You're Wrong About - The O.J. Simpson Trial: The Arraignmaker

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

This week, we put on our suits and head back to the courtroom. O.J. Simpson pleads not guilty, Marcia Clark finishes questioning Kato Kaelin and Bob Shapiro continues to furrow his brow. Digressions include "Speed," the Kuleshov effect and the intentional boringness of American law. In the final ten minutes, we talk briefly about the crime scene and Marcia’s reaction to it. If you'd like to see the arraignment footage for yourself it's here.Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

I want us to spend time with all of the people in this story in a way that allows us to cultivate a sense of connection with them and to see the parts of their lives that are recognizable to us and also just to recognize when they're being dicks. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that investigates history without impaneling a grand jury. Not yet. I forgot what a grand jury is, so I was just saying that. It's like a regular jury, but they're all wearing ball gowns. I'm Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic.

And if you'd like to support the show, we're on Patreon at Patreon.com slash You're Wrong About and PayPal. And we sell cute mugs and t-shirts and stuff. And if you don't want to do that, that's also chill. Just settle in. Or bounce after five minutes, but we're glad you're here right now. And today, we're talking about, I think, Marcia Clark. Yeah, you're right. I think this episode is also going to be maybe kind of a catch-up episode. And possibly a better title is The Arraignment, because we're going to do OJ's Arraignment on June 20th and the day is leading up to it basically the weekend after the Bronco chase

from a few different perspectives. And we're going to bring our chorus in. Arraignment is one of those words like grand jury that I see all the time, but it's not clear to me that I know what it is. It's the part in law and order where we see the defendant with their lawyer and the prosecutor come in and Jill Hennessey is wearing a scrunchie. And it's where you stand in front of a judge as a defendant. The charges against you will be read aloud. And you plead guilty or not guilty. So it's like a court hearing. Yeah, you're standing in front of a judge in a courtroom.

Take me with you. Arrain me. We're doing a little arrain maker. You're an arrain man. Yeah. So where are we starting? So we haven't really zoomed out in a while. We've been close by with Paula for a couple of episodes now. And so I want to return to one of my favorite voices in the chorus of the series, which is... Oh, what's his face? Griffin Dunn. Yeah, Dominic Dunn.

Griffin Dore. Griffin Dore Dunn, yes. Raven Claude Didion. So in Dominic Dunn's coverage of OJ Simpson, we have a crossover event with one of our previous topics. This is from a Vanity Fair column called LA in the Age of OJ. And he writes, In the midst of all this, the Prince of Wales came to town. What a flat tire that trip was. The beleaguered prince was simply not a hot ticket. There was a great deal left behind the scenes telephoning to beg people to show up at certain of the charity events.

The stars did not turn out. There was no hostility toward the Prince. Nearly indifference. For a second, I was afraid you were going to bring it back to the Stanford prison experiment. Everybody got locked in the basement. And Philip Zimbardo was watching the crowd the day of the Bronco chase and taking notes. So yeah, I guess it makes me happy or something that into this story, we can imagine one of the other people we've recently talked about just going through, you know, peering out his limo, going, Hi. So where are we in time for this arraignment? Is this like right after the Bronco

chase or like months after the Bronco chase? This is right after. This is the Monday after. The Bronco chase is June 17th on a Friday. And then we have basically the weekend for the lawyers to prep and people to sort of catch their breath a little. And then the arraignment is on Monday. So does that mean that all of the evidence that they're going to present at the trial, they've already gathered like the investigation period is over? No, not after 72 hours. There's a lot to do. And you know, there's also the gathering of the evidence and then the testing of the evidence. We're at the beginning of trial prep. Okay. So they happen on parallel tracks that they're putting OJ on trial and they're still

building the case against him behind the scenes. Yeah. And I know that we've taken over a year to talk about it, but it has only been a week since the murders. Yes. There's just been so little time for an investigation to play out. Yes. We're doing a Christopher Nolan movie. Yes. So Marcia, as we've talked about before, is questioning Kato before the grand jury when OJ makes a break for it and the Bronco chase begins. And she, like the rest of America, ends up watching it on TV. She does not make a secretive for contempt for the defendant. And so in the following chapter, she tells us, I can never bring myself to call him OJ.

And it galled me when everyone else did. No one referred to Charles Manson as Chuck. Yet even the people on my own team would talk about OJ this and OJ that. I had zero tolerance for it. Yeah. And she actually has like a swear jar, but it's an OJ jar. And if someone on the team calls him OJ, they have to put a quarter in. Wow. And she says, I didn't hate Orinthal James Simpson. At least I don't like to think of it that way. Hate is not an emotion that a prosecutor can afford. Hate clouds your thinking and distorts your priorities. You can't let it get personal. Having gone on record with that noble sentiment, let me say that I reserve the right to consider Orinthal Simpson an unregenerate lowlife scum. Okay. So she clearly did hate him, but that's fine.

