I'd like to take this time to thank you one final time. You've made a great sacrifice, all of you have made, to serve on this jury and the extraordinary commitment to the --and the dedication that you have demonstrated as jurors on this important case. And for that we will always be grateful. You do have one final duty to perform. You are going to have to determine how much responsibility O.J. Simpson should bear for the senseless, tragic and irreversible acts of murder he committed on June 12, 1994. Now, we all know that generally in our society when a jury like yourselves finds that a man has committed murder, killed two people, the guilty man goes to jail. Typically for the rest of his life.
That, of course, as Mr. Baker just pointed out, that, of course, is not going to happen here. Mr. Simpson is a free man. Mr. Simpson is a free man. He killed two people. He's a free man. He will get to enjoy the rest of his life as a free man while his two victims lie in their graves and while their families suffer for the rest of their lives. So how is it -- how is it that O.J. Simpson will bear responsibility for the unspeakable acts that he committed. Well, we know one thing for sure. You've been in this case long enough to know one thing: He will not accept that responsibility. He has never accepted any responsibility for anything in his life. He has done everything in his power to avoid accepting responsibility for killing Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. You saw the numbers. Look at all the millions of dollars that he spent hiring lawyers, experts, consultants, everybody under the sun, to hide and cover up his murders. And he succeeded until recently, until Tuesday. When he came into this courtroom, he took the witness stand and he turned to you, looked you straight in the eye, and lied, and lied, and lied, and lied to deceive you into rendering a false verdict. But all of you, all of you, for the first time, saw through the lies, and you saw the truth. And you rendered a true verdict. And you put responsibility on Mr. Simpson for these two murders. And when it is now time to determine the full extent of that responsibility, the last thing you will do, what does O.J. Simpson do? Well, he brought in his lawyers, Mr. Taft, his good friend. He brought in his vendors. He brought in a whole bunch of people, folks, to tell you he is broke. He's broke, and he cannot accept any more responsibility. Did he come? (Counsel indicates to table.) Where is he?
I object, Your Honor. This is irrelevant and immaterial. He's not required to be here and doesn't have to be here.
Is he here, ladies and gentlemen? Not required to be here. Required to be out on the golf course someplace. You see, he still refuses to accept responsibilities. He can't come here and face you ladies and gentlemen because you are the truth, have declared that he is a killer, and he can't face you, you, and you. He can't face the truth. And that's why he's not here, and that's why -- that's why he sent his messengers to tell you that he's broke and he'll never earn a dime again for the rest of his life. I guess he'd like to you believe that he'd be lucky to own a credit card. Well, he still has his life, doesn't he, ladies and gentlemen? He still has his life. You know, I'm not going to go through all this evidence. You've been here long enough. His people can came in here and say he's a pauper; he's got no ability to earn a dime. We're required by law to present some evidence about his financial condition. We put folks on to try to explain to you that he has money. He's gotten greater wealth than he had before and he stands to earn millions and millions of dollars for years to come. And don't be fooled by this idea that he's going to walk off into the sunset and get a job at McDonald's. We put up this board (indicating to board entitled Orenthal Simpson's Net Worth, Reported by Simpson). I should talk a little bit about Mr. Simpson's credibility and honesty, which I think is really at the bottom of what we've been listening to the last day or so. It's really coming down to who do you believe. Do you believe O.J. Simpson and guys like Mr. Taft? Before there was any problem, before there was any dispute, 12 million, 13 million, 8~million, whatever, all of a sudden, when we asked for financial records for this case, to be used against him in this case, look what happens. All of a sudden, the money's gone. It all disappears. And they've got answers for it all. It's all gone, look. When we asked for what we asked for in 1996 for this case, to show you folks so that you can make an intelligent, informed decision, gone. That's what that chart means. Where's all the money? No one knows where it is. They know. We tried to do whatever we could with the limited records they gave us. They didn't give us the real records and all the books. You heard --
Your Honor, I object. There's no evidence to that. There's no inference that we didn't give them all the records. That's --
