FOR NINE MONTHS THEY WERE AMERICA’S most obsessively fascinating odd couple. Marcia Clark: feisty, combative, flirtatious. Christopher Darden: sullen, chip on the shoulder, a tormented soul on display before millions of viewers. Darden, through no fault of his own, ultimately found himself in a morass of divided loyalties that was more baneful than Clark’s. An African-American, he was prosecuting a man whom much of the black community–egged on by the defense team–decided was another victim of a racist law-enforcement system. He calls it the “Darden Dilemma.” “I was branded as an Uncle Tom, a traitor used by The Man,” he writes poignantly in his new, highly personal, book, “In Contempt” (excerpt, page 48). “I received death threats and racist letters from blacks and whites alike. As the case became more and more about race, I watched helplessly as it ripped the scabs off America’s wounds.”
Darden’s memoir, the first from the principal legal players in the Simpson trial, is much like his appearance in court: over-the-edge with emotion and anguish, other times precise and businesslike. Sorry he ever took the case, he believes that the trial was lost the moment the jury was picked. Not solely because of the jurors’ race, he says, but also their education and “attitude–they just didn’t like us.” “My sense was that they just had their minds made up already,” he told NEWSWEEK last week in his first major print interview. “They didn’t want proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They wanted proof beyond some degree that mortal men can’t provide.”
Darden also fired off some injudicious words at Judge Lance Ito for allowing the defense to raise the race issue. “As far as I am concerned,” he said, “he surrendered his gavel to the defense and gave them the key to the courthouse.” But he seems to feel the most sadness that Johnnie Cochran, “another black lawyer,” made it clear that the trial rested on race. “I will never forget watching Cochran draw a line in the sand,” Darden writes. “I will never forget watching him choose that butcher over me.” Cochran called the charge preposterous, saying Darden was aware of former detective Mark Fuhrman’s racist past. “Chris Darden was part of a case that didn’t have clean hands,” he told NEWSWEEK.
Darden doesn’t spare himself, either. He accepts blame for having Simpson try on the tight-fitting gloves. Clark didn’t talk to him for days after the debacle, Darden writes, and he was frozen out of strategy sessions for weeks. He also concedes that he felt strongly that Fuhrman was lying about not uttering racial epithets in 10 years, but didn’t try to keep him off the stand. As for his relationship with Clark, he describes it as a deep friendship, leaving wiggle room for inquiring minds to roam.
That’s not the only tantalizing tidbit left hanging. He writes of finding potential evidence left uncollected in A. C. Cowlings’s white Bronco–including a bloodied towel. But he didn’t find it till six weeks after the famous chase and then Darden made little effort to have the evidence analyzed. At the time he says he was assigned to the Cowlings investigation, not the murders.
Disillusioned, Darden, 39, doubts he will return to the courtroom immediately. After the trial he went on an extended vacation, gave lectures and began teaching at Southwestern University School of Law. He received a reported $1.3 million for the book.
Darden writes that he refuses to watch or read anything about Simpson. That won’t be so easy starting in September, when the civil trial on a suit charging Simpson with wrongful death is scheduled to start. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs–Nicole’s estate and the family of Ron Goldman–insist they will present a crisper case than the state’s.
For one thing, NEWSWEEK has learned that the plaintiffs have developed a new theory about the relationship between Nicole and O.J.–one that they believe better explains the motive for the killings. Simpson, they argue, was afraid of losing control of a newly independent Nicole and angry that she seemed to be keeping him from his two children. In the criminal trial, prosecutors portrayed Simpson as a jealous husband who killed his ex-wife as the final step in a classic spousal-abuse pattern. But jurors never bought that connection. A source close to the plaintiffs said: “Marcia Clark had one theory she wanted to stick to–the domestic abuse and jealousy. But [the motive] was a buildup of rejection from Nicole and isolation from the kids.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers say they have drawn this more nuanced picture after conducting wide-ranging depositions. In the 10-day deposition given by Simpson, he says he broke off the relationship amicably a month before the murders in 1994. Then, the relationship seemed to turn nasty. Less than two weeks before the murder, Simpson related, Nicole arranged an excuse for their daughter, Sydney, to skip a visit with her father. Angry, O.J. told Nicole: “Don’t get bitchy.”
Simpson will have to tell his story directly from the witness stand in the civil trial. He can’t be tried again for murder so he has no privilege against self-incrimination. Lawyers say they are relishing the confrontation, though Simpson may be hard to handle on the witness stand. “O. J. Simpson is a world-class competitor who is extremely charismatic and charming,” admits lead attorney Daniel Petrocelli, who represents the Goldman family. Indeed, Simpson has a story and he sticks to it–from CNN to his $29.95 videotape.
If there’s anything Simpson need fear, though, it’s the law of civil trials. Only nine of 12 jurors are required to find Simpson liable. And, as Petrocelli says, “we only have to prove that O.J. “probably’ caused the deaths.” (Technically, it’s a “preponderance of the evidence.”) The trial will take place in affluent Santa Monica, where jurors may not buy the defense’s police-conspiracy theory.
Indeed, if the plaintiffs have their way, race, the issue that so tore up Chris Darden, will never enter the civil trial. This time, they are counting on the judge (still unnamed) to limit testimony about Fuhrman’s language and bigoted views. Too late, maybe, but Darden might find some solace. “Mark Fuhrman’s racism has nothing to do with this case,” he told NEWSWEEK. “Mark Fuhrman didn’t plant evidence. I believed that then. I believe it today.”
