DID HE OR DIDN'T HE?

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Prosecutor Marcia Clark was steaming, too angry even to listen to her favorite blues tapes as she drove home that night. After 20 murder trials--almost all of which she's won--she thought she had seen it all. Of course she had expected a little razzle-dazzle from Johnnie Cochran Jr. during his opening arguments, but, she says, the surprise unveiling of 14 new witnesses by O.J. Simpson's defense lawyers stunned even her. ``This was plain sleazy,'' Clark said in an interview with Time. ``I was floored. They disregarded the judge's orders.''

But Clark, a steely prosecutor who says she must be ``convinced 200% that a defendant is guilty before I'll try a case,'' is hardly incapacitated. Every night last week, after going home for an hour to tuck her two children into bed, and all through the weekend, she was back in her small 18th-floor office at the Los Angeles County courthouse, munching on celery (she does not eat dinner), smoking Dunhills and scribbling furiously on a white legal pad. Clark, deputy district attorney Christopher Darden and the six other lawyers working on the case--along with a bunch of cops who constantly drop by to visit Clark and offer help and moral support--ordered in pizza or Chinese food as the team scrambled to right the prosecutorial ship. ``I don't believe the defense can produce everything they say they can,'' says Darden. ``I can tell you that you will not see the prosecution be as complacent as we have been for the rest of this trial.''

The plan, says Clark, is to research and impeach the new witnesses--witnesses the prosecution believes Cochran mentioned merely to create a fog of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors at the outset of the trial, even though he knows their testimony will not survive cross-examination. ``Let me tell you this,'' says a bemused Clark. ``This was not the typical first week of a murder trial.''

Firecrackers, hand grenades, bombshells: the defense team is ready to toss an arsenal of hints, suggestions and arguments into this already explosive case. While Clark was cooling off and plotting her comeback, halfway across Los Angeles County, defense lawyer Robert Shapiro was watching his 14-year- old son Brent play a hard-fought, body-checking ice hockey game--and chatting strategy. Consider the bloody socks, he says, talking fast while cheering on Brent. Investigators ``find a pair of socks'' at O.J.'s house the day after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are found murdered, Shapiro explains. ``Nobody notices any blood. Two weeks later the socks are looked at by two of our experts, along with the head of the L.A.P.D. lab. Nobody notices any blood.'' Not until August, claims Shapiro, is blood discovered on the socks-- lots of it, plenty to run a DNA check. And where did this blood come from? Shapiro hints that when some of Simpson's blood was drawn on the day of his arrest, a bit seems to have disappeared. The implication: it found its way onto the socks.

Johnnie Cochran, meanwhile, along with co-counsel Carl Douglas, is at his Wilshire Boulevard office overlooking Hancock Park late into the night. He too will be working through the weekend, with a brief break to have a session with his personal trainer (``I want to be standing when this is over,'' he says), and to lament the fact that he wasn't able to use his Super Bowl tickets this year. But he admits he's feeling pretty good about his case right now. ``People have been coming up to me and saying, `Before you started talking, I thought this guy was guilty. Now I'm wondering.' Today I went to my barbershop. I walk in, and I get a standing ovation.'' As for the prosecution's cries of foul, Cochran and Douglas are, naturally, having none of it. ``Much ado about nothing,'' insists Douglas, who toils in an adjoining office. Says Cochran: ``You just take the slings and arrows.''

But such highbrow language hardly captures the raw reality of Judge Ito's courtroom last week, where each day brought a new spike in the players' emotional temperatures--and further discomfited the millions of TV viewers who thought they knew what to think about O.J. Over kitchen tables, in restaurants, around office coffee machines, people debated the lawyers' opening statements, critiqued Judge Ito's style, expressed amazement over snapshots of Simpson's body offered up by the defense and photos of Simpson's socks displayed by the prosecution.

Of course, for those Americans who have known since the Night of the White Bronco that the opening of the O.J. Simpson trial would do more to suck up leisure time than all the debates over the balanced-budget amendment and observations about the odd January weather combined, the high courtroom drama was the big payoff. But those who had cynically decided in advance that the so-called trial of the century would be nothing more than an interminable media fest were guilty of, to use Johnnie Cochran's new favorite phrase, ``a rush to judgment.''