And this is one of the areas where, you know, where I'm torn on Marcia, where like, you know, I think when you feel a sense of attachment to a historical figure, you can love part of them without loving every part of them. And I think Marcia really has a prosecutor's heart. Like, she believes in a world where there are bad guys and where you have to find the bad guys and put them away. This is 1994. This is the year that we passed the crime bill. I mean, this is like the acceleration of mass incarceration, like it's all happening in this story, even as this story does not illustrate it in a more kind of direct way. Right. Okay. So I want to read to you four accounts of Orinthal Simpson's Arrangement. And then we're going to watch footage of it. And I'm

going to read you the accounts in order of most to least sympathetic. Nice. So here's the account of the Arrangement by Lawrence Schiller, who wrote the book from which we get all of the Robert Kardashian parts and the people versus O.K. Simpson. Oh, the courtroom was crowded on Monday, the 20th of June. Orinthal James Simpson. Is that your name? The athlete seemed to sleep on his feet, rocking a little, drugged. His skin was drawn almost skeletally over his face, painfully tight around sunken eyes. Simpson closed his eyes for a second, rocking forward as if he might fall. He almost missed his cue. Yes, he finally said. Mr. Simpson, do you understand the charges as I read them to you? Yes. Shapiro placed his right hand on Simpson's left shoulder, squeezing and

directing. The athlete seemed to sink into himself. But when Shapiro squeezed his shoulder, he surfaced long enough to do what was required. What do you think of the language used to describe him in this? Whether his eyes are sunken and his skin is stretched tight. I guess you could say that it's trying to give a little bit of sympathy to him. But I also don't understand the context of this whole book. If this whole book is like, O.J. did it book or O.J. didn't do it book, here's how sad he looks. Well, it's a book written with the cooperation of the defense team. So it is the defense team perspective book. So they probably are putting that in there to give us a little bit of look how tough this is for O.J. stuff. Well, let's compare it. We are returning to

Jeffrey Tubens, the run of his life. Oh, no comment. No comment. I have. Those are the exact words that come to mind from me also. A series of jokes just ran through my head and I'm not going to verbalize anything. Yes. Yeah, don't worry. You'll have other chances. Yes. Simpson was arraigned in municipal court on the following Monday, June 20th. He was physically transformed from any O.J. Simpson the public had seen before. Looking dazed and bewildered, he staggered from the holding pen to the defendants table before Judge Patty Joe McKay. He wore a black suit and white shirt, but he was denied a tie, belt and shoelaces, even apparently collar stays for fear that he might turn them into instruments of suicide.

Had cocked to one side, Simpson stared vacantly around the courtroom, asked his name, he appeared confused, and Shapiro had to prompt his answer. Asked his plea, Simpson muttered quietly, not guilty. The proceeding was over in moments, and in the only real business transactive, Judge McKay scheduled the preliminary hearing for 10 days hence, June 30th. I mean, this whole thing is such an illustration of the fact that quote, unquote, objective journalism does not exist. Because either one of these accounts, if you read them independently, you would be like, oh, well, that's just a factual description of what's going on. But you can see in the juxtaposition how much value judgment is

going into each one of these quote, unquote, factual descriptions. Is OJ gaunt? Is OJ sort of, you know, skin stretched tight over sunken eyes versus he stared out vacantly? Like one of those implies that he's the victim of something. And the other one implies that like he's just completely out of it. And maybe he's not very smart. Like one gives you sympathy for him and one doesn't. Yeah, totally. And like in one, he's like maybe drugged, he's staggering, like, none of the language here implies that he's experiencing grief, which I think Shiller's writing does. Right. And now, for least sympathetic, Marcia. Oh, I hope she says OJ should smile more. That would be perfect. The next morning, Dave and I had taken our places at the council table

when the bailiffs brought Simpson out of the holding cell. Finally, the prisoner entered the court. I raised my head and got my glimpse of OJ Simpson. He looked like he'd been sleeping on the street. He wore a dark suit that seemed to sag on his body. In accordance with rules of the suicide watch, he wore no belt or shoelaces. His features were slack. His manner distracted. I suspected he was tranked. He looked half angry, half scared, utterly deflated. In the coming months, I would watch an alert carefully coached OJ Simpson put on an affable confident face for the jury and the world to see. And I would remember the way he looked this first morning. A common thug, Marcia. Marcia, that's bad. That's racist. Yeah. And if you published this book in 2021, the year we are

now in, I guess, thousands of people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about, Marcia? What are you trying to say to me? Yeah. Can you be more specific, Marcia? What kind of thug do you mean? What's that? Marcia calling OJ Simpson a common thug feels to me like she's a career prosecutor. She's been doing this for, I think, 15 years at this point. I don't know if it's possible to come up and spend your career as a lawyer in a prosecutor's office without absorbing and reenacting that culture. Yeah. And one of the cultures there is the mass incarceration of men of color. And so in that moment, it feels to me potentially like Marcia is looking at this now defendant and saying like your celebrity has been taken from you, your power is being taken

from you. I know what you are. You're one of the kind of people that I send to prison for a living. Right. And I love the moments when I'm on the same page as Marcia Clark because she's the one who's standing up and cutting through the noise and being like this woman was nearly beheaded. Can we talk about Nicole? Yeah. And I'm like, yes, let's talk about Nicole. And we can do that without playing a role in that ongoing legal charade. The facts are strong enough without that. Yeah. And without being like with all of the celebrity and everything else stripped away, he's just a black dude, which is right there on the page. That's basically what she's saying. This also demonstrates how much sort of projection we do into the demeanor of other people.

