Prosecuting O.J., Misogyny in the Courtroom, and Race and Justice, with Marcia Clark | Ep. 377
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 34 minutes
Words per Minute
184.93636
Summary
Marsha Clark is a name that many know very well from the trial of the century. In 1995, famed NFL player and actor O.J. Simpson was tried for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ronald Goldman. At the center of it all was lead prosecutor Marsha Clark.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm so excited for this guest
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today. Marsha Clark is a name that many know very well from the trial of the century, a century ago,
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way back in the 20th century. In 1995, famed NFL player and actor O.J. Simpson was tried for the
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murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The trial created a
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full-on media circus with around-the-clock coverage like this country had never seen before. At the
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center of it all was lead prosecutor Marsha Clark of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.
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Over the course of that eight-month trial, she and her fellow prosecutor, Christopher Darden,
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gave their best efforts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of O.J. Simpson
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in committing these two murders. They faced off against a team of defense lawyers, including
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Robert Shapiro, Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian. Later, our pal Alan Dershowitz would
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join, known as the Dream Team. Dersh says he now refers to it as the Nightmare Team. Cochran was in
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the lead role, and he rendered this famous standout line in closing arguments.
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Like the defining moment in this trial, the day Mr. Darden asked Mr. Simpson to try on those gloves,
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and the gloves didn't fit. Remember these words, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
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Amazing. So, so well done. I mean, even if you disagree with the verdict, you can't take that
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away from Johnny Cochran. And we all remember what happened next. O.J. did indeed try putting
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on the glove. It did not fit. It was the moment, Marsha says, she knew they had lost the case.
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It has been more than 20 years since the O.J. case ended in an acquittal, but the trial continues
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to capture the attention of the nation. It lives on in pop culture through TV shows, music, movies,
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documentaries, and many are still asking questions on the result of the verdict, intense media frenzy,
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and what life was like for those involved after the trial, and what the trial and our obsession with
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it says about us. Marsha Clark has a fascinating life story, one that goes well beyond her role
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as lead prosecutor in that case. There was her role as a working mother. She became somewhat iconic
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for pushing back. Remember Lanceto, the judge, who was trying to shame her for her long, her refusal
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to work after hours, and she was not having it. And life now, including her career as an author
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of successful crime novels. There is so much more to get to, and I'm thrilled to have her on the show
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with us today. This is my first time meeting and talking to the one and only Marsha Clark.
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Marsha, welcome to the show. Hi, nice to meet you. It's a pleasure.
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Oh my gosh, you have to understand. I'm sure you've heard this many times, but to me,
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you really are a heroine. I was in law school while you were trying this case. I was in my third year
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of law school watching you and dying to be a prosecutor. And I had this weird thing at the
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time as I've had it ever since. I don't know. There's something, there's like a weird theory
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on the internet that somehow Nicole Brown Simpson and I are the same person or that I'm her reincarnated.
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I don't know what their theory is, but there's just weird tentacles between me and this case.
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But I was obsessed with you. I was like, I want to be just like her win or lose. You were
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Oh, thank you so much, Megan. I'm a big fan too. So mutual society here, but yeah,
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that's crazy. You were in law school at the time and yet you finished law school and became a lawyer
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anyway. I wanted to be a prosecutor so badly. I never went to law school thinking I wanted to be
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a lawyer. I just wanted to be a prosecutor. That's all. And it wasn't until I amassed my hundred grand
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in debt and saw what they pay you in the New York city district's attorney's office. I was like,
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oh man, I need another dream. So I went private.
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Yes. So respect, respect, because I know it doesn't pay well and it's scary and you take a lot of
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negative incoming, but you believe you're on the side of the angels when you take a job like this.
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And one of the fun things in reading your book and getting, you know, sort of boning up on your
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backstory is a lot of people go to the DA's office and then leave and go make a bunch of money in the
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private sector as these white shoe criminal defense lawyers. You actually started as a defense
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lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer. And I love the story. Basically, after not too long, your boss was
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like, you might consider joining the other side. You seem a little better suited. So tell us about
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that. So it was a, it was a, um, a double murder plus attempted murder case and, um, involving a
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pretty well-known criminal, um, head of a gang. And, um, there were flaws in the evidence and I had to
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write the motion to dismiss at the preliminary hearing. And I thought, you know, if the judge
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actually follows the law, uh, this case gets dismissed. And I thought, but you know, it's a
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preliminary hearing. The standard of proof is low, but we'll probably get through, be fine. And so I
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didn't even want to go to court with my boss. He presented the motion and came back and said,
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Marsha, congratulations. We won case dismissed. And I went, Oh shit. He looked at me, he said,
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okay, we can refile. Uh, and maybe you want to be a DA.
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Right. Right. You can come back as the prosecutor on this case. Yeah. Because it's one of those things
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where I don't know you, now you get shame for being a DA and putting people in jail. Like it's
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somehow inherently bad. But I remember being in law school and even then not understanding how
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criminal defense attorneys could do what they do. Now I have a better appreciation. I see very clearly
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their critical role, but I couldn't do it. I could not do it. I'm much more prosecution oriented like
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you. So you wind up, what was it? Three years out of law school working for the LA district attorney
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or how many, how many years of law school? Yeah. Uh huh. No more. Let me think. Hold on. I don't know
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about, about two and a half, three years out of law school. Um, went to the DA's office and remained
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there until, you know, after the trial. Yeah. Now, before we get to all that, let's talk about a little
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bit of backstory because it's interesting to get to know you. I understand you were born in California,
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but you were raised kind of all over. Tell us a little bit about how you bounced around.
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Yeah. So I was born in Berkeley and then we moved all over the place, um, pretty much until I was a
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senior in high school. And so we lived in Tacoma, Washington. We lived in Texas. We lived in,
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um, Michigan. We lived in, um, Maryland. We lived in New York and then came back. Pardon?
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Why was that? Oh, my father was the director of the food and drug administration. So he kept getting
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promoted and every promotion came with a transfer. So we were, we bounced around a lot and then wound
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up back in Los Angeles. So, and then I stayed here, you know, I actually really loved New York. I did not
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want to leave. Um, and I really thought I would move back, but then I went to college and then I
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got, you know what I mean? Life kind of took hold and life was here. And so I stayed here.
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Now there was something in your past that you revealed in your book that I didn't know about.
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And I do think it had a role in you becoming a prosecutor and it must've made the trial of OJ,
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you know, just to have a few more stakes for you personally than the average prosecutor.
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And that was, you yourself became a crime victim at age 17.
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Right. So that was, um, during a trip out of the country. And I really, um, I think I was just
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incredibly naive, but I was raped. Um, it was a pretty violent rape. And, um, that was,
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I remember walking into the ocean and thinking I was going to kill myself because I didn't think I
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could stand myself. You know, there was a way in which I was so devastated and felt like I had been
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used up and thrown out. And it was, um, pretty bad. And the very last moment, water up to here,
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I said, wait a minute. And I got mad. I said, I'm not doing this. And for the longest time,
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I actually, it was almost immediately thereafter blocked out the memory completely and pretended
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it never happened. Um, but I kept having horrible dreams about it. Um, and so it didn't go away,
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but ultimately I did wind up dealing with it very shortly after I became a prosecutor. So none of this
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was conscious, but what happened was I was, um, just joined the office. I had been a DA for what,
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maybe three, four months and I was handling preliminary hearings and a woman who was a rape
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victim came in and she, she only wanted to have a woman prosecutor. And so I took the case and I
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remember her sitting outside and talking and, um, she was, she was just a wonderful person,
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wonderful woman. And I felt so badly for her, um, on within the weirdest, it must be just a coincidence,
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but within hours I was so sick. I had a fever. I had the shakes. I was a mess. And the defense
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attorney looked at me and of course that you better go home. I went home. I was sick. Um, but then
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realized that it was stirring up a memory and it was the memory of my own rape. And so, you know,
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finally dealt with it, finally acknowledged what had happened. Um, and her case went well. Um,
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as far as I know, I finished the preliminary hearing, certainly he was held to answer. I
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believe he was convicted. Um, and I do think that impacted my ability to, um, emphasize and
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understand. I think especially back then, which was the stone age, rape was still something they
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looked at the woman and said, what did you do? What were you wearing? What did you say? How did you act?
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And, um, the ability to, to hand, to, you know, look back at my own life and what did I do and
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realize I was blaming myself, um, for, uh, for simply saying hello to someone, being nice to someone
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and realize that this is bullshit. Um, and I think that did help add a layer of empathy and understanding
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that, um, I might not have otherwise had. Certainly it made me, um, even more proud of being a prosecutor,
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being able to help people that way. Yeah. I, I understand. I, I feel like looking at the arc of
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your career, I mean, not to, not to be brazen about it, but I feel like your own experience as a crime
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victim made you somewhat of a warrior for, uh, for other women who have gone through that and worse.
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You joined what, what I understand is essentially kind of like a special victims unit at all,
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a special trials unit, or describe the unit that you were in for 10 years.