Such viewers could only watch, transfixed, the spectacle of surprise witnesses, new details of blood and fibers, a testy Ito and lawyers positively sputtering with outrage. Who could have predicted that among those holding press conferences would be doctors from the California Medical Center, reporting on the condition of deputy district attorney William Hodgman, who was stricken with chest pains at the end of Day Two? Hodgman, ordinarily mild-mannered, got so upset in court that Ito said, ``How do you suggest I deal with the objections of the prosecution after I succeed in peeling them off the ceiling?'' Ito added, ``I have known [Mr. Hodgman] as a colleague and a trial lawyer, and I've never seen the expression on his face that I've seen today.'' As Marcia Clark told the court last Tuesday in a bit of masterful understatement, ``we live in very, very strange times.''

Moreover, by the time Johnnie Cochran addressed the jury on Wednesday, it had become clear, not only to the increasingly agitated prosecutors but also to legal analysts, that the Dream Team is more than just highly paid, highly qualified and highly dedicated. Cochran & Co. unveiled an unexpectedly strong defense. They also demonstrated--by their stealth-witness gambit--that they are prepared to push this case to the very limits of legality. Says Gigi Gordon, a leading Los Angeles defense attorney: ``Those jurors are all sitting around in their little hotel rooms right now thinking, Wow, four guys in watch caps! And whose blood is under her fingernails? Doubting. Doubting.''

In their opening statements, Clark and Darden hammered at two key points: the horrific crime and the motive. Darden handled the personality aspects of the case, speaking of the popular O.J. Simpson from movies and Hertz commercials and warning the jury of the defendant's ``private side.'' Simpson, he argued, was obsessed with Nicole, obsessed with control and jealous to the point of violence. ``If he couldn't have her, he didn't want anybody else to have her,'' Darden said. Simpson, who had been warned by his lawyers to refrain from his customary eye-rolling and grimacing, observed the proceedings impassively, occasionally scribbling notes or shaking his head.

Although Darden--a soft-spoken, studious lawyer who joined the prosecution team on Nov. 7, after supervising the grand jury investigation of Simpson's friend Al Cowlings--performed well, the most dramatic moment of the opening day came later, when Marcia Clark displayed graphic photographs of the bodies. Judge Lance Ito ruled these pictures off limits to television viewers, and the reactions of those present in the courtroom explained why. Ron Goldman's father Frederic wept at the sight of his son's slashed and bloody corpse up on the 87-in. video monitor, while Nicole Brown Simpson's three sisters cried quietly; Simpson's mother Eunice could not look. When Ito at last called a recess, the Browns and the Goldmans clasped hands.

Clark, whose trial demeanor can be both intense and compassionate, walked the jury through the murder scene, telling of hairs matching Simpson's, of telltale shoe prints and trails of blood--blood, she intoned repeatedly, that ``matches the defendant'' in dna tests. As she finished, after several interruptions from Ito, admonishing her not to argue her case in her opening statement, Clark appeared close to tears as she reminded the jury to remember the victims.

For the mostly African-American jury of eight women and four men, this was the day's denouement. They were out of the courtroom by the time Judge Ito--informed that a hapless Court TV cameraman had slipped and televised the face of one alternate juror for a fraction of a second--excoriated the press and threatened to shut down the television cameras altogether. But as has happened before, Ito brandished a stick that he ultimately declined to use: he relented the next morning and let the show go on.

In Hollywood, when a high-budget movie opens, insiders discuss whether ``the money'' made it onto the screen--whether the result, that is, justifies the expense. In this trial, O.J. Simpson's money has certainly made it into the courtroom. Scrappy, overworked state employees appear to be just that when set against the silver-tongued, monied and remarkably personable defense lawyers. Cochran, chuckling modestly in a moment of theater that must have infuriated Clark and Darden, told the court last Thursday, ``We certainly don't refer to ourselves as the Dream Team. We're just a collection of lawyers just trying to do the best we can.''

That best was impressive. Impeccably dressed as ever in dark blue, striped shirt and bold red-and-blue tie, Cochran sought to strike an immediate rapport with the jury. Spinning stories, addressing jurors like a loquacious, well-loved uncle, Cochran spoke confidently of his client's innocence, reeled out his favorite saying from Martin Luther King Jr.-- ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere''--and insisted that ``this case is about an obsession to win at any cost and by any means necessary.''