-- say he cannot account for all the cash; he didn't -- doesn't know where all the cash is. You heard him. They know where it is. Let them explain it. If it's 15 million, 13 million, 8 million, whatever, but don't -- don't be fooled. Don't be fooled. Mr. Taft comes up here and tells us, you know, Mr. Simpson has no money, but I'm billing hundreds of thousands of dollars to him; my full-time job is taking care of O.J. Simpson. You've got bookkeepers; you've got computers; you've got Mr. Goodfriend working for Mr. Simpson. We've got a full-time secretary, Kathy Randa. Why does a guy with no money need all these people to take care of nothing? What are they all doing? What's this whole big financial enterprise doing if he doesn't have any money? Let me tell you what they're doing: They're waiting for your final verdict; they're waiting for these six months that the trial's going on to end. Everything dropped off the last six months. You think Simpson might be lying in the weeds? Do you think he might be maintaining a low profile, like he might be trying to show you that he doesn't have any earning capacity? Do you think Mr. Simpson is the kind of guy to do something like that? Do you think he might try to mislead you? They tell us he's made $600 in autographs in the last six months. I hope he pays his housekeeper more than $600 a month. $20,000 in mortgages; $25,000, pool man, gardeners, Taft, Goodfriend, this person, that person. Where did all this -- who pays for all this? Mr. Taft says, I've got bills -- Mr. Simpson's got bills to pay. He's got bills to pay. What do you mean, bills? What are bills? He's got to pay for his luxury; he's got to pay for his mansion; he's got to pay for his golf; he's got to pay for his trips; he's got to pay for his cars; he's got to pay for his housekeeper; he's got to pay for his beautiful lifestyle that he lives. That's what the word "bills" means. Don't be fooled. And -- and the unconscionable irony of all this, ladies and gentlemen, is that this man is making more money because he murdered two people than ever before. Just think about that. He murders two people, and within four weeks, he puts out a trademark application for cutlery. Think about that one. For knives, O.J. Simpson knives. That's the kind of man we're dealing with. Sits in jail and he writes a book called "I Want To Tell You," the idea being, I want to tell you the truth; I want to tell you that I'm innocent. Makes a million dollars on that book, which is one big lie. Then he gets out of jail and he makes a video. Can you imagine that? He hires guys with cameras and scripts and writers, and they come over to his house and they actually sit down and write down -- write out a movie they're going to put on video and sell about the evidence in the case against him, talking about the glove that had his murdered wife's blood on it, talking about blood in the house. What kind of guy is this? Makes a video, after murdering two people, about the murders and sells it for money. And his lawyer gets on the stand and he says, gee, we're disappointed we didn't make more money off that video. That video that talks about Ron Goldman's blood and Nicole's blood. Gee, we're disappointed. We should have made more money. Well, maybe in the next video, in the next book, whatever else this man's going to do, maybe they will make more money. Maybe they'll get their wish. You know, the bottom line here is, this man, wherever he is now, whatever golf course he's playing on right now, he comes home every day, pulls his car in, has dinner, talks to his friends, and goes to sleep. Has his family. He has his plans for the future. He has his life. But Nicole's life is over. My client's son's life is over. And they do not return to their homes every day. They do not get to come home and sit down at the dinner table. They do not get to return to the warm comfort of their beds at night. Because O.J. Simpson took all of this away from them forever. And he doesn't have the courage to walk into this courtroom and face you and tell you to give him a break, which is what he wants. He wants a break. Go easy on him. He doesn't have the courage to face you and ask you himself, so he asks his good lawyers and friends and colleagues. Give me a break, ladies and gentlemen. Let me make money again. Don't take it away from me. Just listen to me and believe me this one last time. I have no money and I'll never be able to make money again. Just believe me. Just trust in me. This is what he's saying to you, ladies and gentlemen, except he doesn't have the guts to get up there and tell you himself. So they send all these imposters here. Don't fall for it. It's another O.J. Simpson con. Don't fall for it. You're too smart. You are the ones who have finally stood up to this man and said no. You are the only ones who have not allowed him to escape responsibility. You know, punitive damages are things we usually see in cases when somebody cheats another person out of some of money, someone slanders another person, libels them, commits a dishonest business practice, breaks a contract in bad faith. This is where we usually see punitive damages get awarded against the person. We're not talking about lost profits, are we? We're talking about murder, double murder. We're talking about the most despicable act a human being can commit. And O.J. Simpson must be punished for that. He must be punished. He must be punished. Even though he will not come here and listen to you, you must send him a message. You