I mean, it's a middle-aged man in a suit. He looks tired, but ultimately, most people's faces don't actually say that much. There's a lot of interpretation going on in people's quote-unquote demeanor. Do you know about, I'm going to pronounce this wrong, but the Kula show of effect? Can you describe that? My understanding of it is that it's the juxtaposition between I guess sort of a close-up of somebody's face on film and then what they're looking at will give you a particular impression of how they feel. So if you look at somebody say looking out of a window and then you cut to a car accident outside and then you cut back to that person, you'll say, oh, that person looks sad because they're looking at a car accident. But then if what you cut to

outside the window is like two kids playing basketball, then you cut back to that person, it's like, oh, he's thinking wistfully and nostalgically about his own past. Like, he's thinking of this happily. It's exactly the same image, but you're projecting whatever context you have around that image onto what their face is. And it works, I think, especially if you have a neutral expression. Yes. So basically, if you go through life with a neutral expression, people are just going to accuse you of all kinds of weird shit. Oh, this is you going back to your own thing of that you think you have an inquisitive face. I just have a lot of thoughts and feelings about my eyebrows, because I think that like they aren't actually a little bit uneven and

inquisitive, but also I have like deep set eyes, which I think can look villainous. I just think about my eyebrows all the time, Mike. I just get up and I stress about my eyebrows. Sarah's vacant look. She looked cranked. I do. Yeah. But right. But I do think a lot about how this plays out at trial, because the thing is, it is rare in the scheme of things for a defendant to take the stand in their own defense and to offer, therefore, the jury any kind of a sense of who they are when they're not being walked back and forth in handcuffs. Right. Right. And if you have someone who is being accused of something, and if all you have is footage of them with a neutral expression, then you're just like, yeah, you're going to project whatever onto that and you're

going to be potentially very intensely prompted by the way the media is presenting the story. In fact, you probably will be. Right. And if somebody is testifying against a defendant and they're say looking down at their notes, are they doing that out of shame? Are they doing that out of anger? Are they doing that out of remorse for their crime? I mean, you can project almost anything onto that. Are they looking neutral? And if they look neutral, then are you then able to say like, oh my God, like you're so heartless, you don't even feel anything about this crime you've committed, even though they're probably being told by their lawyer, like just have this little expression as possible because you having no expression is bad, but like having some kind

of readable expression would probably be worse because there's no correct way to look when someone is testifying against you. Like so much of this is really just a way for people to reenact their preexisting beliefs about the case. Like if they think you're guilty, they're going to project all of that assumed guilt onto you and then use that as evidence, right? Of like, he was looking down at his notes during the testimony. And it's like, that's not actually evidence. That's literally just you projecting what you already think onto that person. Yeah. I mean, this is basically Nancy Grace's entire career. Yeah. This is like the uncomfortable moist area we're getting into is the Clark Grace part of the spectrum. Okay, I'll read more of Marcia's this goes on.

Shapiro stood close to him patting his shoulder whispering in his ear, fawning. Seemed to me he wanted to be close enough to his client to make sure he was in the photos. The municipal judge, Patty Joe McKay, took the bench and we all sat down. Orinthal James Simpson, is that your true name, sir? I asked him. He wouldn't meet my eyes. He mumbled, yes. To the charges stated in counts one and two of the complaint. How do you plead guilty or not guilty? Simpson's reply of not guilty was jumbled. In fact, it was barely coherent. Then Bob Shapiro did something that shocked me. Shapiro beseeched the court to allow Mr. Simpson to redo his plea. You could have scraped me off the floor. Did he think this was

a goddamn soundstage? Simpson plea take two. I walked helplessly as the jugular Shapiro's outrageous request. This time Simpson drawing on the thespian skills, doubtless honed by his work in the towering inferno, reached down inside of himself and hit the mark. He restated his plea of not guilty. Enraged, I watched as Shapiro, his comically heavy eyebrows knitted in a show of concern, patted his client on the shoulder, congratulating him on his improved performance. That's fucking cold shit to bring towering inferno into this. I think so too. Not all of us have made every great choice in Hollywood, all right? And this is all with the massive chunk of salt, the salt lick, if you will. But I