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So that was my goal was to get into the special trials unit. Very, very. So the DA's office had
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several units, hardcore gangs, sexual violence. Now they had, they had family violence. Um,
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each one was a different, you know, specialty, but there was one very small unit of only about that
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time, five, uh, attorneys, five DA's that handled all the high profile cases. So the, um, night stalker
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was there. Um, the onion field would have been there. They would, it just all of the, the high
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profile, you know, big, all, all murder, pretty much all murder cases. And then, so at some point,
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I'm sorry. That's the A team for sure. And it's also people who have to be able to take
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the scrutiny of the media watching every single move. Little did, you know, just how much for sure.
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Right. He's like, Oh sure. That might be fun. No. Oh wait.
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But back then, Megan, the media scrutiny was nothing. I mean, it was nothing. They would show
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up maybe the, when we say the press, then we're talking newspapers, uh, physical newspapers,
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newspapers and they would show up with maybe a camera and your picture. The DA's picture would
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never be in the camera, be in the frame ever. It was just the defendant. And if they spelled your
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name, right. It was amazing. If they spelled, you spelled your name at all. So that was the,
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the media coverage back then they'd show up with the arraignment. They'd show up maybe in somewhere
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in the middle and then at the verdict. And that was that. And so there was no worry about media
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scrutiny. And it was just, you know, you're just doing these big cases. And the real challenge of
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them was that they went so long. I mean, we're talking, one of the trials took two years and
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being in trial for two years straight was so intense and crazy. It was really weird at the end of the
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case, within about a week of it finally being over, I was, I realized I was losing hair and I was
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freaking out like what's going on. Oh my God, wake up, find hair on my pillow. And one of the
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other lawyers in a unit said it's stress. It'll come back. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I remember when
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I was practicing law, which is an incredibly stressful profession, unlike media, which is
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a walk in the park. But I remember when I was practicing law, hearing the stats about like the
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average life expectancy in America. And it's still that women are expected to outlive men for the most
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part. Women have a longer life expectancy. And I remember thinking these are not lawyers. These women
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are not lawyers. Like there's no way we haven't worked our way over into the short lifespan category
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as female lawyers. Just too stressful. Then I didn't have anything like the law career that you
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had. So I can only imagine. And in the meantime, you're trying to raise two kids and you're going
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through a divorce and all that would come out during the OJ trial as well, what you were going
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through. So let's talk before we get to OJ. You you were the prosecutor on another case, which I
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happen to know a fair amount about because I I, too, am a crime victim. Really, I was stalked very
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badly by a very deranged person who wound up being going into jail and a mental facility for a decade
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for what he did to me. And so I boned up very quickly on stalking and stalking cases. And when
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does one get a restraining order? And what are the risks of doing that? And blah, blah, blah. And that's
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when Gavin DeBecker first came into my life, who I know you talk to on this case I'm about
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to get to. And we just had him on the show a couple of months ago. And the case was the
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prosecution of Robert Bardo, who killed, stalked and killed a famous actress at the time by
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the name of Rebecca Schaefer. And this did make national headlines. It was horrific. For
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those who aren't familiar with the case, let me just show you Rebecca Schaefer. She was starring
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in a show called My Sister Sam with Pam Dauber of Mork and Mindy fame. And she was young.
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She was like 20, 21 years old. I'm going to show you the clip and then Marshall Clark will
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What's wrong? Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody thinks I can solve a complex emotional problem.
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Okay, I have a problem you can solve. My apartment looks like Macy's in hell.
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What? I have learned to live with your stuff. You think it's fun living with someone who saves
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So there actually was kind of a resemblance between the two of them. And I know Pam Dauber took
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this whole what happened to Rebecca very hard personally. So tell us what happened with Robert
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Bardo, the man who killed Rebecca Schaefer. So that I did not know until a couple of days. I
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didn't immediately know it was a stalking case. It was a murder case that I was given to try. And it
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was my first introduction to this kind of stalking where it was the kind of stalking I had heard of and
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knew about as a DA was boyfriend stalking ex-girlfriends, you know, and it was a personal connection that had
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gone sour. And then they were doing what they could to pay back the other side. But this notion of stalking a
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celebrity you've never met, or maybe only met in a crowd of fans was something new to me. And so fairly early on in the
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case, as I was investigating, Gavin DeBecker called. And I did not know him other than I had heard about his name and
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connection, I believe it was with the Teresa Saldana case. She was another actress who had been stalked and he
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attempted to murder her did not. She survived. And so I had some idea that he was an expert in this field. So we started to
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talk and it was revelatory. I mean, I think Gavin's a genius. And we spent hours and hours and hours and hours on the
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phone, as he was traveling and doing all kinds of different cases and working, answering my questions about stalkers about
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their mentality, about why this happens, how this happens, and how do we prevent it, by the way, and how do we
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keep people safe? In addition to, of course, what the prosecution, the shape of the prosecution, because
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he went to Park Dietz, who used to work with Gavin, who was a psychiatrist, psychologist. Now I can't
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remember. But that was his point of view was going to be that Robert Bardo did not premeditate the murder,
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that he did not intend to kill, that he, it was a rash impulse, etc. Which I knew, I believed to be bullshit. So there was a lot of
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discussion and a lot of preparation with that in mind. But I learned a great deal about the stalking mentality as a result of my
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collaboration with Gavin during that case. It was such the most, one of the most incredibly tragic
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of circumstances where you have the entirely innocent victim who did nothing but be kind to someone. And this
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was what happened. This was her reward was, you know, she opens the door and he shoots her. It was horrifying.
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He shot her through the heart. She, she truly had had no contact with him. He hired a private
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investigator to track down her address. He got it. He showed up there. She answered her own door.
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She, I think, gave him an autograph or something to that effect, like on the spot and then closed the
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door. And, and then he came back and knocked again and she opened the door again and he shot her through
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the heart, killing her. They call this kind of stalker an erotomaniac. And it's somebody basically who
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has no connection with you, but in his head believes that you have some sort of a, essentially a love
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connection. In my case, the guy thought that I was sending him messages because the number one rule is
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don't communicate with your stalker. Do not communicate with your stalker. And so even signing
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the autograph is potentially dangerous. And I've heard you say, you learn from Gavin saying anything
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more than the autograph isn't the next level of danger, you know, like all best or love, you know,
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whatever, just, just, just your name is sufficient. Um, but, but if you, if my stalker believed that
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he, I was communicating to him through the president's ties, through my hand motions on
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television, through things that Sean Hannity was saying on, on his show, like I had nothing to do
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with me. Even if I had gone off the air, he was believing that I was sending him messages. So it was
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constant contact quote, you know, air quotes from me to the stalker. And that's terrible. And it's
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dangerous. And it's why we took it so seriously and it did escalate and it was bad. But in her case,
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she signed an autograph. The guy got it in his head that there was some connection between them
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and he shot her and she died. Um, and so you had to prosecute this guy with his team being like,
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look, he was, he didn't form premeditation. You know, he showed up there. Obviously there's
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something wrong with Robert Bardo. Come on, everybody can see that. And you managed to get
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around that. As I understand it, like you, he sort of submitted some demonstration of how the alleged
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encounter actually happened. And you saw holes in that demonstration that nobody else saw.
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Yeah. So what happened is he, they videotaped his session with the, the doctor with Park Dietz
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in which the doctor asked him questions about his state of mind and then asked him, you know,
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how did it happen? Show me what happened. And so I'm watching him reenact. And it's like something
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bumped me that that's weird. Rewind. What's bothering me? Rewind. And then I realized what it was.
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He was showing that he approached her door and he had his hand behind his back. And as she opened the door,
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he, he, he, yes, he opened the door, he pulls out the gun and then shoots her. And I thought,
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oh my God, that's an ambush. That's premeditation. He came to the door prepared. He had the gun behind
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his back. And so I was able to prove that this was a killing by means of lying in wait, which is a
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special circumstance and gets you life without the possibility of role. So the argument was, no,
00:22:11.240
he wasn't hiding behind the bushes. But my argument legally was you do not have to hide behind the
00:22:16.180
door, behind the bushes and be physically obscured as long as your purpose is obscured and that you
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lure somebody in by appearing to be harmless. And then, but you're prepared to kill. And the judge
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bought it. The court of appeals bought it. Um, and he is now doing life without parole.
00:22:35.120
Good. You know, this reminds me of something. I moved last year, my family and I moved from
00:22:40.480
New York where I've spent my 51 years to Connecticut and I got a driver's license and,
00:22:48.100
you know, they ask you if you want to register to vote when you get your driver's license. And I said,
00:22:51.560
sure. Yeah, of course. And so you had to put down your address and my registration. Right. And I hadn't,
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I've never done this because I, since I became a public figure and because thankfully for me,
00:23:01.760
my stalker came very early in my television career. So I learned very quickly, holy crap,
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you really have to bend over backwards to protect yourself. So, um, I wasn't about to put my home
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address on my license because very easily discoverable. And then I long story short was
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rejected. My registration to vote was rejected because I had put down a PO box and they were like,
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you can only register to vote if you put down your home address. I said, well, what if my PO box is,
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you know, nearby my home? We don't make sure I'm not in a different jurisdiction. I understand that.
00:23:33.280
Nope. We need your actual home address for you to vote in Connecticut. I'm like,
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this is insane. There are, forget people who are well-known thanks to television like me.
