen. They've been unfrozen these gloves were bloody they there's no way they're in the same condition and then um and then ito said and well but he's got to wear he's he's ruling for the defense allowing it i said well i was objected and then he said but of course he's going to have to wear latex underneath because these are bloody gloves so he has to put on latex gloves and then put the gloves on top. And I said, now it's completely irrelevant. Now you'll never know if they, you know, that's not going to be the same fit. There's no way they can fit the same way. The gloves are not the same. You put in latex underneath. This doesn't work. Chris insisted that if we don't do it, they will. And I said, then let them. And we can tell the

jury exactly what we just said, you know, that their latex is underneath, the gloves are not in the same condition. We can't do this. This is a stupid experiment. It's irrelevant experiment because you can't duplicate the conditions. And we saw what happened. happen when i was at nbc i had wait let me just i'm sorry let me just add one thing after that then i said you know let's have the expert get the actual gloves in their normal condition the way he actually wore them that night where he won't have to wear latex and it won't have been shrunken and frozen and shrunken and then he did put those on and they fit, and no one remembers that moment. No. The cleanup in aisle seven doesn't play as well as the spill. So I had Chris Darden on my show at NBC, and I asked him about the effect this trial had on him. And it was sad. It was profound, and it was kind of sad. And here's just a little bit of that. Is that true? Do you feel this trial

ruined your life? Well, it certainly changed it. And it certainly, you know, changed the direction of it. And it took me to places I rather would have rather not gone. How so? Well, because, you know, we owed a debt. We had a commitment, you know, to the Goldman family, to the Brown family to bring the murderer of their son and brother to justice and we failed to do that and you know you don't lose something like that and then just forget about it

it doesn't just roll off your back can you relate to that? sorry can you relate to that? i i know i read in your book it was it actually struck me you said your reaction upon the verdict of course he was acquitted was you felt guilty you felt guilty oh yeah oh yeah you know mean, our job is to convict the guilty. Our job is, I mean, if you can ever call it justice, getting a conviction when these people will remain dead. But it is all we have. And that's what we're supposed to deliver. And we didn't. And so I think both Chris and I will remain scarred by that forever. Oh, I hate that. I mean, all you can do is your best. All you can do is give it your all. You know, you can't before the gloves, way before the author came out with the tapes, way before then. You could see the way it was going. And I thought to myself, regardless, then the only thing I can do is do everything. And that means spare no effort, work day and night.

So I would go home to be with the kids, but I brought the work with me. And when I put them to bed, I was working at home. Work day and night. So I would go home to be with the kids, but I brought the work with me. And when I put them to bed, I was working at home. And so the one thing I can say is that I did not spare any effort. There was – I did everything I could think to do, worked as hard as I could possibly work to bring the case, if not to the jury, at least to the rest of the country, to see that this is the truth. We're presenting the truth here. He did do this. And at least I'll have that. And so I do have that. I know that we fought as hard as we could fight. We all worked as hard as we could work. And so that is a measure, I guess, of comfort. But at the end of the day, the truth is we did not succeed. And I feel like Chris does, that we did owe it to them.

We owed it to everyone to see that justice was done. I think it's something that is felt not just by the families, but by everyone watching. You want to see justice prevail. And when you don't, you lose faith. You know, it makes you feel like you can't trust our system of justice. And that's a terrible thing. So we cannot help but carry some of that with us probably forever. I don't see it like that at all. I see, you know, the jury let us down. The jury had a different motivation. I understand there were definitely some holes in the case. If you know the jury let us down the jury had a different motivation i understand there were definitely some holes in the case if you believed the defense's dna um evidence you you could get

to this you could get to this result but unlike i mean you you tried you saw you tried to present the clear picture the jury got mesmerized by johnny cochran and the so-called dream team and i think they had other preconceived biases going in there with all due respect to them i'm sure they did their best but at least one has come out since and said he he would have changed his verdict he thinks simpson did do it and now having like seen the case with fresh eyes um i have to ask you about if i did it oj simpson shortly after i joined fox news in 2004 oj simpson through harper collins which the Murdochs also own, so this is a story that we were debating very much internally, wrote a book with Judith Regan on sort of an offshoot of HarperCollins. And it was called If I Did It. And it was basically his confession. And it talked about how he did it. If he did it, this is how. And I was looking at it just prior to our interview.