bet it is really unprecedented and weird for a lawyer to be like my client requests to do over. That makes sense to me as a potential breach of protocol. But I also feel like Marcia is just taking the defense team maneuvering very personally in this anecdote. She said that prosecuting isn't personal. I read that part. I mean, it does seem a little bit like just tone it down, Marcia. It's fine. I understand, especially since she's writing this book in retrospect and like spoiler alert, she did lose this one. That it's like every story becomes one where like OJ Simpson is doing something out of line. But like, I don't know, he just has to stand there for this one. Like, I don't know if he's capable of really like screwing with your whole

thing that much right now. Right. She's punching it up a little bit. You know, we all do this. So do you want to finally watch this fabled footage, which at the end of the day is obviously incredibly boring? Yeah, I think it's going to be like 30 seconds long as well. It's going to be like two minutes. Yeah. Because then I can project my own bullshit onto it. It's going to be great. Exactly. That's what I want. All right. Three, two, one, go. Are you ready to go for it with the arraignment at this time? Yes, we are. All right. You weigh reading of the great way statement of constitutional rights. All right, people. Please speak up so you may be heard. Yes. We start all over. Yes.

Mr. Rental James Simpson, is that your true name, sir? Yes. Your charges is complaint in case number BA097211. It's an honor about June 12, 1994, in the county of Los Angeles. You committed a crime of murder and violation of penal code section 187A. Mr. Simpson, do you understand the charges that I read up to you? Yes. And have you discussed those charges with your lawyer, sir? Yes. At this time, do you wish to enter a plea guilty or not guilty? Not guilty. Yeah. What do you think of that? How would you describe it? So boring. Oh my God. And yet it seems so exciting in all of those depictions.

I know. What do you think of how the defendant looks? I mean, he looks like he looks tired, dude. All of the things about sort of his vacant eyes and potentially tranquilized, and he seems kind of confused and a little bit disoriented, and he's not clear on sort of when he has to speak versus what is just a formality, and he just has to stand there. That stuff all seems true. He seems kind of confused. As I would be if I were being arraigned. Also, isn't Marcia lying? Didn't Marcia say in her book that he said not guilty, and then they had to do the not guilty part again? Yes, that is true. It's a weird thing to lie about, Marcia. He didn't have to say his plea twice. He had to say his

name twice. There's a disparity here. She says his name and says, is that your true name, sir? And she writes, he wouldn't meet my eyes. He mumbled yes, which does happen, but he kind of goes yes and like kind of a questioning tone slightly. And it appears that he doesn't fully that like, maybe he didn't fully hear the question that he's kind of blindly answering in the affirmative to, in which case he would want to do it over. Yeah, it's weird that she mentions that as like somehow meaningful. It seems like they have kind of janky microphones. She's also talking pretty fast. It just seems like he doesn't know exactly how this procedure works. And he's a little confused as to sort of what he's supposed to respond to and whatnot, which is, I don't know. Right.

Doesn't seem to be evidence of guilt or innocence. It's just like a thing that happens to people. Or of entitlement, or of his team being a bunch of low-lifes. It's funny because all of these people have made and will continue to make very bad choices and to do morally reprehensible or at least questionable things. But like this doesn't appear to be one of those moments. So like you don't have to make it that. It's a bold move, man, to punch up an anecdote that is readily available in footage. Well, but that's the thing. This book comes out in I think 1997. And so it was, but like not the way that it is now. The same way Paula talks about having this like unscripted kiss with Michael Bolton. And then you watch the video and you're like,

you know, I would imagine to you the way these books are constructed. Like they're going to tell the story of the arraignment where nothing really happened except for what was supposed to happen. And I can imagine if you're trying to write a bestseller, you would be like, Marsha, do you have any grievances about that? Oh, you do. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. It just ultimately isn't that meaningful of an event in the course of the next nine months, which is why we've talked about it for 20 minutes. Okay, let's talk about Marsha's press conference. Ooh, which we heard about from Paula and Paula didn't like it. Yes. What did Paula dislike? What do you recall? Wasn't this the press conference where Marsha basically just said like we have all the evidence

against OJ and this was premeditated and he super duper did it. And that's our conference. That's what we're telling you today. Yes. She's like this man who had the gall to stand in front of me looking tired is clearly a premeditated murderer. Like this is the moment at which we get a taste of what this whole process is going to be like, basically. So Suzanne Childs, who is the press strategist for the DA's office says there's going to be a lot of press. Marsha says that was the under fucking statement of the year. The lobby was jammed wall to wall with bodies, broadcast androids trying to muscle out the prince gruffs. Photographers were dangling from the mezzanine. For a moment, I thought fright would get the best of me that my voice might quaver. But then

something remarkable happened. As I drifted toward that sea of reporters and cameras, I was enveloped by a sense of calm. All my life, I felt sure that something would happen to me that would make my life bigger, more profound. As I walked toward the lectern, I felt I wasn't even moving under my own power. To say that I felt a sense of destiny might be overstating it. But I do remember thinking, this is it, you were meant to do this. And then she says it was premeditated murder. It was done with deliberation and premeditation. That is precisely what he is charged with, because that is what we will prove. And someone asks, are there plans to charge anyone else? And she says, Mr. Simpson is charged alone because he is the sole murderer.

