O.J. Not Curious About Crime Details, Detective Says Defendant Irate At Testimony; Juror Under Intense Scrutiny
A detective Thursday described O.J. Simpson as distressed but not curious about details when told of his ex-wife’s death - potentially damaging testimony that drew angry words and looks from the defendant.
”`Oh, my God, Nicole is killed. Oh, my God, she’s dead,”’ detective Ronald Phillips quoted Simpson as responding when reached in a hotel room in Chicago the morning after the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman had been discovered. “And then he got very upset on the telephone.”
Phillips, who later came under intense cross-examination by defense counsel Johnnie Cochran, said he did not use the word “murder” in talking to Simpson, and, Phillips said, the football Hall of Famer did not ask what had occurred.
“Did Mr. Simpson ask you how she was killed?” prosecutor Marcia Clark asked after Cochran’s objection to this line of questioning was overruled. She then asked whether the accused had wanted to know when Nicole Simpson had been killed, where the crime had taken place or any other specifics about the case.
Each time, Phillips replied: “No.”
Simpson frequently has responded to testimony with expressions of disbelief and animated asides to the lawyers sitting beside him. But he seldom has looked as irate, or seemed to protest as aggressively to his attorneys, as he did during Phillips’ recounting of the June 13 telephone conversation. During his calm but accusatory questioning of Phillips, Cochran repeatedly tried to show that police had not followed proper procedures.
In particular, the defense continued its assault on investigators’ hours-long lapse in calling the coroner. That defense tactic was intended both to induce doubts about police competence and intentions and to undermine the prosecution’s estimate of the time of death based on a dog’s barking.
Cochran also sought to imply that police had not really tried to call Simpson after the murders had been discovered but had wanted instead to get to his estate for some nefarious reason. If the police really had wanted to reach the defendant, Cochran asked, why did they spend so much time looking unsuccessfully for his home number when a speed-dial button on his ex-wife’s telephone was labeled “Daddy”?
Phillips calmly answered that he hadn’t noticed the marking.
The courtroom seemed particularly tense Thursday. That was, in part, because of ongoing problems with the jury pool, which again were the subject of private discussions before court convened.
Three original jurors have been replaced by alternates, and there has been extensive speculation this week that another one soon will be ejected.
That juror, before being selected to serve, reportedly placed a bet at work on Simpson not being convicted.
The same juror, a 46-year-old black courier whose brother works for the San Francisco 49ers football organization - for which the defendant once played - wore 49ers clothing during a tour of Simpson’s estate last Sunday and evidently looked carefully at photos there despite the judge’s orders not to do so.