And one of the things that jumped out at me was there was always blowback and it was actually never published and there was no publicity tour. But he did a couple of interviews anyway. He called Nicole the enemy. He talked about his outreach against her when she would flirt openly with other men in front of their children. And this is just a bit at the scene of the crime. This is per O.J. Simpson and his book. Down to meal with Kato Kaelin, dressed in a dark sweatsuit, he sped over to Nicole's condo in Brentwood. He parked in the alley, put on a knit wool cap and gloves, grabbed the knife that he keeps in his Bronco. According to Simpson, his intent at this point was to scare her, not kill her. Encounters Ron Goldman. Sees him arriving at the condo. Simpson goes on to report that he accused

Goldman of planning to sleep with Nicole. Goldman denies it. Nicole tells Simpson to leave Goldman alone. He was just returning glasses she had left at the restaurant. But Nicole's Akita, her dog, when it wags its tail to greet Ron, convinces Simpson that Ron and Nicole have a sexual relationship. Simpson yells at Goldman, you've been here before. In Simpson's account, Nicole charges at him, or charges at him like a banshee, failing, falling and smacking her head on the concrete. When Goldman drops to a karate stance, Simpson loses it. And what amounts to basically a confession, Simpson writes, then something went horribly wrong. And I know what happened, but I can't tell you how. Then later, this is from a

report about the book, in a taped interview to promote the book that was never aired on TV, Simpson, according to a partial transcript obtained by the New York Times, said, after this guy kind of got into a karate thing, I remember I grabbed the knife. Asked in the interview whether he removed the glove before grabbing the knife, Simpson replied, quote, you know, I had no conscious memory of doing that, but obviously I must have because they found a glove there. Talks about how he fled the scene, soaked in blood, holding the bloody knife. When Nicole and Goldman dead in front of him, he stripped to his socks before reentering his Bronco, saw the limo parked in front of his house, so entered the estate along a darkened pathway, banging loudly into an air conditioner outside of Cato, Caitlin's bedroom,

as he attempted to do so. And on and on and on. He also claimed in that book that he had a second man, a friend named, quote, Charlie with him at the time of the murders. This must have been stunning to you. Forget the propriety of the publishing and all that but the fact that he wrote this down and kind of told us what he says happened what did you make of that i didn't make anything of it to be honest with you i don't believe he wrote it um i don't i think that someone else wrote it and i do know who. He had a lot of good guesses about what happened. Some are obviously wrong. Nicole did not fall and bang her head. Nicole was taken down brutally by him and basically rendered unconscious by the time Ron showed up and then had the fight with Ron and then went back and finished her off.

There was no Charlie because that crime scene went over with a fine tooth comb, no evidence of any other person there. And you had the blood drops next to the bloody shoe prints showing one person leaving the scene, no one else present. Some of the other things were true. I think that what he, I'm not sure why he did this book. I think there was obviously a profit motive, which I hope the Goldmans have made unworth it to him. But I really just,

I just thought it was kind of a work of fiction written by somebody else and something that he signed on to that he probably regrets. Otherwise, you know, there's very little truth to be found there. You know what's crazy? Of course, we all saw that years later he got convicted of kidnapping. He was trying to, I don't know, something with his memorabilia and trying to avoid paying the Goldman's the money that they um are entitled to as a result of their civil court verdict he wound up serving i think 11 years of a 33 year old 33 year sentence um i was serving almost nine years forgive me um but he he actually just comments now on random things marcia he my team and i noticed it after the Will Smith slap of Chris Rock.

He actually got out there and commented on it and was like, oh, you know, I understand. I've been there when the media says horrible things. I'm like, what the, what is, what are you doing? How is this happening? Is it, we've lost our minds. Well, how are they going to him for comment? Why are you asking him? Why are you asking this guy for comment? And he had something to say about Jeff Toobin too. Did you hear that? Oh my God. No. What did he say?

She froze, but we got to know the follow up on Toobin. Okay. We'll squeeze in a quick break while we get her back. Cause clearly this is not done, right? Steve, can we do that? Yes, we can. Want to plug her book too. While we have the second, check out her new book, The Fall Girl. It's out next month. She's become a very successful crime novelist. Don't go away, because much more with Marcia Clark right after this quick break. All right, we've got her back with us. And we did look it up during the break. You were 100% right.