00:23:41.960
There are all these billionaire hedge fund, you know, movers and shakers who bad guys want to
00:23:47.500
kidnap. They want to kidnap their kids who have serious concerns about letting their public
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address get out there. And it's not just Connecticut, Connecticut, LA and California are
00:23:57.780
leading the pack and protecting public figures from this because of people like you, because of cases
00:24:02.420
like this, you know, because there's a lot of celebrities living there, but the average state
00:24:06.560
is like mine where you, you can't, you lose your privilege to vote unless you're willing to reveal
00:24:11.320
exactly to the world where you live, your exact home, where your children are, where you,
00:24:15.060
it's really wrong. Yeah. Yeah. It is really wrong. And they need to find a way. I mean,
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consider someone who's not famous, who's not rich, who doesn't have the means even to explore how
00:24:27.820
to do this. I mean, if it's just a woman whose ex-husband is going after her and she's moved to be
00:24:35.120
safe and to keep her children safe, she doesn't have access to whatever it takes to do this extra
00:24:41.400
layer of confidentiality. It's not so easy. So, I mean, California does have these means and they
00:24:47.140
have special means of registration so that you can vote, but a lot of places don't. And I really
00:24:54.120
think this should be a national thing that is required because in order to vote, you should
00:24:59.060
not have to surrender your safety in order to vote. That's just ridiculous. And think about it.
00:25:03.540
So you're basically legislating crime victims out of the voting rolls by having this policy.
00:25:09.780
Like what, what sense does that make? Well, I'm going to call you one of these days to get you
00:25:14.460
to help me to change the law in Connecticut because it's, it's ridiculous. And they really just,
00:25:18.200
I'd be happy to. Yeah. Thank you. I haven't. How could they resist the two of us? Good luck.
00:25:23.420
I don't know, but you know what? Here we come. That's right. That's right. So all of this is just by
00:25:29.940
way of background to show you, you had had a young lifetime of understanding crime from both sides,
00:25:36.960
of trying to do what's right against very bad actors and being fearless in the face of massive
00:25:44.020
challenges and putting them behind bars. And then along comes the OJ Simpson case. And I love the
00:25:50.120
fact that like me, you're not really a sports person apparently. And so when you first got the
00:25:55.140
very first call about this, they said, do you, do you know who OJ Simpson is? And your answer was no.
00:26:01.280
Oh, I did. No, I knew. Oh, you knew naked. You didn't know like the bills for the 49ers
00:26:10.040
for the Heisman trophy that no. What are those? That's amazing. So can I tell you in advance of
00:26:17.880
this interview, I was, I watched a little bit of, um, the people versus OJ Simpson, you know,
00:26:22.620
with Sarah Paulson as you, and, um, but I was trying to explain to the kids, they don't know who OJ
00:26:31.280
this would be kind of like if Tom Brady got arrested. Tom Brady's in a loving marriage with
00:26:37.680
his wife, Giselle, but I'm just saying this would be like somebody like Tom Brady got accused of
00:26:42.080
murdering his spouse or somebody very close to him. Like that's how famous OJ Simpson was. And,
00:26:47.680
and the other thing, Marsha, you tell me, but like the other thing I see similarity between those two
00:26:50.720
guys with all due respect to Tom, please is, um, beloved, almost universally beloved, of course,
00:26:57.520
not by sports rivals, but just as a personality in America. Oh yeah. OJ Simpson actually had another
00:27:04.320
layer to it. Um, that I learned throughout the case or learned very early on in the case,
00:27:11.260
he was somebody who came up from very hard scrabble life. You know, I mean, this was a very
00:27:16.540
rough childhood that he had for many, many reasons. And so he's a success story in the sense that he
00:27:22.960
overcame huge odds to become, uh, as famous as he was. And I mean, as, as incredibly accomplished
00:27:31.200
and talented as a sports figure as he was, I mean, I ultimately came to wound up watching the footage
00:27:38.540
of his, um, early career when they came out with the 30 for 30 piece. I don't know if you got to see
00:27:45.760
that, wasn't it? That was a great piece. Yeah. I thought it was amazing and watching him play and
00:27:51.320
like, holy shit, he's a, you know, phenom, he's a phenom. So there was this kind of, and then of
00:27:59.020
course there's the racial aspect where, you know, I mean, he's overcome the odds of being a black man
00:28:04.080
in a, in a world that was made it a lot harder to be than I think it is today though. It's far from
00:28:11.020
perfect. So I think it was really, there were so, there were so much to his persona and what he
00:28:17.640
achieved that made him, uh, an, an, an incredible icon for so, so many. And he, he was a very charming
00:28:25.380
guy. I mean, he really had enormous charisma. You know, you watch him in the 30 for 30 as he's
00:28:31.880
talking straight to camera and, and so self-deprecating and so charming. I get it. I get why he was as big as
00:28:39.880
he was. Hmm. Even, um, in the, you know, the, the docudrama people versus OJ Simpson, um, they're
00:28:47.980
showing like after the white Bronco chase, he's, he's getting out. And the first thing he says to
00:28:52.500
the cops is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And he's saying to them on the phone, I know you just, you want to
00:28:56.500
go home to your kids. You know, that's, that was most of America's impression of him. Kind, caring,
00:29:04.420
caring about others. Like you say, self-deprecating, you know, this sort of gentle giant who overcame
00:29:10.620
incredible odds to become America's hero. And, and unlike some of these celebrities, no drunken
00:29:18.460
tapes that we knew at that point of him being belligerent or an ass or saying a bunch of terrible
00:29:25.180
things, you know, thinking of like Mel Gibson, nothing. It was just universally beloved guy.
00:29:31.780
So you go into this thing as the audience, as the people, as the jury pool thinking, nah,
00:29:39.920
nah, not this guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting back then, um, there were still not the ubiquitous
00:29:48.520
iPhones and, you know, cameras that people had in their pockets and, you know, abilities to record.
00:29:54.860
And so there were quite a few celebrities who were not all that they seem and they could be
00:30:01.460
not all that they seemed, um, and get away with it without people finding out that they
00:30:05.860
were actually behind the scenes. Not so great. Um, as we later learned, uh, way too many times
00:30:12.860
since then. Um, so people didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know the good or the bad. Honestly,
00:30:18.580
I came into it. So very neutral. Um, but I just didn't know enough about him to, to know
00:30:25.420
that I should feel one way or another. So when, you know, when all of this started coming out,
00:30:31.900
it was a revelation to everyone, a bigger one for those who had this really great impression of him
00:30:38.040
that they defined, they discovered for the first time he'd been beating Nicole. He had,
00:30:42.580
there were some reports did come out about beating his first wife, that he was actually kind of a
00:30:49.560
boorish guy, uh, really, and treated Nicole very, very badly, um, in very ugly ways, a very, a spousal
00:30:56.020
abuser. He was, you know, a classic spousal abuser. And then the tapes came out that you could hear him
00:31:02.000
yelling at her. She's pregnant. He's calling her a fat pig. I mean, it was just disgusting one thing
00:31:07.680
after another, but it all got, it was all remained very quiet because she didn't want to, she really
00:31:13.980
didn't want to prosecute. Uh, the only one time she did, um, the national inquirer reported it,
00:31:19.380
but no one else picked up the story. So no one really knew. And all of this just started to come
00:31:24.220
out because of the criminal, because of the murders. Otherwise no one would ever found out.
00:31:29.360
Yeah. I mean, tell the audience what Denise Brown, her, her sister said when she found out that
00:31:36.020
Nicole had been murdered. Oh, she said he did it. I knew it. He did it. And she was like right away,
00:31:44.760
um, right on top of it. And she saw it coming, but she, you know, was behind the scenes with them.
00:31:50.300
They would, you know, have dinner together, spend time together. She had reason to know that he was
00:31:55.200
not the great guy, uh, that you saw on TV. Hmm. It's chilling. Um, Marsha mentions the 911 calls
00:32:03.140
that if you followed this trial at all, you you've heard, uh, that's how she began the case,
00:32:09.200
the people versus OJ Simpson on the, on the subject of his domestic violence against his wife of seven
00:32:16.520
years. Uh, here's one of those nine one one tapes, and then we'll go to break and have more with
00:32:21.760
Marsha, uh, right after this, listen to this nine one one call as we go out.
00:32:24.920
Nine one emergency. Can you get someone over here now to three, two, five Gretna green? He's back.
00:32:31.280
Please. Okay. What does he look like? He's OJ Simpson. I think you know his record. Could you
00:32:36.140
just take somebody over here? Okay. What is he doing there? He just drove up again. He just drove
00:32:41.600
up. Wait a minute. What kind of car is he in? He's in a white Bronco, but first of all,
00:32:45.600
he broke the back door down to get in. Okay. Wait a minute. What's your name? Nicole Simpson.
00:32:50.160
Okay. Is he the sportscaster or whatever? Yeah. Okay. Wait a minute. We're sending the police.
00:32:56.300
What is he doing? Is he threatening you? I'm going nuts. Okay. Has he threatened you in any way or
00:33:03.220
or is he just harassing you? You're going to hear him in a minute. He's about to go in again.
