COMING TO O.J.'S DEFENSE

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

The Dream Team is ready: ready for trial and weary of the endless warm-ups and preseason skirmishes. Or rather, if O.J. Simpson's defense lawyers are not primed, they aren't admitting it. True, some nerves have become a bit frazzled lately--Robert Shapiro and F. Lee Bailey weren't speaking there for a while--and the team suffered some major setbacks last week. Judge Lance Ito ruled that the prosecution need not prove its case ``to a moral certainty'' and could introduce evidence of prior violence in the Simpson marriage. But O.J.'s lawyers barely flinched. They have their special reserves--their boundless high style and winning courtroom ways, their fax hookup with appeals adviser Alan Dershowitz in Cambridge, Massachusetts, their famous and attractive client.

And they have Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Renowned as much for his legal brilliance as for such high-profile clients as Michael Jackson and rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, Cochran--one of the smoothest, best-connected lawyers in all Los Angeles--is now the undisputed leader of the defense team. He was responsible for convincing Shapiro and Bailey to make up; he will be presenting opening arguments and making trial assignments; and he is the person O.J. calls every night from prison. Last Thursday morning Cochran, 57, a devout Baptist, even called his troops into a prayer meeting in a room at the L.A. County courthouse. ``It became very emotional,'' says Cochran of the session led by the Rev. Rosey Grier, the former Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle who is Simpson's friend and spiritual adviser. Cochran then directed each member of the legal team to go to Simpson's cell and personally reaffirm his allegiance to the defendant. ``All you are left with during a crisis is your conduct during it,'' he instructed his colleagues. ``I want everybody to remember that, so that your conduct is exemplary.''

So far, this has been Cochran's only acknowledgment that there may in fact be tough times ahead. In an interview last week with Time, he appeared cool, determined, even upbeat. Fielding calls in his ultramodern Wilshire Boulevard office from his second wife Dale and from Simpson's friends Paula Barbieri and Robert Kardashian, Cochran offered a preview of the strategy he will roll out this week. He will examine many of the witnesses, while Shapiro and two junior attorneys will handle the others; Bailey will conduct most of the cross-examination. Throughout, Cochran says, they will hammer on what he calls the prosecution's overzealousness to convict Simpson. ``This is a classic rush-to-judgment case,'' he maintains. ``They made a decision within four or five days that he is guilty, and they have not wanted to pursue any other theory.''

Cochran is quick to dismiss what promises to be one of the biggest challenges for the defense: Simpson's alleged pattern of past abuse. ``[The prosecution] has tried to tear him down piece by piece,'' he insists, ``but O.J. is not charged with getting into an altercation with his wife on Jan. 1, 1989. That matter was litigated in the courts, and it is over.'' Cochran also intends to stress the timing of the murders, using what he calls a ``commonsense'' approach. ``When did the person--who would be totally covered with blood--have time to dispose of all the clothes, dispose of the weapons or whatever, get home, shower, pack and go to the airport by 11 o'clock?'' he asks. Cochran insists that ``In terms of the facts, I've had tougher cases.'' In 1990 he defended former Diff'rent Strokes star Todd Bridges, who was arrested for firing eight bullets into a man in a crack house--a man who survived to identify Bridges. Cochran won an acquittal. It was perhaps the most dramatic illustration so far of his extraordinary talent for making jurors see things his way. ``Apart from the fact that he is a very skillful lawyer,'' says friend and fellow lawyer Edi M. O. Faal, ``he has the unique ability to appeal to all people across the board, across racial lines. He would have been a very successful diplomat.''

Cochran brings another key ingredient to the mix--his credibility in the African-American community. For despite pronouncements by Shapiro and others that race will not be a factor (even in the face of defense allegations of racism on the part of LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman)--and despite the fact that the fairness of O.J. Simpson's trial will more likely hinge upon issues of class and celebrity than upon skin color--the specter of racism looms large both inside the courtroom and out. ``Since so many African Americans don't trust the criminal-justice system--and for good reasons--[the case] is racial, and that's why Johnnie is important,'' says attorney Harlan Braun, who defended one of the four police officers in the Rodney King beating case.

``For some time it has been open season on African-American males, and it runs the gamut from the regular citizen to the celebrity,'' Cochran says. ``Whether it's Mike Tyson or Michael Jordan, there is a tendency to want to bring down people who have done well, and in representing these people there is an extra burden. So when you drive down the street and people say, `Johnnie, please save Michael,' `Please save O.J.,' there is a sense that if it can happen to Michael Jackson or O.J., it can happen to any of us.''

With stakes this high, of course, truth and spin are difficult to distinguish. But Johnnie Cochran has built a reputation defending African Americans--only a few of them rich and famous--against the system. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, he moved with his family to L.A. in 1949. After attending UCLA, he graduated in 1962 from Loyola University School of Law. He then worked as a deputy L.A. city attorney, representing minority victims of alleged police brutality in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots. After he went into private practice in 1966, he landed the case that launched his career: an unarmed black man named Leonard Deadwyler was speeding his pregnant wife to the hospital when he was pulled over, then shot and killed by an L.A. police officer. The case enraged the black community and was televised live; though Cochran lost, his impassioned courtroom performance was memorable.

In another formative case, in 1981, he represented the family of Cal State-Long Beach football star Ron Settles, who had been arrested for speeding and was found hanged in his jail cell. Though authori- ties said Settles had committed suicide, Cochran forced an exhumation and new autopsy; this time the jury decided that Settles had probably died from a choke hold. ``It was the most remarkable civics lesson you could learn,'' he says. ``When I started trying cases 31 years ago, you would be almost held in contempt of court if you said a police officer was lying.''

The Settles family was awarded $760,000. In all, Cochran has won more than $40 million for his clients--and about $1 million annually for himself. He has also been instrumental in bringing about changes in police procedure, such as a lawsuit that led to the 1982 outlawing of the carotid choke hold used by the LAPD.

Cochran's efforts for his more famous clients have been no less extraordinary, and they reveal just how plugged in he is. When Elizabeth Taylor asked him last January to help Michael Jackson fight sexual-molestation charges, Cochran not only kept the case out of court, he also took Jackson around to meet influential black leaders and clergymen, who then held a press conference to complain about unfair treatment by L.A. district attorney Gil Garcetti's office. At the same time, Garcetti remains a pal for whom Cochran did some key campaigning in 1993. ``He deals effectively with everyone, from Presidents to common people,'' says his friend John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, ``and he knows everyone in between.''

Yet the Simpson case was the first time a good friend had asked for Cochran's legal assistance, and the lawyer agonized over taking the case. Cochran says what finally made up his mind was his sense of justice--a sense honed perhaps more on one particular loss than on all his dramatic victories. In 1972 Cochran's client, Elmer (``Geronimo'') Pratt, a Black Panther accused of murdering a white schoolteacher, was sent to prison for life; 23 years later, Cochran still maintains that Pratt was framed by the FBI, and is still fighting for his release. ``It taught me that you can work within the system and believe in it, but if the government wants to get you, they can go out and get you,'' he says. ``It also taught me that you never stop fighting.'' And when his battle for O.J. begins in earnest this week, a nation of spectators will be able to judge for themselves just how skilled a fighter Cochran really is.

--Reported by Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles

With reporting by Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles