Closing arguments in Simpson trial begin today Civil case using more

  evidence

  Jonathan T. Lovitt ; Richard Price

  01/21/1997

  USA Today

  FINAL

  Page 04A

  (Copyright 1997)

  SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- When closing arguments begin today in the O.J.

  Simpson civil case, the oratory will be fortified with evidence that never made it

  into his criminal trial.

  Almost all of it works against Simpson and helps his accusers, the families of

  murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman who are suing

  Simpson.

  Daniel Petrocelli, who represents Goldman's father, Fred, starts off today for the

  plaintiffs. He'll deliver the bulk of the argument. John Q. Kelly, the lawyer for

  Nicole Simpson's estate, will follow.

  Their arguments will likely include at least 15 items that jurors in the criminal

  case never saw or heard about for a variety of reasons. The prosecution

  purposely withheld some. Others were ruled inadmissible for a criminal trial. A

  few surfaced after the trial was over. Among the items:

  Shoe pictures: Simpson says he never owned or wore a pair of size 12 Bruno

  Magli shoes with soles that match bloody footprints leading away from the

  victims.

  The plaintiffs produced 31 pictures from two photographers that showed him

  wearing such shoes nine months before the murders.

  Police statement: The answers Simpson gave police the day after the murders

  June 12, 1994, include assertions he backed away from during the civil case.

  Petrocelli likely will use those contradictions.

  One example: Simpson now says he cut himself the morning after the murders.

  But in his statement to police, he said he cut himself ``somewhere when I was

  rushing out of my house'' on his way to Chicago.

  Simpson's testimony: He didn't have to testify at his criminal trial. He did at his

  civil trial, and his testimony was full of apparent contradictions. Example: At his

  civil trial, he said he broke off a reconciliation with Nicole around May 10 and

  resumed seeing Paula Barbieri.

  But in his police statement, he said the breakup was three weeks before the

  murders, which puts it closer to the time when the plaintiffs say Nicole broke up

  with him.

  The trigger: Prosecutors in the criminal case were criticized for failing to give

  jurors evidence of an emotional ``trigger'' that could have driven Simpson to

  murder. In the civil case, plaintiffs offered one:

  Barbieri said she left a phone message to Simpson at 7:06 the morning of the

  murders. The message said she was breaking up with him.

  Simpson said on the stand that he never got the message. So the plaintiffs

  produced four pieces of evidence to contradict the claim: a phone record, notes

  from Simpson's psychologist, a portion of his police statement and Barbieri's

  testimony.

  Nicole's writings: A letter and a number of diary entries detail infidelity, threats

  and beatings by Simpson. One line reads, ``You beat the holy hell out of me.''

  More evidence of abuse: More witnesses testified to seeing Simpson strike

  Nicole. Simpson denied hitting her.

  Lie-detector test: Though jurors were told to disregard this evidence, they did

  hear that Simpson took a test days after the killings and failed it with the worst

  possible score, indicating ``extreme deception,'' Petrocelli said.

  Slow-speed chase: Jurors learned that Simpson was carrying several changes of

  underwear, his passport, a disguise, $8,700 in cash and a loaded .357 revolver

  during the police chase with Al Cowlings.

  Jurors also have his suicide note and tapes of an exchange between Simpson and

  detective Tom Lange in which Lange pleads for Simpson to surrender.

  ``Nobody's going to get hurt,'' Lange promises Simpson, who replies, ``I'm the

  only one that deserves it.''

  More science: Experts rebutted defense claims that blood on socks found in

  Simpson's bedroom was planted and testified that small cuts on his hands were

  fingernail gouges and blood collected for DNA analysis was not contaminated.

  For the defense, new evidence is scarce. Simpson lawyer Robert Baker will have

  less evidence to build his argument now than Johnny Cochran Jr. had at the

  criminal trial.

  He cannot argue, for example, that now-retired detective Mark Fuhrman planted

  evidence because he's a racist. Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki allowed nothing about

  Fuhrman's use of racial epithets.

  But Baker will have a few new things, mostly for his argument for a police

  conspiracy. Not until this case did anyone learn that police detective Philip

  Vannatter at one point carried three vials of blood in his pocket: a sample from

  Simpson and samples from autopsies of Nicole and Goldman.

  The implication: He could have planted blood of all three.

  And Baker will likely use the testimony of forensic expert Henry Lee, who said

  he discovered a new trail of blood from a photograph of the crime scene. The

  trail leads out the front gate of the condo, suggesting more than one killer.

  PHOTO,b/w,Larry Ho,Los Angeles Times; PHOTO,b/w,Steven

  Schretzmann,Desert Sun; PHOTO,b/w,Michael Caulfield,AP