00:33:10.860
Okay. Just stay on the line. I don't want to stay on the line. He's going to beat the
00:33:13.600
wait a minute. Wait, just stay on the line so we can know what's going on until the police get there.
00:33:20.820
We'll be right back. Don't go away. More with Marsha Clark.
00:33:30.400
So Marsha, the LADA and the police were investigating OJ Simpson. There was a line
00:33:36.760
to the effect of, we went over there to notify him that his ex-wife had been murdered.
00:33:41.120
We didn't expect to watch him become a suspect before our very eyes. It was a trail of blood
00:33:45.620
leading from Nicole's house to his house. I mean, the truth is OJ was a terrible criminal.
00:33:50.720
He really did leave. And I obviously I'm showing my bias. I 100% believe that he did this.
00:33:55.720
But he left a trail of blood from the murders back to his own house. And the only way this
00:34:01.920
was discounted at trial was, well, there were a couple of different ways. The defense got up there
00:34:06.140
and tried to suggest the LA cops had planted the whole thing. There was some chemical in the blood
00:34:10.440
that they said show the LA police had had to have manipulated it. And they played the race card.
00:34:16.220
And as, as I think it was Robert Shapiro would later say, they played it from the bottom of the deck.
00:34:20.560
So, um, before we get to all that, you say, all right, let's get him. We're going to arrest him.
00:34:25.780
Have plenty. And then he flees. He flees. Robert Shapiro says, I'm going to, I'm going to bring him
00:34:31.760
in. Fear not. He doesn't bring him in. And he goes with his friend, AC, um, Al Cowling in a different
00:34:38.660
white Bronco. OJ owned one. So did his friend AC. And before we knew it, 100 million Americans at a
00:34:48.540
time when, as you point out, like we didn't have an iPhone that could just pop up and beep and say,
00:34:52.920
oh my God, turn on your TV. Somehow we all just got word to get in front of your TV. Oh my God.
00:34:58.020
A hundred million Americans watched this. This is sought for no report on anything other than
00:35:04.680
police staying, keeping a clear distance behind. There's no rule book on this because right here,
00:35:10.440
Pat, this hasn't happened yet. It seems to be that way. And it, uh, the traffic up above is still,
00:35:17.140
uh, in fact, I'm trying to look down through my, uh, lower window. It appears that CHP has stopped,
00:35:23.520
uh, traffic, uh, on the on-ramps coming onto the 91 westbound just to let the, uh, the officers proceed,
00:35:29.240
uh, at a, at a nice, uh, pace coming through here. Again, they don't want anything to happen,
00:35:33.900
uh, to this, uh, suspect vehicle. They want to try to keep it as safe as possible,
00:35:38.060
but, uh, there's definitely a crowd growing on every, uh, overpass that we see vehicles and people
00:35:44.800
that want to get a glimpse and see if, uh, this is in fact OJ coming down the, uh, the freeway.
00:36:00.140
Right now we all, we're okay, but you gotta tell the police that this is back off.
00:36:04.480
He's still alive, but he's got a gun to his head.
00:36:08.380
Everything right now is okay, officer. Everything is okay. All about, he wants me to get it to his mom.
00:36:15.880
So that's all I, that's all we have. He's got a gun to his head.
00:36:26.320
What did we learn from the slow-moving white Bronco chase?
00:36:36.920
I don't know why. Yeah, a little bit triggering.
00:36:38.900
So the 9-1-1 tape from Nicole was more triggering, let me tell you.
00:36:47.540
But watching that again, I'm struck by a few things.
00:36:53.740
I'm talking to the two lead detectives in the case.
00:37:01.680
They contacted him as he came home from the airport.
00:37:05.040
And as far as I knew, he was in handcuffs and he was at the station and they were interviewing him.
00:37:15.260
And I was going to ask, and I wanted to find out, what did he say?
00:37:20.100
And they told me, basically, it was a non-confession.
00:37:26.520
It was kind of a sliding all over the place, which, you know, happens.
00:37:31.440
It's actually pretty rare that a defendant says, you got me, I did it.
00:37:50.100
We have, we, even by then, had a mountain of evidence.
00:37:53.540
I mean, it was insane, the amount of evidence, as you put it.
00:37:57.160
So, rightly, Megan, he was a terrible criminal.
00:38:02.080
He left evidence everywhere, leading right up to his bedroom.
00:38:17.160
And, of course, then, that allowed the Bronco slow chase to happen, which I think was a galvanizing moment for a lot of people.
00:38:27.400
It became kind of this rolling snowball effect of people watching and jumping on and then going out to cheer and go.
00:38:38.460
You know, it just kind of this mania took hold.
00:38:41.280
And it became a cause to stand up for don't squeeze the juice kind of thing, which I don't know would have happened.
00:38:48.500
Had he gone into custody as he would have with any other person, any other defendant, you name them, they would have been in custody after all the evidence that we had.
00:39:06.980
So that they let him go at that point for reasons I still don't understand.
00:39:12.360
But and then let him stay out for as long as they did.
00:39:16.840
Again, I think a lot of that had to do with a previous case.
00:39:20.440
And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds with this.
00:39:22.400
But it had to do with the Michael Jackson case and the beef that the police department had with our office for not filing charges and for endlessly investigating him up in Santa Barbara and convening the grand jury for as long as we did and then never bringing charges.
00:39:36.600
And I think they were afraid that might happen here.
00:39:39.500
Although the difference between the two cases was so stark, it was ridiculous.
00:39:44.280
Nevertheless, yeah, nevertheless, it caused this kind of feeling of mistrust.
00:39:47.980
And so they didn't want to they didn't trust us to file as soon as we could.
00:40:04.560
He was bleeding from his knuckle with a bandage wrapped around his left left hand at one of the fingers of his left hand.
00:40:12.120
There was one bloody glove at her house, Bundy, and one bloody glove at his house, Rockingham.
00:40:17.740
There was blood all over his white Ford Bronco, which had been parked back at his at his house, Rockingham.
00:40:25.400
The limo driver who'd been waiting to take him to the airport that night didn't see him.
00:40:31.300
Then suddenly saw a figure that looked just like OJ Simpson running in the back of the house.
00:40:35.580
His his tenant, Cato Kaelin, heard three thumps, very loud thumps, which is clearly OJ reentering the property right after the time of the murders.
00:40:43.620
You know, the blood evidence in his bedroom of hers and his.
00:40:47.000
I mean, it's like you you couldn't have asked for, you know, a stupider criminal.
00:40:50.960
Um, but again, they played the race card and I feel like now in 2022 America, don't we have a better appreciation for how that can work, how powerful it can be and how people can use it to completely ignore seemingly unignorable facts?
00:41:12.400
I think everybody's a lot smarter, but I will say this.
00:41:15.480
Back then, I was trying cases downtown for about 10 years.
00:41:19.760
And in the downtown court, as opposed to the branch courts that were in like the suburbs, we were used to seeing the race card being played.
00:41:36.800
But this was a level beyond because he was so famous, because he had the imprimatur of this wonderful icon, this amazing guy.
00:41:47.320
And then there was also, I think, a sense of we're not going to let you take him down because he is a symbol of success.
00:41:52.840
He is a symbol of overcoming all the obstacles that minorities do and have to to succeed.
00:41:58.620
So there was a huge like this impenetrable wall of we don't want to.
00:42:04.880
Yeah. And I think, you know, it also had to do with the rulings in court.
00:42:08.620
Look, I think in another with another judge, with a different set of circumstances where you really enforce the law as it's written, you wind up with a hung jury.
00:42:18.840
But I don't think anybody in the DA's office, even most of us knew at best we'd get a hung jury.
00:42:26.940
And probably if we retried it, hung again and then dismissed.
00:42:30.900
So, I mean, I think that was kind of in the cards from early on and became more and more apparent as time went by.
00:42:49.900
Yeah. Well, yeah, I think she was in Brentwood or on the border of.
00:42:53.220
But the problem was we could never have taken the case to Santa Monica because it was earthquake damage and it was a security risk.
00:43:00.740
And people were escaping from Santa Monica like the custody bus would pull up and the beach was right there.
00:43:06.520
And so it happened more than a few times that they would get out the bus and run.
00:43:11.960
And so if you can't secure a building when you have a high profile case like this, you have to bring the case downtown.
00:43:17.200
And they had a special floor, the ninth floor, that had surveillance cameras in the ceiling that were being monitored by the sheriffs inside the courthouse constantly.
00:43:27.460
And in a case like this, that was going to be high profile and going to be such a security risk, which it really was.
00:43:33.360
There was never a chance of filing it anywhere but downtown.
00:43:41.440
Different jury pool when you when you go to L.A.
00:43:45.420
Just a couple of years after after Rodney King, the beating of Rodney King, which was very public and the white officers were acquitted in that case, which led to the riots and a lot of bad blood.
00:43:57.340
And I think most people have acknowledged that at or around this time and certainly around the Rodney King beating, there was there was a serious problem of racism within the ranks of the LAPD.
00:44:09.340
And the black community had every right to be distrustful, angry.
00:44:14.480
You know, there's a second question about whether O.J. was really part of the black community, which we can talk about.
00:44:21.120
But just dealing with, you know, the actual community, they did have very good reason to distrust the cops.