Wow, she really went for it. She did the destiny thing. And then she just went up there with the savage quotes. Yeah, destiny, sole murderer. And then she says immediately after in her book, she writes, I'd blown it. Man, had I blown it. What I had meant to say, of course, was that Simpson was not the sole murderer, but the sole suspect. I realized my slip almost immediately. But by then, I was fielding other questions and correcting my error would only call more attention to it. I was sure I'd take heat for not using the word suspect. As it turned out, I did get heat, but not for that. The word that Robert Shapiro almost instantly seized upon when reporters spoke to him later that day was not murderer, but sole. The DA's office was not investigating

other suspects he charged. In fact, this was completely untrue. The investigation was still wide open. The thing is, though, this is rich people justice. I mean, this happens constantly with low level crimes. The prosecutors will punch it up and describe it like it's some sort of fucking saw movie. And then what they actually charge the person with is like a super chill misdemeanor. This is exactly the thing that OJ has 55 lawyers. So of course, there's going to be like a whole legal process around this. And they'll be like, oh, this tarnishes the entire endeavor of the case. And how dare she blah, blah, blah. This is the difference between rich people justice and justice justice. Well, I mean, I think rich people justice is justice. And justice justice

is just like a stick with a string and a paper clip on it. Yeah, because rich people justice is like, I mean, Bob Shapiro is not that great at his job, but he knows how to delegate to people who are just, you know, this is like that Nancy Grace kind of paradigm of being upset at someone having the gall to represent their client. Right. This is a bad day for her understandably. And all he's doing is catching her mistake because she said OJ is the sole murderer, which she knows is not the correct language, the murderer part. And then she is camouflaging the fact that actually the LAPD doesn't know that and is still investigating because it's been a week. And is leaving open the possibility that he did have accomplices. She's saying that because she

doesn't think he had accomplices is what I think is happening. Right. Yeah. I mean, to agree with the rich people justice thing, like, I'm sure this is the kind of thing she's used to being able to do. Exactly. It's only when rich people get tried that we notice this kind of stuff. Right. So meanwhile, there's still a grand jury convened and she has to get more testimony out of Cato. That's still going on. Oh, we're returning to our A story of Cato and Marsha. This is the episode where everyone just doesn't acquit themselves all that well. This is the screenplay by Noah Bumbach section of the OJ Simpson trial. People being unlikable. So Cato, meanwhile, also watches the Bronco chase on Friday night on TV. We are now reading from one of our old favorites, Cato

Kalan, the whole truth from the actual tapes by Mark Elliott. After footage of the Bronco chase and after that standoff finally ends. The book says what followed was a rebroadcast of Robert Kardashian's earlier reading of OJ's suicide note, which Cato now saw for the first time. He watched grimly fascinated as Kardashian stood before a phalanx of microphones and read from OJ's handwritten note. To Cato, it sounded like a suicide note, but he wasn't going for it. He felt it was nothing more than a scam that OJ wasn't going to kill himself. Oh, none of it rang true. As for Paula, that was all wrong too. A lie. That wasn't how OJ felt. He told Cato on numerous occasions that he didn't love Paula and would never marry her. So what was he talking about?

What do you make of that? I mean, yeah, that makes sense. We've talked before about how OJ talks to Cato about Paula versus how OJ talks to Paula about Paula. Yeah. There is the sort of the question of like, well, which one is the real OJ? Because he could easily be playing up his love for Paula to Paula, but he could be downplaying his love for Paula to Cato because this is what men do. Well, I think he feels differently about her wall and jail. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I assume both are true, right? Because he is kind of in this orbit around Paula. Like, he can't leave her alone. It's not to the extent anywhere near that it was with Nicole, just in terms of can't leave alone. Right. But like,

he does have some kind of a fixation on her, I think. Like, he can't let her get away. He does not like to let women get away. Yeah. Because that's about him, not about her. Yeah. So he needs her in his life and you can like say that you don't love someone and, you know, probably not, but still just feel very strongly that like they can't leave you. Right. So Monday after her press conference, Marcia returns to the Grand Jury to continue questioning Cato Kalin. Yes. So basically, Cato's testimony on Friday was incomplete because it was broken into by one of the greatest televised events of our time. Right. And now they're picking it back up again. So they basically, they were in the middle of this and then they all took a Bronco chase

snow day. And then they're now reconvening to continue what they were doing last week. I mean, I think we can all probably identify with this more strongly than we would like to. Like we are living inside of history and we have to go do the most boring aspects of our jobs. Yeah, seriously. So I'm going to send you some stuff for us to read. And I would like for me to be Q and for you to be A. Oh, okay. I thought we were going in a different direction for a second. Sarah Marshall admits she's Q. God, it's an all cap. They're just shouting the whole time. Yeah, it's hard on the eyes. These trial transcripts. So this is for Marcia's questioning of Cato and the Grand Jury. And we're going to start with her questioning him about Nicole's

