HEADLINERS

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

JOHNNIE COCHRAN JR. The architect of O.J. Simpson's acquittal let the nation see justice in black and white

WHEN CHRONICLERS OF THIS CHARGED ERA sift through the moments, grand and trivial, that were called turning points in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, they may well conclude that Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. did not, in fact, play the "race card." He didn't have to because in many ways Cochran was the race card--a lawyer who had built a lucrative career representing minority victims of police misconduct. By the time he joined what was to become known as the Dream Team, Cochran, 58, had already won some $45 million in damages and an impressive rate of acquittal for minority clients by exposing corruption, prejudice and incompetence in law enforcement. The unofficial motto of his 10-lawyer African-American law firm is taken from Martin Luther King Jr.: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Jurors did not require too much coaching from Cochran to believe that Simpson may have been a victim of the Los Angeles Police Department; all they had to do was replay in their minds the videotape of the savage beating administered four years earlier to an unemployed black construction worker named Rodney King. One whiff of the foul odor of institutional racism--and retired detective Mark Fuhrman, a key prosecution witness, stank to high heaven--and a case that many had thought unshakable became unmakable.

It would be easy to caricature Cochran, the self-made man born in Louisiana and raised in Los Angeles, with his sherbet-colored suits and his blue Rolls-Royce, his honeyed voice and revival-meeting cadences. It is worth pointing out that even as he preaches justice for society's outsiders, he is himself the consummate insider, with a roster of clients that have included Michael Jackson, Snoop Doggy Dogg and former Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown, and a circle of friends who are among the most politically connected in all Los Angeles. His courtroom charisma, however, cannot be copied, much less mocked. He holds a jury rapt and disarms opposing counsel with his smooth, unflappable charm. He works himself and his associates as if they have just got the ball with only seconds to spare. Though his client may or may not have got away with murder, during the Simpson trial Cochran, repeatedly and effectively, managed to get away with rhetorical arson. He ignited a battle with prosecutor Christopher Darden over the word "nigger." He dragged the ghost of Malcolm X into the courtroom by dubbing Fuhrman and detective Philip Vannatter "twin devils." By the end of the trial he had taken to showing up flanked by Nation of Islam bodyguards. And, to the horror even of some members of the defense team, he made the odious and hyperbolic comparison of Fuhrman and Adolf Hitler.

The verdict, when it finally came, left most whites bewildered and angry, many blacks jubilant. As the nation regarded itself on this split screen, it became apparent that the truths we hold to be self-evident are perhaps evident only to some: justice has a different meaning for the minority motorist pulled over for speeding or for no reason at all. Cochran skillfully managed to make O.J. Simpson, with his white wife and his country-club friends, the unlikely symbol of this ugly racial truth--and so exploited the media frenzy of a celebrity case to deliver a message too often ignored by white America. Never mind that many Americans, white and black, thought it was the right message, wrong trial.

Two weeks after the verdict, Americans had a chance to hear that message again when hundreds of thousands of black men marched in Washington in a day of atonement and an assertion of pride. Cochran did not attend, but he was there in spirit, one of the reasons, along with the chimera of a Colin Powell presidency, that many participants had the optimism to march at all.

--By Elizabeth Gleick