00:44:27.840
When the Rodney King verdict happened, it was somebody I was friendly with who was trying that case.
00:44:33.200
And I and he was devastated and it was shocking.
00:44:41.000
I mean, and I actually reminded the jury, you know, we lost that case.
00:44:47.420
We tried, you know, and unfortunately, the sentiment was at the time and this had, I think, a lot to do with the feelings among the jury pool at the time.
00:44:58.140
And we were picking a jury for the Simpson trial that, yeah, you can't trust the police and they band together.
00:45:04.060
And then you have the kind of the us versus them mentality because the white jury acquitted these officers who were shown on videotape.
00:45:11.780
It was it was one of those situations where it couldn't have been stacked more terribly in terms of polarizing the community.
00:45:22.500
The irony, of course, was that in the O.J. Simpson case, the police officers were the ones that had the hardest time believing he was guilty.
00:45:29.680
One of the reasons I think they were they didn't want to bring him in for me to file the case and didn't want to put him in custody is they were still having a hard time.
00:45:38.660
They were still struggling with the belief that he could have done this.
00:45:42.320
And so when it came out with the theories of conspiracy and planting evidence, et cetera, these guys, are you kidding me?
00:45:57.220
He used to have them over to his house like he was chummy with the cops like they knew him as a celebrity and a great guy and not they had to disbelieve their lion eyes when they saw all the blood evidence and so on.
00:46:12.020
Ultimately, at trial in L.A., it would be, as I recall, nine black jurors, one Hispanic or two Hispanics and one white.
00:46:25.560
So we had it was a it was a more balanced jury in terms of white and black and whatever it was.
00:46:32.720
But but they dropped like flies under the pressure of being sequestered and all the pressure of don't watch TV and don't read the book and don't do.
00:46:43.020
And so, yes, ultimately, I think that was the makeup of the jury.
00:46:49.560
So that was boy, you can see the setup for an uphill battle for you and Chris Darden.
00:46:59.580
And of course, now we have a civil jury in a separate case saying, indeed, he murdered them both.
00:47:07.800
We have much, much more with Marsha Clark ahead.
00:47:10.660
We're going to get into Chris Darden, Johnny Cochran, the gloves.
00:47:14.560
If they don't fit, you must acquit and all of it.
00:47:17.900
And then we'll talk to her later in the show about what she thinks about crime enforcement today in L.A.
00:47:22.780
This guy, Gascon, not going to get recalled after all.
00:47:29.600
Don't forget, folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
00:47:42.180
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00:47:47.920
And there you get our full archives with more than 375 shows.
00:47:50.820
When we watch the O.J. Simpson white Bronco, slow moving white Bronco, we see people cheering him from the overpasses.
00:48:12.480
He was there to drop off sunglasses that she or her family member had left at his restaurant.
00:48:17.040
He was a waiter and it appears to have just showed up wrong time, wrong place.
00:48:24.260
They're cheering O.J.'s fleeing the police with a gun to his head.
00:48:29.020
I mean, it's just something sick about America with our obsession with celebrity, I guess.
00:48:33.760
I don't think they would have been cheering some random some random Joe Simpson.
00:48:42.480
And it's it is kind of I found myself very shocked and and very upset at seeing it.
00:48:51.840
He's not you realize we didn't just announce that he rejoined the NFL.
00:48:56.640
You realize that he is actually being accused of a double homicide, a hideous double homicide.
00:49:06.420
And it did strike me that it was just it was really kind of a mentality of I don't care.
00:49:17.380
I remember all the great things he did as a player.
00:49:24.020
And it felt that way to me largely throughout the trial, that these two poor victims were
00:49:32.140
basically dismissed, ignored and and thrown away by so many who just who only cared about
00:49:42.160
There were millions who did care and came out to show their support and, you know, wore the
00:49:47.220
angel pins and really understood that they were this is a homicide case.
00:49:50.760
This is not about the Hall of Fame for the NFL player of the year.
00:49:56.060
But there were many who didn't see that there were two victims involved here.
00:49:59.960
And it felt like we were always pushing that boulder uphill to try and remind people of
00:50:05.600
what this was all about, what why we were here today.
00:50:08.920
The cameras are not in the courtroom because he just scored a winning touchdown, you know,
00:50:13.200
and that it felt very hard to keep people focused on that.
00:50:16.660
Again, let me say, not all people by any means and many, many who understood the difference.
00:50:26.240
But a shocking number who were against the prosecution.
00:50:29.680
And I know you wrote in the book about how your lines were ringing off the hook at the
00:50:33.680
DA's office from people supporting him, mad that you brought the prosecution.
00:50:37.200
It's just like it's so crazy to think about it.
00:50:40.060
But yeah, I mean, that we're still divided on the verdict.
00:50:42.520
We certainly were divided on, you know, black and white reaction to the verdict and so on.
00:50:49.300
Meanwhile, OJ had been accused by Nicole of domestic violence in the past.
00:50:53.600
He had one sort of slap on the wrist encounter with law enforcement as a result.
00:50:58.200
As I understand it, that's where Mark Furman first had his encounter with OJ.
00:51:02.280
He had been called to the house on one of those.
00:51:05.380
And as you say, one of the 911 calls reflects an angry OJ.
00:51:10.360
This is how you guys chose to open your case to try to convince the jury.
00:51:14.460
I'm to try to shake some of this imagery loose.
00:51:17.700
He's not just the juice from the Hertz commercials and the Heisman and all that stuff.
00:51:21.920
This guy has a very violent side and it tends to get unleashed on his wives, his domestic partners.
00:51:30.400
He's unwilling to try to kill the city and find them.
00:51:35.060
Okay, the kids! Okay! Okay, the kids are too few!
00:51:45.060
Let's go to Hinesman, 4-2-2-1-R-D-8-25, children of all.
00:51:49.060
Did you hear about the kids when you started to sit in the living room?
00:51:51.060
They were here! Did you hear about the kids' kids?
00:52:19.060
Mr. Simpson is over six foot, you know, burly, big muscles.
00:52:25.060
I mean, you know, this is somebody who is a very powerful, very, you know, imposing figure.
00:52:31.060
And this is the guy who's yelling and screaming at you and raising a fist.
00:52:38.060
And I hear Nicole in there responding to the dispatcher who's saying,
00:52:45.060
And, you know, all she wants to do is run and hide, which, by the way, she frequently had to, to get away.
00:52:53.060
She's, as Gavin put it, Ron Goldman was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
00:52:58.060
And Nicole was in the wrong place for a long time.
00:53:01.060
And, you know, she kept getting kind of short trips from law enforcement.
00:53:11.060
And even Mark Furman was called to the house because she was sitting in the car and the, and OJ Simpson took a baseball bat to the windshield and smashed it in front of her.
00:53:24.060
And Mark Furman showed up and saw the smashed windshield and simply wrote him what we call an FI card, field identification card, no arrest.
00:53:33.060
You know, this happened again and again and again.
00:53:37.060
And the reason was because he was a beloved figure by the police as well.
00:53:43.060
And of course, domestic violence was not taken seriously back then.
00:53:46.060
Um, crimes against women not taken very seriously back then.
00:53:50.060
And it, that in that sense, I think things have gotten better, not perfect, but it's getting better.
00:53:57.060
Uh, but back then it was very easy for people to sweep things under the rug.
00:54:01.060
And so women frequently did abandon the case and recant their statement because they couldn't expect to get justice, uh, in, in the courts.
00:54:12.060
So you're not going to get a result and you're poking the bear.
00:54:15.060
You know, we were talking about earlier, my own research and does one get a temporary restraining order?
00:54:20.060
Because I remember reading a case where a woman got a temporary restraining order against her stalker.
00:54:25.060
And again, to your point, your stalker can be your ex-husband or it can be a stranger.
00:54:29.060
And the next thing you know, he stabbed her and the TRO was in between the knife in her chest.
00:54:34.060
And so it can be, it can be very aggravating and it's dangerous for a domestic violence victim of any kind to bring law enforcement in.
00:54:53.060
Um, and so you can, you can understand, but, but she did, she did more than just that to the pictures.
00:54:58.060
I will never forget you saying to the jury, well, you'd shown them her, her bruised face.
00:55:07.060
I know people think about the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard thing, and they think Amber may have faked those photos.
00:55:11.060
I have no idea what Amber Heard did, but Nicole Brown Simpson didn't fake those photos of her bruised and bloody face.
00:55:18.060
And she, I'll never forget you saying to the jury about her will, her will.
00:55:23.060
And you were saying, who does that at her age, who goes and does the last will and testament and puts it in a safe box in the bank with her bruised face photos.
00:55:34.060
Like she's trying to tell us something from the grave.
00:55:40.060
And as a matter of fact, we have now changed the rules of evidence to allow for the admission of these kinds of statements that are, you know, I know he's going to kill me.
00:55:49.060
Uh, or writings that are, you know, in a journal, I know he's going to do this.
00:55:53.060
Um, she had written quite a few things in her journal about the abuse that she suffered and about, uh, her belief that he was going to kill her.
00:56:04.060
Um, now we, we do get that kind of information before the jury, but yeah, I mean, it was a very telling thing.