guest house. Okay. And you're Marcia and I'm Cato. Yes. Okay. Did that particular property have a spare room there? Yes, it did. Can you explain what kind of spare room that was? On Gretna Greene, there was a guest house behind her house. Were you interested for some reason in that guest house? Yes. Why was that? Because I lived in Hermosa Beach and it was a long drive and I asked if that room was available to live in. Did she respond? Yes. What did she tell you? Oh, these are so boring. She said, sure, you can live there. Did you move in? Yes, I did. During that period of time, did you become acquainted with the suspect, Oriental Simpson? Yes. Did you ever observe them to argue or fight? I saw them close and I saw maybe an argument. Do you recall

the nature of the argument or guess that it was one? That it was one. So do you know what argument this refers to? Yeah, this is one where he's like banging in the door and Cato has to fix the door because he's like so violent. Yes. So it's like, yeah, I guess I remember an argument, I suppose. Argument-ish, who can say? And like, what is the nature of the argument? Do you remember? No, not memorable. Right. And we've talked previously also, this is a quote unquote fight that is immortalized in a 911 call that Nicole made at the time and where you can just hear her ex-husband shouting at her and threatening her and actively breaking into her house. The theme of this episode is people lying about verifiable footage. It's like tapes are available. It's like me writing a thing

being like, everybody remembers that Dennis Hopper wins at the end of speed. You just be like, we can all see speed. We can go get speed. And you're like, I know you've seen speed one time, but how well do you remember it? Do you really remember it? Probably not. So now we're going to skip the next big block of text and go to the thing that starts. He told you he was going to see his daughter's recital. So about the day of the murders, Marcia asks, he told you he was going to see his daughter's recital at five o'clock? Yes. So at seven o'clock, you asked him how it went? Yes, I did. And did he respond to you? Yes. What did he tell you? He said she was wonderful, beautiful, and he was proud of her. Tell me how he was behaving. Did he seem agitated, upset, nervous?

No, nonchalant. Relaxed? Yes. Did he make any mention to you of Nicole at that time? Yes. What was that? In a good natured sort of way, he had mentioned who she was with girlfriends, I believe, no names. I don't know who, that he was wondering if they were going to age gracefully and what kind of outfits they were going to be wearing. Can you recall what his words were? It was about wearing tight-fitting clothes in reference, good natured. Can't you wear that when she's going to be older, joking, like wearing tight-fitting clothes, good-naturedly, like a grandma? When you say good-naturedly, that's what he was acting like? Yes. Was he laughing? Yeah, joking, laughing. Kind of wondering, were you going to wear these when you get older? Yes. Did he seem angry when

he said that? No. So what do you think about that? Oh, Jesus, such a dick. What is he talking about? He's talking about the women wearing too tight dresses that I guess aren't going to fit when they're older or something? I feel like Kato is saying, he was saying it good-naturedly, and it's like, is it possible to say that good-naturedly, Kato? I don't know. I love that just in every interaction, you're just like, God, this guy sucks. Right. Just ones in your life, just have a normal conversation that doesn't leave people just grimacing as they walk away from the kitchen. It's funny that Marcia has chosen the one moment in which Ok did not have the wherewithal to be annoying in which to find him annoying.

Like, just wait until he says something. Don't worry. Also, I hate this thing in trial transcripts where they're like, did you ask him what time it was? Yes. And did he respond to you? Yes. And what was his response? It's like, just, I mean, I guess I realized that everything has to be in this weird Q&A format, but like this whole, all of this could just be done in just like letting people talk. I don't know. I understand that there's, I'm sure, like various legal reasons for asking questions that way that I just, I don't know, but I trust are there for a lot of good reasons. But also, I think trials are intentionally made boring and incomprehensible because what's happening is often much less complicated than it seems if it's being presented to you in this

highly ceremonial way with outfits, with like moments when you can or can't talk and you have to say certain words and all this stuff is happening in Latin. Like, I really, it seems built to alienate normal people. Yeah, it is weird that we have this weird fiction of sort of 12 ordinary people who are assessing, you know, the facts of the case. But then we also have this weird, stilted way of presenting facts and information that human beings do not encounter in any other context. It's like, if you're going to have this fiction that ordinary people that were being judged by a jury of our peers, why not make it so that like our peers can actually understand and absorb the information? This seems like what they're doing is presenting it to

professional judges, which is what they do in a lot of other countries. Then it would make sense. Do you want to hear the Mark Elliott version of Kato's exchange with OJ about Nicole's dresses from the actual tapes? Oh, yeah. Kato asked OJ how the recital went, a smile crossed OJ's face. Sydney was great, he said. Then the smile vanished. But Nicole was trying to play hardball with me. He also complained to Kato about what Nicole had worn to the recital. It seemed to bother him a great deal that she had on a tight, sexy black dress, which OJ felt was totally inappropriate, not only for the dance recital, but under any social circumstances for a woman her age. Nice. She's 35. I know. Kato, he said, shaking his head back and forth and blowing air through