For all the prosecution's seemingly damning points, Cochran offered counterpoints, many of them news to every listener. But it was a strategy not without risk. Cochran must now deliver the credible witnesses and solid blood evidence that he promised. He claims, for example, that there was blood under Nicole Brown Simpson's fingernails of a type that matched neither O.J.'s nor the victims'. (The prosecution has since declared that ``Cochran took one line out of a report given to him. There is a scientific explanation that you will see presented at trial.'') Cochran also said there was a woman who saw four men in knit caps leaving the murder scene. And that the mysterious object in the manila envelope would prove the l.a.p.d.'s collection of evidence was inept. The ``trail of blood,'' Cochran insisted, was actually too sparse to match such bloody crimes. And the lawyer produced the defendant himself, in photos and in person: pictures taken in the days after the murder showed Simpson's mainly unbruised body, and the former football star stood up to display his scarred left knee as evidence that he was too disabled to commit the murders. The effect of these maneuvers on the jury may have been what Cochran intended. Simpson, he was saying, is just like you, jurors-- flawed but essentially intact.

The prosecution's objections began when it sounded as if Cochran was engaging in legal arguments, not simply presenting the case. But what sent Hodgman to the hospital later that night, and had Clark back in court the next day arguing heatedly for a 30-day continuance and sanctions against the defense, was Cochran's citing of more than a dozen witnesses not previously on the defense's witness list. One of the fresh witnesses: Mary Ann Gerchas, the woman who claimed she had seen men in knit caps running away from Nicole's house on the night of the murder. Cochran said another couple will testify that at 10:25 p.m., 10 minutes after prosecutors say the murders were committed, they saw nothing amiss outside Nicole's house.

In response, the language was extraordinary, the outrage genuine. ``Disgusting,'' ``appalling,'' ``worse than appalling,'' Clark raged. ``Trial by ambush,'' she charged. Defense lawyer Carl Douglas acknowledged to the court that there were some new witnesses but insisted the mistakes were ``inadvertent'' and pointed out that the prosecution had also been late with some witness names during the hearing on Simpson's past abusive behavior.

Many legal experts believe the defense performed beautifully, but is being a bit disingenuous. ``There's no other way to interpret this except as a deliberate withholding of the witnesses,'' says Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California. ``I understand why the prosecution was outraged.'' And at the very least, the defense must enjoy seeing the prosecution so rattled at such a crucial point in the trial. ``For Bill Hodgman to object 13 times is a sign of how bad the damage to the prosecution was,'' says Los Angeles criminal-defense lawyer Andrew Stein. ``Marcia Clark and Bill Hodgmanwere right to be indignant.''

Even as the lawyers wait for Ito to rule this week on the prosecution's 27 motions for sanctions--which could include an admonition to the jury to disregard some of Cochran's statements because the defense did not comply with California's discovery laws--Clark has already absorbed the new blows. Darden argued to the judge that some of Cochran's witnesses were not likely to hold up under cross-examination. He called them a collection of ``heroin addicts, thieves, felons,'' adding that one is ``a court-certified pathological liar,'' and the prosecution's research may bear this out. Rosa Lopez, for instance, who worked at the house next door to Simpson's, claims to have seen Simpson's Bronco parked outside his house at the time the murders must have occurred. But Lopez is considered so confused and unreliable that even the staff at the National Enquirer rejected her as a source months ago. (For example, she told Enquirer reporters that Jason Simpson had had a birthday party at his father's house the night before the murders, which is not true.) And according to the Los Angeles Times, Gerchas, a jewelry-store owner, has been sued at least 34 times in recent years for complaints including allegations of fraud and failure to pay creditors.

Clark insists that her efforts to shred the defense's arguments do not mean she harbors any hatred for Simpson. ``I care about fairness and justice for a defendant, but I really don't focus on a defendant,'' she told Time. ``I focus on victims. It's not personal with me. I view it that this person has done something bad. They may not be a bad person. I can even accept their good side.''

For those merely watching on the sidelines, the adversarial nature of courtroom proceedings does tempt an observer to keep score. Advantage prosecution, the pundits declared following Day One. TOUCHDOWN, JOHNNIE! blared the tabloid New York Post after Cochran took the floor. ``After the prosecution finished, it seemed so clear that O.J. was guilty,'' says U.S.C.'s Chemerinsky. ``Then after the defense finished, you felt he was not guilty. What more could you ask for?'' The jury, however, has yet to see the full presentation of evidence--and evidence, in theory, is what will take the day.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty and James Willwerth/Los Angeles

-QUOTE-

"This was not the typical first week of a murder trial."

"Those jurors are sitting around right now . . . doubting."

With reporting by ELAINE LAFFERTY AND JAMES WILLWERTH/LOS ANGELES