00:56:17.060
The, one of the unfortunate pieces of the trial and you've made a reference to it earlier was the judge.
00:56:23.060
Judge Lance Ito was a disaster pretty much on every front.
00:56:28.060
I mean, he, he became a national laughingstock afterward for good reason.
00:56:32.060
And one of the things that was rather irritating, I mean, it wasn't his main failure, his, you know, we'll talk about his main failure, but one of the things that was very irritating about Judge Ito was his treatment of you versus his treatment of all the other lawyers in the courtroom who happened to be male.
00:56:46.060
And I'm not somebody who's constantly waving the feminism card and I, and you are never somebody to play the victim.
00:56:52.060
I've read and seen your interviews for years now, but there's no question that he was a prick to you.
00:56:57.060
And I, you know, without evidence of what the other reason was, I think, I think he was a misogynist.
00:57:09.060
I have to say it was, you know, it was a remarkable thing.
00:57:12.060
It kind of made me laugh because I bigger fish to fry.
00:57:18.060
Um, but it was one of those ridiculous and very obvious things.
00:57:28.060
And, you know, the remarks about my hair and skirts and whatever, it was a horrible, you know, example of a male on the bench.
00:57:36.060
There are so many good judges and there were, you know, I was really hoping to get one of them.
00:57:45.060
When you, what we call lay paper, when you, uh, peremptorily challenge a judge, you only get one.
00:57:51.060
And there were others who could have been worse.
00:57:53.060
So when we talk, when Bill and I talked about, well, what do we do?
00:58:00.060
And he had had Lance on his, um, case against Keating.
00:58:08.060
It was not the same case, uh, not the same situation as the Simpson trial.
00:58:13.060
So there was that, but really far and away, what was worse to me was the manner in which he, he run, ran the courtroom, which is to say he did not.
00:58:22.060
He handed the reins to Johnny Cochran and Johnny ran with it.
00:58:25.060
Um, which is why when people say, aren't you angry with the defense and the way Johnny ran the case, I said, no, I I'm not.
00:58:32.060
The defense will always take advantage to the greatest extent possible.
00:58:37.060
And if you have judge who's inclined to let the defense rewrite the rules of evidence and the rules of trial procedure, uh, you're screwed because the judge is the final arbiter.
00:58:50.060
Not only did he do not, but he encouraged it and he made some of the most outrageous rulings I had ever seen.
00:58:55.060
Uh, eventually I did call him on it at the very end when he was going to allow the defense to comment outrageously on Mark Furman's, uh, taking the fifth, which is a known thing.
00:59:10.060
This is what we call horn book law, uh, from centuries ago.
00:59:14.060
You do not get to comment on someone who invokes his fifth amendment, right?
00:59:18.060
Because other, you could do that and say, Hey, he invoked his right to remain silent.
00:59:25.060
So they were going to allow him to them to capitalize on his invoking the fifth.
00:59:30.060
Then before the jury, uh, questioned him about it.
00:59:39.060
And I took it up on a writ immediately, which he tried to prevent and tried to deny us the time.
00:59:46.060
And at which point I said, you're denying the people the right to a fair trial.
00:59:49.060
He eventually capitulated and the court of appeal wrote back immediately and said, you will not allow this.
00:59:55.060
You will stop this trial because Johnny kept extending and extending and saying, we'll never rest.
01:00:01.060
No other judge would put up with that nonsense.
01:00:03.060
Look, no other, most judges would never have allowed race to be made a part of the case to begin with,
01:00:15.060
And yet they were allowed to completely subvert justice by bringing in an issue that had nothing to do with the evidence,
01:00:21.060
nothing to do with the motives or the real parties involved.
01:00:24.060
So it was the worst possible situation because he himself was, as they say, a star fucker.
01:00:31.060
And so he was much more wedded to the side of the case that was famous.
01:00:36.060
And it was a bizarre thing to watch a judge abdicate completely his role as the the the captain of the ship.
01:00:45.060
Yeah. And the neutral arbiter, you know, calling balls and strikes and not not keeping the thumb on the scale.
01:00:50.060
Before we get to him and the race ruling, because that really is.
01:00:54.060
Just a moment on you and your experience before him.
01:00:57.060
You're you think back on how sexist we were and just openly, openly sexist, judging your looks at every turn.
01:01:07.060
MSNBC had just launched like all these 24 seven cable channels at CNN and Court TV in particular.
01:01:14.060
Right. That's of course what you're going to do.
01:01:16.060
You get huge numbers made stars out of people like Greta Van Susteren, Geraldo.
01:01:21.060
My pal Dan Abrams was covering a lot of lawyers up and coming became stars as a result of this.
01:01:26.060
Jeffrey Toobin. That's where we first started really hearing about him anyway.
01:01:35.060
Right. I'm trying to think we're going from straight to curly.
01:01:40.060
OK, guys, I get it confused, but it caused the thing.
01:01:48.060
This is Sarah Paulson portraying you in the people versus OJ.
01:01:50.060
Yeah, here. Here's a little soundbite reenacting what happened.
01:02:36.060
I mean, he was obviously trying to mock your hair like you're unrecognizable and not in a fun, playful way.
01:02:46.060
While all the defense lawyers are staring at you.
01:02:56.060
Actually, they kind of flipped it in that clip you saw.
01:03:05.060
I decided to do a perm because I want to wash and wear hair.
01:03:14.060
And the media, the media coordinator at DA's office said, you need to get your hair cut.
01:03:21.060
And my hairdresser said, stop with the perm already.
01:03:29.060
I all I want to do is make it easy to deal with.
01:03:33.060
So we've got shorter, but the change came and he made, you know, made the remark that
01:03:38.060
he did because at some point I didn't have time to go to the hairdresser to re perm my
01:03:46.060
I had no choice but to then blow it out and just let it be straight because I couldn't
01:03:51.060
So I go into court thinking, ah, no one will notice.
01:04:05.060
I mean, I will say for our listening audience, because we're airing live on Sirius XM Triumph
01:04:11.060
She's got her hair is long and it's beautiful and it's straight right now.
01:04:16.060
I don't know what you've done, what what kind of magic juice you're drinking, but I want
01:04:25.060
But I do want to mention this is I you became a hero to a lot of working moms, single moms.
01:04:33.060
Your husband ratchets it up while he sees you on trial and the most stressful trial of your
01:04:42.060
You did not want to lose custody of your two young boys.
01:04:44.060
And you had told Judge Ito at the beginning of the trial, I this is what time I can work
01:04:53.060
I was like four o'clock or five o'clock in the afternoon.
01:04:55.060
And one day he was going to let it go late in the evening.
01:04:58.060
And here again is this is the actual you, I think.
01:05:05.060
This is the actual you because Johnny Cochran later convinced you because you went to him
01:05:13.060
And then Johnny Cochran accused you of using your children as an excuse the next week.
01:05:20.060
You didn't like how the ruling had worked out and he thought you were manipulating the
01:05:29.060
I'm offended as a woman, as a single parent and as a prosecutor and an officer of the court
01:05:34.060
to hear an argument posed by counsel like that.
01:05:39.060
Some of us have child care issues and they are serious and they are paramount.
01:05:47.060
But he should not come before this court and impugn the integrity of someone who does have
01:06:02.060
You know, I mean, I think I was just so pissed off, Megan.
01:06:07.060
And there were there were moments during that trial when I said things that I really meant.
01:06:11.060
And, you know, go figure, you know, on a personal level.
01:06:21.060
But what I mean is you don't talk about yourself on a personal level when you're in court in
01:06:32.060
I think this is irrelevant or this is relevant.
01:06:34.060
But to have to talk about yourself on a personal level is a rather uncomfortable thing.
01:06:39.060
And I was never in the position to have to do that before.
01:06:47.060
And why that I should even be talking about myself as a person in this context when we
01:06:52.060
have two dead victims is outrageous and should not be allowed.
01:07:03.060
Ultimately, I think that he didn't do it again.
01:07:06.060
But it was a very upsetting thing to be in the limelight in the crosshairs that way.
01:07:11.060
It's one thing to impugn me as a prosecutor and say, you know, she she the arguments lousy.
01:07:21.060
But to go after someone personally like that, that was not kosher to say the least.
01:07:27.060
And just so the audience knows, in the midst of all this, the ex-husband's mother, your
01:07:32.060
ex-mother in law released topless photos of you.
01:07:35.060
Now everyone's Googling it, Marsha in Saint Tropez, which like years earlier.
01:07:44.060
You know, like the amount of shit being thrown your way outside of the courthouse is truly
01:07:50.060
But I love it because you are so strong and you never let him see you sweat.
01:07:55.060
And you had a higher calling that you were devoted to.
01:08:02.060
In any event, I feel for you as a woman in today's day and age and who was, you know,
01:08:09.060
OK, let's get into the trial a little bit because you mentioned Judge Ito's ruling on
01:08:14.060
And I think most people are like, why wouldn't why wouldn't we be talking about race?
01:08:21.060
He's the one who found the bloody glove at OJ's house, which was a critical piece of
01:08:25.060
And Furman got caught on tape saying the N word a bunch of times.
01:08:36.060
Initially, nobody knew that Furman had said all these really messed up, horrifying things.