October 2020, OJ tweeted, damn, Jeffrey Toobin. At least Pee Wee Herman was in an X-rated movie theater. Toobin wrote, he wrote the book, The People vs. O.J. Simpson, on which the miniseries was based. My God, my God. I understand people, people sin and like you move on, you forgive him. No, no, this is not that case. I guess not. I mean, I think it's remarkable that people are asking for his comment. I really,

but whatever. Maybe like if a double murder takes place, you might go to him for that commentary on how they do it. Right. He's got some real expertise in. Okay. So back to this, you say in the book, we lost, we lost this case because American justice is distorted by race. We lost because American justice is corrupted by celebrity. The bedrock issue here was not race, but race coupled with celebrity. So ironic, because, of course, as I mentioned at the top, O.J. used to say, I'm not black, I'm OJ. And, you know, they had to, of course, change his whole house before the jury toured it to take down all the photos he had of all these white celebrities and white friends and put put up pictures with black people. So he looked like he was more part of, you know, the black. I mean, it's like a farce, right? A farce. But expand on that. You lost because of

race coupled with celebrity. Yeah, I think you take one away and then you have a different verdict. You know, if he's if he's as you said, I'm you're not going to like this. But if it's Tom Brady and it's him instead of O.J. Simpson, I think he gets convicted. If it's John Q. Lunchbucket and he's any other race,, Black whatever, he gets convicted. But you put the two of them together. And I think, especially at that time, and we can never talk about these things in a vacuum, it matters that Rodney King had just happened. It matters that the city was burning. It matters that everyone was on edge because of the verdict in the Rodney King case. These things really make a difference. And so you have that as well. But all of that put together certainly did make the recipe for this verdict. We're now obsessed with identity, skin color, gender, gender identity. And more and more, this is creeping into courtrooms. What do you make of that, of wokeness and identity more and more appearing in law schools, in the training of young lawyers,

on the bench, and even in our jury boxes? You know, I think it's good that lawyers in particular are being taught about the ways in which race may impact the way law enforcement works, the way cases are prosecuted, which cases are prosecuted. I think to be sensitive to the possibility of bias in the way people do their jobs is an important thing to be acknowledged, because you can't address bias unless you acknowledge bias. So that's as a first, as a general point of information to be aware. I think that's a good thing. That said, it cannot be allowed to take over in a courtroom. And at the point when you start to pick a jury, the jury has to be told and must be enforced in no uncertain terms by the judge. We are here to judge the facts unless Unless race is an issue, and it can be,

it certainly can be. But if it is not an issue, then it will not be allowed into the courtroom, because it does, these are the kind of hot button issues that distort the ends of justice. There's no way you can have a just and fair verdict when you're throwing in hot button issues that simply make people upset, but have nothing to do, legally speaking, with the evidence. And so- Call it unfairly prejudicial in a court of law. Let me get to this before I let you go,

because we only have a couple minutes left and I teased it. So I'd love to know your thoughts on the current LADA. The attempted recall failed because they didn't get enough valid signatures, although it came pretty close. And he and other soft on crime DAs are popping up in city after city as these crime rates

go up. What do you make of it? You have to be aware of what a district attorney can and cannot do. I see an awful lot of commentary that says, oh, he's, you know, the people aren't getting busted. They're letting criminals walk out the door with merchandise. They're smashing grab. Nobody's doing anything. But that's not a district attorney's job. District attorney only can prosecute the people who get arrested. So you have to look at the law enforcement level and say, do they have the wherewithal? Do they have the means to actually go after all these people? And that's kind of a threshold issue right there. First, they have to get arrested. That's important. Now, if Gaston is also promoting policies about filing cases that is too lenient, that across the board thing. Discretion has to become, has to be part of it. If a defendant has, you know, two prior shopliftings and now he's got an out and out robbery,

you're not going to file a three strike case on that, but you will file it if this is his third armed robbery. You know what I mean? You have to be able to think about who you have in front of you and not just do these across the board

and either nullification or the opposite, you know, going after everybody. I'll tell you what, I wish we could get you back in there. I know you never prosecuted another case, but no matter what anybody says, you prosecuted a great one that in 1994,

1995, I'm proud to know you, Marshall Clark, all the best to you. Thank you so much, Megan. It's been a pleasure. Likewise. Tomorrow, Jared Kushner. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.