his lips. What is she going to do? Wear dresses like that when she's a grandmother, wear mini skirts for this kind of function? Can't she dress like a woman? Then that's when Kato is like, can I take a jacuzzi? Marcia is saying, did he seem agitated, upset, nervous? Kato has said in a different context, or will say in a different context, he was upset. Yeah. One of the things that Kato talks about in his quickie memoir is feeling genuinely scared of what OJ's people could potentially do to him, because OJ's a powerful guy. Yeah. I understand being genuinely scared of that, but also it's just he's not describing what he will describe elsewhere, and he's not describing what we can understand from any other source to be the case on this evening.

He's sort of the regular person in the story, and his greatest flaw, I think, is his very, unfortunately, relatable need to equivocate and minimize the conflict around him until it's too late. Yeah. Okay. And here's, we're going to read the final section, which starts with, what happened? Did anything unusual with her during the phone call with Rachel? Oh, okay. So we will remember from a previous Kato episode that Kato is basically spending the evening on the phone with friends versus friend Tom, and then his friend Rachel, and he is on the phone with Rachel when something strange happens. Mm-hmm. Marcia asks, what happened? Did anything unusual occur during the phone call to Rachel? Yes, I was on the phone with Rachel and talking. I heard a

noise on the back of my wall, and it was like a three-thump noise. Go ahead and just demonstrate for the jury. Witness complies. So I guess I have to like thump here. Let's try this. That's a nice thumping. Nice thumping. For the record, the witness has taken his fist and pounded three times on the table in front of him. Okay. Or on the chest in front of him. Yeah. Do you have an air conditioning unit that goes into the wall? Yes. Is it in like a window or an opening of the wall? Yes. That wall that the air conditioning unit is in, is there a small little path alongside the outside of that wall? Yes. Next to that path. Is there a fence? Yes, there is a fence. Is that the side border of the property of Rockingham 360 Rockingham? Yes.

The area on the wall where you heard that thump, those thumps, was that near to the air conditioning unit? Yes. Also, the picture moved. And the picture on that wall moved? There's a picture over by the phone, and it tilted, and I thought there was an earthquake. It tilted when you heard the thumps? Yes. So you thought it was an earthquake? Yeah. I told Rachel on the phone, hey, did we have an earthquake? She said, no, I don't think so. Don't tell me what she said. Okay. I don't know what tone Kato used for the okay, but. Probably more polite. I don't know why Marcia had to go there, but okay. It's hearsay. He got to show these Kato's that you don't take kindly to their bowl. God, that was so boring. Jesus fucking Christ. Is there a picture?

Yes. Did it move? Yes. Was it related to the thumps? Yeah. It's like, all right, guys. Obviously, something hit the wall and the picture moved. Yeah. Does it have to be that boring like lawyers? Why is it so boring to be you? Yeah. And later on at the civil trial, he will say that it sounded like the impact of a human body, but he doesn't say that here. Oh. So the theory based on that testimony is that this is O.J. like hoisting himself up over the fence and jumping back into his property so that he can make a covert entrance, sneak back into his house, and then open the door to greet the limo driver and be like, hello, I was napping. Yeah. What do you think about that? What do you think of our friend Kato? It just seems like from the account

in his book, there's a very consistent story of O.J. acting very strange this night that I don't think is like coming through in these trial transcripts at all. No, it's not. Despite my excellent performance. Yeah. No, you were great. It was not the fault of the actor. Thank you. You know what? Yeah. And I just think he's not expressing that because I think that he is equivocating his butt off right now because he doesn't want to be the first person to testify about the volatility of this man. Yeah. Marcia says, still, Kato's testimony advanced us a few notches. He had admitted that Simpson was a jealous guy, certainly jealous enough to manipulate his wife by buying her friend's loyalty. And during my questioning about the

night of the murder, Kato had substantially widened the time period during which Simpson was unaccounted for. Now the window is open between 945 when they'd returned from McDonald's, which was 15 minutes earlier than the estimate Kato had given the cops, and about 1053 when Simpson responded to the limo driver. Okay. And then he also testifies about the bag that he sees lying on the grass. Do you remember this? Oh, yeah. Marcia says, on the stand, however, he did reveal for the first time having seen a knapsack lying in the grass. Sure. Kato had rounded the corner of the main house flashlight in hand. He checked out the area behind the garage and finding nothing started back toward the front yard and then opened the gate to let the limo