01:08:43.060
What we did know was that he was the one who found a very damning piece of evidence.
01:08:48.060
He found the bloody glove that matched the one at Bundy under the air conditioner at on
01:08:52.060
the sidewalk of at the side of Simpson's house.
01:08:56.060
And I mean, that really tied him directly to the crime and get to the murders.
01:09:01.060
And so they were going to have to discredit Mark Furman somehow.
01:09:05.060
Well, it was very hard to do because the truth of the matter is there were about 15,
01:09:11.060
20 cops at the Bundy scene before Mark Furman even showed up because the patrol cops show up
01:09:18.060
They come, they secure the scene and the detectives show up later and they start to guide things,
01:09:23.060
you know, and decide what they want to look into and how to which evidence they want to
01:09:29.060
So by the time Furman got there, at least 15 cops had said, I was at Bundy.
01:09:37.060
And they were trying to sell the notion that Furman showed up, found two gloves and moved
01:09:43.060
one of them to Rockingham to frame O.J. Simpson.
01:09:50.060
There's no evidence to back it up, nor ever could be.
01:09:53.060
And so when they wanted to, I said, look, if you can prove that it's possible for him,
01:09:58.060
for there to have been two gloves there and for someone to have then secretly moved one
01:10:04.060
Both of these things, by the way, impossible to prove because it never happened.
01:10:08.060
But if that were true, then Furman's bias and inclination to try and frame someone that
01:10:19.060
There's motive to do something terrible and frame someone.
01:10:22.060
But if you can't, if there is no evidence whatsoever, no possibility that there was ever
01:10:27.060
a second glove at Bundy that could have been moved, then what is the relevance of his
01:10:36.060
So no matter how he may have felt about Simpson, it's irrelevant.
01:10:41.060
And initially the judge ruled in our favor and said, no, there will be no evidence of
01:10:45.060
race because there is no evidence that he could have, there was a second glove to move.
01:10:53.060
I can't remember which ones, but you know, screaming about how this is not fair.
01:11:02.060
You're trying to skew this in favor of the prosecution.
01:11:06.060
And the next day capitalizing on that tidal wave of media coverage, F. Lee Bailey basically
01:11:15.060
just got it and screamed at the judge, adding no new evidence.
01:11:18.060
And of course, not being able to prove anything like the possibility of a second glove existing
01:11:25.060
And the judge just reversed himself and said, okay, I'm going to let it in.
01:11:31.060
And was that the argument that you just described over the author who had Furman on tape?
01:11:39.060
She was writing a book about crime and she had Furman on tape using the N word.
01:11:43.060
Was that, was that argument as you just described it over her book evidence?
01:11:53.060
At that time, it was really only about a couple of people, not very many, one or two that were
01:12:01.060
When he arrested me, when he talked about something, one was an arrestee and one was not.
01:12:11.060
And we're talking nearly the end of the trial that this woman came forward to say, I've been taping my sessions with Mark Furman and here are the tapes.
01:12:21.060
He was using the N word and talking about abusing African-American men repeatedly in his exploits as a, as a detective and as a patrol officer.
01:12:33.060
And no one knew about those tapes until she came forward and the defense and she went for, she came forward to the defense.
01:12:40.060
I, I do know that the Hollywood writers, because she was hoping for a career in Hollywood and the Hollywood writers band together and said, you will never work in this town.
01:12:50.060
And, um, she never did, but her, but her tape certainly came into evidence.
01:12:56.060
And it was one of the most horrifying, uh, days I'd ever spent in court, uh, listening to the filth that was on those tapes.
01:13:05.060
It was just devastating, ugly, ugly stuff of, of a critical witness for your side.
01:13:14.060
It's critical, you know, and with the, with the racial charge already behind you for all the reasons we've discussed, my God, this was the last thing you needed.
01:13:25.060
Uh, we used him for commentary on the missing case of this baby Lisa.
01:13:29.060
And I found his analysis and he's a Fox news contributor to be so insightful and so interesting.
01:13:36.060
There was no racial element at all in this case.
01:13:38.060
It was just a detective calling it as he saw it.
01:13:43.060
Some people didn't believe Fox news should have hired him as a contributor.
01:13:59.060
He certainly was telling the truth about his role in the Simpson case.
01:14:03.060
Um, and I, and I say this because it was corroborated by at least a dozen other officers, uh, about what had happened that night, what they found and how they found it.
01:14:13.060
So there's that, um, and I would not ask anyone to take his word for it, having heard the tapes and heard what he has said and done.
01:14:22.060
Uh, but he, his word was corroborated and he is smart.
01:14:26.060
However, you know, the, the fact that he did not tell us that he had been recording these, uh, tapes with this author and he knew it's not something that he forgot.
01:14:38.060
In fact, on those tapes was a meeting he had with her after the case broke, after he testified at the preliminary hearing on the Simpson case, talking about those tapes and talking about how he was going to capitalize on his role in the case.
01:14:53.060
And she was going to write this book and, uh, that sort of thing.
01:14:56.060
So it's not as though, Oh, I made these tapes a million years ago and forgot.
01:14:59.060
He was very well aware of it and it was ongoing.
01:15:02.060
Um, so I, I have to say the fact that he did not tell us and, and, and therefore hid it from everyone made it so much worse because at least I could have said, okay, look, we've got these tapes.
01:15:17.060
And so will she, I don't know that any of this is true by the way, apparently that was investigated.
01:15:22.060
All the incidents that he was supposedly was involved in were never proven to have happened.
01:15:26.060
And he was embellishing for the benefit of this author, uh, who wanted lured stories and he gave them to her.
01:15:33.060
So, you know, as a person, I don't have a lot of respect for Mark Furman as a person.
01:15:39.060
I think, um, his attitudes about African Americans, about minorities, about women, uh, are disgusting and really horrifying.
01:15:49.060
But, um, as a detective, he was able to do a good job and did do a good job actually.
01:15:55.060
My God, I can't imagine what it was like for you sitting there that day.
01:15:59.060
Of course, it wasn't the worst day of the trial.
01:16:02.060
Um, as I mentioned in the intro, that was the gloves and the leader, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
01:16:12.060
When we come back, Chris Darden and the role he had in forcing OJ to try on those gloves,
01:16:19.060
which was a move both members of the prosecution team would live to regret.
01:16:28.060
Bill thought Ido would be okay, but Bill wound up having a heart issue and taken leave from the trial.
01:16:33.060
In came Chris Darden, the partner that we would all watch every day right next to you.
01:16:38.060
And as has been documented and admitted by you and Chris, it was his call to have OJ Simpson try on the gloves.
01:16:48.060
Now, I'm confused after having read about the glove issue.
01:16:53.060
When he put on those gloves, was he putting on the actual gloves from the crime scenes, like from Bundy and Rockingham?
01:17:02.060
Or was he putting on a model that the glove manufacturer had sent to you guys, like an identical model, supposedly?
01:17:10.060
So they proposed, the defense proposed that he try on the actual crime scene gloves.
01:17:17.060
I objected on the record, saying they have shrunk.
01:17:27.060
And then, and then Ido said, and well, but he's got to wear, he's, he's ruling for the defense allowing it.
01:17:36.060
And then he said, but of course, he's going to have to wear latex underneath because these are bloody gloves.
01:17:42.060
So he has to put on latex gloves and then put the gloves on top.
01:17:47.060
Now you'll never know if they, you know, that's not going to be the same fit.
01:17:56.060
Chris insisted that if we don't do it, they will.
01:18:01.060
And we can tell the jury exactly what we just said, you know, that their latex is underneath.
01:18:11.060
It's, it's irrelevant experiment because you can't duplicate the conditions.
01:18:24.060
After that, then I said, you know, let's have the expert get the actual gloves in their
01:18:30.060
normal condition, the way he actually wore them that night where he won't have to wear latex
01:18:35.060
and it won't have been shrunken and frozen and shrunken.
01:18:45.060
The cleanup in aisle seven doesn't play as well as the spill.
01:18:49.060
So I had Chris Darden on my show at NBC and I asked him about the effect this trial had on him.
01:19:09.060
And it certainly, you know, changed the direction of it.
01:19:12.060
And it took me to places I would have rather not gone.
01:19:20.060
We had a commitment, you know, to the Goldman family, to the Brown family, to bring the murderer
01:19:31.060
And, you know, you don't lose something like that and then just forget about it.
01:20:00.060
You know, I mean, our job is to convict the guilty.
01:20:04.060
Our job is, I mean, if you can never call it justice, getting a conviction when these
01:20:18.060
And so I think both Chris and I will remain scarred by that forever.
01:20:29.060
You know, you can't in no trial or you secured the verdict you want.
01:20:32.060
I mean, with time, has it have you gotten gentler on yourself?
01:20:38.060
No, I mean, at the time and there was a there was a sense that we couldn't win this case
01:20:43.060
very early on, way before the gloves, way before the author came out with the tapes all
01:20:52.060
And I thought to myself, regardless, then the only thing I can do is do everything.
01:20:57.060
And that means spare no effort, work day and night.
01:21:01.060
You know, so I go home to be with the kids, but I brought the work with me.
01:21:04.060
And when I put them to bed, I was working, you know, at home.
01:21:09.060
And so that the one thing I can say is that I did not spare any effort.
01:21:15.060
There was I did everything I could think to do, worked as hard as I could possibly work
01:21:22.060
to bring the case, if not to the jury, at least to the rest of the country to see that
01:21:36.060
I know that we fought as hard as we could fight.
01:21:44.060
But at the end of the day, the truth is we did not succeed.
01:21:48.060
And I feel like Chris does, that we did owe it to them.
01:21:52.060
We owed it to everyone to see that justice was done.
01:21:55.060
I think it's it's something that is felt not just by the families, but by everyone watching.
01:22:06.060
You know, it makes you feel like you can't trust our system of justice.
01:22:11.060
So we cannot help but carry some of that with us probably forever.
01:22:24.060
I understand there were definitely some holes in the case.
01:22:26.060
If you believed the defense's DNA evidence, you could get to this.
01:22:35.060
You saw you tried to present the clear picture.
01:22:37.060
The jury got mesmerized by Johnny Cochran and the so-called dream team.
01:22:41.060
And I think they had other preconceived biases going in there with all due respect to them.
01:22:47.060
But at least one has come out since and said he he would have changed his verdict.
01:22:52.060
And now having like seen the case with fresh eyes, I have to ask you about if I did it.
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Simpson, shortly after I joined Fox News in 2004, O.J.
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Simpson through Harper Collins, which the Murdochs also own.
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So this is a story that we were debating very much internally, wrote a book with Judith
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Regan on sort of an offshoot of Harper Collins.
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And I was looking at it just prior to our interview.
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And one of the things that jumped out at me was there was all this blowback and it was actually never published.
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And there was no publicity tour, but he did a couple of interviews anyway.
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He talked about his outreach against her when she would flirt openly with other men in front of their children.
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And this is just a bit at the scene of the crime.
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He downed a meal with Cato Kaelin dressed in a dark sweatsuit.
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He parked in the alley, put on a knit wool cap and gloves, grabbed the knife that he keeps in his Bronco.
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According to Simpson, his intent at this point was to scare her, not kill her.
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Simpson goes on to report that he accused Goldman of planning to sleep with Nicole.
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He was just returning glasses she had left at the restaurant.
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Nicole's Akita, her dog, when it wags its tail to greet Ron, convinces Simpson that Ron and Nicole have a sexual relationship.
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And since his account, Nicole charges at him or charges at him like a banshee failing, falling and smacking her head on the concrete.
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When Goldman drops to a karate stance, Simpson loses it.
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And what amounts to basically a confession, Simpson writes, then something went horribly wrong.
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And I know what happened, but I can't tell you how.
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Then later, this is from a report about the book in a taped interview to promote the book that was never aired on TV.
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Simpson, according to a partial transcript obtained by The New York Times, said after this guy kind of got into a karate thing.
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Asked in the interview whether he removed the glove before grabbing the knife.
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Simpson replied, quote, you know, I had no conscious memory of doing that, but obviously I must have because they found a glove there.
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Talks about how he fled the scene, soaked in blood, holding the bloody knife.
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When Nicole and Goldman dead in front of him, he stripped to his socks before reentering his Bronco, saw the limo parked in front of his house,
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so entered the estate along a darkened pathway, banging loudly into an air conditioner outside of Cato, Caitlin's, Caitlin's bedroom as he attempted to do so.
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He also claimed in that book that he had a second man, a friend named, quote, Charlie, with him at the time of the murders.
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Forget the propriety of the publishing and all that.
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But the fact that he wrote this down and kind of told us what he says happened.
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I didn't make anything of it, to be honest with you.
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I think that someone else wrote it and I do know who.
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He had a lot of good guesses about what happened.
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Nicole was taken down brutally by him and basically rendered unconscious by the time Ron showed up and then had the fight with Ron and then went back and finished her off.
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And there was no Charlie because that crime scene went over with a fine tooth comb.
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And you had the blood drops next to the bloody shoe prints showing one person leaving the scene.
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I don't I think that what he I'm not sure why he did this book.
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I think, you know, there was obviously a profit motive, which I hope the Goldman's have made unworth it to him.
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But I really just I just thought it was kind of a work of fiction written by somebody else and something that he signed on to that he probably regrets.
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Otherwise, you know, there's very little truth to be found there.
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Of course, we all saw that years later he got convicted of kidnapping.
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He was trying to I don't know something with his memorabilia and trying to avoid paying the Goldman's the money that they are entitled to as a result of their civil court verdict.
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He wound up serving, I think, 11 years of a 33 year old 33 year sentence serving almost nine years.
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But he he actually just comments now on random things, Marsha.
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He I know my team and I noticed it after the Will Smith slap of Chris Rock.
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He actually got out there and and commented on it and was like, oh, you know, I understand.
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I've been there when the media says horrible things.
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Is that we've lost our minds to him for comment?
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And he had something to say about Jeff Toobin, too.
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OK, we'll squeeze in a quick break while we get her back, because clearly this is not done.
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Want to plug her book, too, while we have the second check out her new book, The Fall Girl.
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It's out next month to become a very successful crime novelist.
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Don't go away because much more with Marsha Clark right after this quick break.
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At least Pee Wee Herman was in an X-rated movie theater.
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Because Toobin wrote, he wrote the book, The People vs. OJ Simpson, on which the miniseries
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I understand people, people sin and like you move on, you forgive him.
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I mean, I think it's remarkable that people are asking for his comment.
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Maybe like if a double murder takes place, you might go to him for that commentary on
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You say in the book, we lost we lost this case because American justice is distorted
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We lost because American justice is corrupted by celebrity.
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The bedrock issue here was not race, but race coupled with celebrity.
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So ironic because, of course, as I mentioned at the top, OJ used to say, I'm not black.
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And, you know, they had to, of course, change his whole house before the jury toured it to
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take down all the photos he had of all these white celebrities and white friends and put
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So he looked like he was more part of the black.
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You lost because of race coupled with celebrity.
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Yeah, I think you take one away and then you have a different verdict.
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You know, if he's if he's as you said, I'm you're not going to like this.
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But if it's Tom Brady and it's him instead of OJ Simpson, I think he gets convicted.
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If it's John Q Lunchbucket and he's any other race, black whatever, he gets convicted.
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And I think especially at that time, and we can never talk about these things in a vacuum.
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It matters that everyone was on edge because of the the verdict in the Rodney King case.
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But all of that put together certainly did make the recipe for this verdict.
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We're now obsessed with identity, skin color, gender, gender identity.
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And more and more, this is creeping into courtrooms.
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What do you make of that, of wokeness and identity more and more appearing in law schools,
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in the training of young lawyers, on the bench and even in our jury boxes?
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You know, I think it's good that lawyers in particular are being taught about the ways in which race may impact the way law enforcement works,
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the way cases are prosecuted, which cases are prosecuted.
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I think to be sensitive to the possibility of bias in the way people do their jobs is an important thing to be acknowledged.
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And because you can't address bias unless you acknowledge bias.
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So that's as a first as a as a general point of information to be aware.
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That said, it cannot be allowed to take over in a courtroom.
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And at the point when you start to pick a jury, the jury has to be told and must be enforced in no uncertain terms by the judge.
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We are here to judge the facts unless race is an issue.
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But if it is not an issue, then it will not be allowed into the courtroom because it does.
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These are the kind of hot button issues that distort the the ends of justice.
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There's no way you can have a just and fair verdict when you're throwing in hot button issues that simply make people upset,
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but have nothing to do with you legally speaking with the evidence.
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And so call it a fairly prejudicial in a court of law.
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Let me get to this before I let you go, because we only have a couple minutes left and I teased it.
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So I'd love to know your thoughts on the current L.A. D.A. there.
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The attempted recall failed because they didn't get enough valid signatures, although it came pretty close.
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And he and other, you know, soft on crime D.A.s are popping up in city after city as these crime rates go up.
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You have to be aware of what a district attorney can and cannot do.
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I see an awful lot of commentary that says, oh, he's you know, the people aren't getting busted.
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They're letting criminals walk out the door with merchandise.
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They're smash and grab. Nobody's doing anything.
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District attorney only can prosecute the people who get arrested.
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So you have to look at the law enforcement level and say, do they have the wherewithal?
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Do they have the means to actually go after all these people?
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And that that's kind of a threshold issue right there.
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First, they have to get arrested. That's important.
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Now, if Gascon is also promoting policies about filing cases that is too lenient, that's a different story.
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And that's what I was reading that prosecutors were walking out because he was ordering them not to file three strike cases.
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And you can't do that. You can't do this across the board thing.
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If a defendant has, you know, two prior shopliftings and now he's got an out and out robbery, you're not going to file a three strike case on that.
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But you will file it if this is his third armed robbery.
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You know what I mean? You have to be able to think about who you have in front of you and not just do these across the board.
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And either nullification or the opposite, you know, going after everybody.
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I'll tell you what, I wish we could get you back in there.
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I know you never prosecuted another case, but no matter what anybody says, you prosecuted a great one that in 1994 and 1995.
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I'm proud to know you, Marshall Clark. All the best to you.
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Thank you so much, Megan. It's been a pleasure.