driver in. He noticed a golf bag on a bench by the front door. He went back to check the area behind his own room. And by the time he ventured out front again, Simpson was talking to the limo driver. But now Kailin noticed something else on the grass near the driveway. It was like a bag, he said in Kato Speak. Marcia, let's not vilify people for using filler words. Right. It's okay to use like Marcia. Marcia's been reading our iTunes reviews. Yeah, she has. Good God. Maybe she's been leaving us iTunes reviews. Kato Speak. She says, that knapsack had not been found among the pieces of luggage Simpson brought back from Chicago. Could it have held evidence from the crime scene? Not bad for a recalcitrant witness. But I was convinced even then that Kato knew a

lot more than he was telling. True. So it's funny because like he does say things, he testifies as to the facts. He just minimizes what he's able to minimize without outright lying. Right. He's just massaging everything a little bit. So that's it for his testimony. It's funny, I imagine them walking out of Parker Center together, but that obviously is not what happened. Marcia and Kato. Yeah. And they're holding hands. Just because they're like the two characters in this story for us, I just assumed that they're like going to go hang out. But like, no, of course not. I think it's because they would probably be like a good sort of like short-lived USA Network buddy cop show in the 90s. Yeah. And it's like, Marcia and the dude. Yeah.

I know there were probably a lot of dramas revolving around house guests in the years after this trial. Big boom in house guest narratives. So after Kato's testimony, they questioned the coroner, David Golden, about his report on Nicole Branson and Ronald Goldman. And she writes, I sat at council's table while David questioned Golden. What I remember most about the testimony that afternoon was not the witness, but the exhibits, the pictures of the victims. David had organized and mounted the autopsy photos on a strip of cardboard. It was a stroke of superb lawyering. Up until then, I'd been busy with the criminalists and hadn't even seen those unforgettable gruesome photos. Good God. Yeah, they're fucking brutal. I remember those from the

OJ Made in America documentary. It's like really rough. Yeah. And I don't really want to talk about that in detail right now because I think that's its own subject matter. Yeah. I can't imagine looking at those for the first time in public, I guess, is the first thing I think of. Yeah. What effect do those photos have on you? I mean, I only saw glimpses of them because I was like, oh, shit. And then I put my hands over my eyes. Yeah. But from what I can tell or like how they've been described to me, it's just an extremely intimately violent act to kill somebody with a knife in a way that like is unfathomable, just hearing like so-and-so was stabbed to death. It's like the actual reality of somebody being stabbed to death is like fucking grisly, dude. Yeah. You know, all

of that certainly is true. And I think when I think about my memory of those pictures, which I probably haven't looked at in over a year, what I find I think most upsetting about them is how much you can see about how these people died. What do you mean? Because I feel like you, I mean, A, just from the details of what happened, you get some sense of just how much pain is involved in that. But then also just the fact that to die in such a struggle, I mean, because they're Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were inside of her kind of condo yard, which was fenced in. And so one of the things that Marcia notes when she's looking at these pictures, she says of Ron Goldman's body, the killer had waged a merciless assault against an unarmed,

unsuspecting victim, a victim who was rapidly trapped in a cage-like corner of metal fencing. That sucks. Yeah. I have nothing, I have nothing remotely insightful to say. It just is a huge bummer for both of these people. Yeah. And about Nicole, she says she lay there like a marionette discarded by the puppeteer. I had a mental flash of the photo of her that hung by the stairs at Rockingham. I recalled her bright glossy features. That was a rich man's wife, someone to whom I couldn't relate. Now, as I saw her frail and broken in death, I felt a surge of helpless anger. I fought back the feeling, times like this call for cool reason. The last thing you can afford is too much feeling. I drove home that night feeling dejected. Next to me was a stack

of files and documents high enough to qualify me for the carpool lane. The cell phone rang, but I didn't pick it up. I'd answer calls when I got home after the kids were asleep. That was when the night shift began. So we all know that cool reason is not going to be possible for anyone. And especially not Marcia Clark. It's hard because she's such a complicated figure because she is the only one who's putting Nicole front and center and seems to be actually mad about this in any sort of visceral way. But she's also like working within a system where the same system that allows her to enact that anger in a sort of societal way also gives her a bunch of really big blind spots. Yeah. And I think this is what I find most compelling about her that she has this passion

for avenging Nicole basically. And she is trying to avenge her. And I feel as if she is in a world where what you can do with that passion as a woman trying to act on behalf of other women is to put men in prison. Yeah. You know, and that's just the part where I'm like, I think your passion is justified. And I think that the shape that it has taken and the infrastructure you are working in is not worthy of the reason that you're doing this to begin with. Right. Is that it? Are we leaving Marcia sleeping next to her moldy wall with her stack of papers and her vengeance? Yeah. With her samurai sword. Her yellow jumpsuit. Her list of people she's going to prosecute. Yeah. Yes. Let us let us depart this fitfully sleeping lawyer

as we close another day. I feel a whole lot of ways about Marcia and maybe you do too. I think the real lesson to take away from this episode is don't lie about stuff when there is footage available. Yeah. That's actually a very usable lesson. We normally don't have those. Just assume that like there's footage of everything because there kind of is now. Yes, there kind of is now. And tell the truth because it's just easier to not have to remember stuff.