must send him a message as loud as humanly possible, so that he can hear it on whatever golf course he is hiding out on right now. You send him a message with your verdict: You cannot kill two people and get away with it, no matter how much money you have, no matter how many lies you tell. You are not above the law. Make him pay, ladies and gentlemen. Don't let him dismiss away your verdict by signing a few more autographs or flashing his million-dollar smile on a few extra photographs. You are the last ones who will have the power to reach out and punish him for what he did to two innocent people. There is no one else after you. You are the only ones who can speak for the victims. You are their last resort. As I told you last week, there will never be true justice in this case. All you can do is assure some small sense of justice, some small vindication for two beautiful, wonderful, young, innocent people, who he took away from all of us. That's the only thing you can do. I know and I trust that you will do the right thing. CLOSING ARGUMENT
First of all, and I hope that at this point, these words don't start to ring hollow, but I just really want to thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart, from the bottom of my client's heart. What you've done is, you put in some extraordinary effort. You have suffered inconveniences, and you've had to go through some sacrifices that were attendant to the extraordinary pressures of this particular case. And now what you have is one final question. And that is, what type of punitive damages should be awarded to the estate of Ron and to the estate of Nicole. As you know, Nicole -- that there are two beneficiaries, Sydney and Justin. This would be for their benefit, held in trust until adulthood, independent of Mr. Simpson. And this will be the only time that you will have the capacity, the ability to act financially to enhance these estates. Mr. Petrocelli addressed the money issue, the financial situation of Mr. Simpson and his lifestyle. What I want to talk about a little bit is to just touch back on the reprehensibility of Mr. Simpson's conduct, the harm he caused. You already know from the evidence what Mr. Simpson did to Ron Goldman and Nicole, and you know what resulted from it. You've heard about families shattered by a phone call on June 13, 1994. You've heard of hearts broken from the loss of loved ones. You've heard of recurring nightmares that are played out nightly in homes of parents and children. And I could bring out the crime-scene photos again and the autopsy photos. But at this point, it sort of upsets my stomach to try to play upon your human sensibilities by even asking you to look at that. But I want to you remember it and I want you to think of it. What I do want you to remember is Nicole's blood flowing east down the sidewalk, and Ron's blood, these people facing east, and Mr. Simpson's bloody shoe prints heading west. Remember that Ron's death was one of extraordinary courage, while Mr. Simpson's acts were that of a consummate coward. Now, the punitive damages that you're going to award are intended to set an example, as well as punish Mr. Simpson for his acts that were so willful, so malicious, so oppressive, and in such total disregard of human life. And you have to act in such a way that no other parents will suffer the way that the Goldman's have had to suffer, the way that the Browns have had to suffer every day of their lives, or that no other children will have their mother taken away from them in the bastion of their own home, when they're upstairs sleeping, from one place that a child is supposed to feel comfort, feel safety. Your duty is to punish Mr. Simpson for his reprehensible conduct on that night. And not only punish him, but deter any morally reprehensible conduct of this sort from ever, ever happening again. And you have to make an example of Mr. Simpson. And by awarding punitive damages, exemplary damages, you're going to tell not only Mr. Simpson, but any man, that -- any man who can't quite accept the fact that a woman doesn't love him, after years of humiliation or embarrassment, or any man who contemplates a master plan of murder of concealment and creation of an alibi with a callous disregard of children sleeping upstairs, that they're not going to get away with it. And your message will have the intent and the purpose of sparing others the mistreatment and the murder that Nicole and Ron suffered that night. Now, the one thing you should keep in mind is just some very specific conduct of Mr. Simpson, and look back a little bit before that night. The fact that Nicole, in particular, was living in fear before this night, even living in fear to the extent that she even had to call a shelter. In addition to that, that she died at his hand that night. Just keep in mind that he went to the measure of calling that house that night, making sure that she was home, making sure the kids were upstairs in bed, before he headed over there: Before he headed over there in that dark sweat suit, the rubber-soled shoes, the ski cap. The gloves he donned, the gloves that Nicole brought him for Christmas, he put on his hands to butcher his wife that night. And he took that razor-sharp knife, and he hid in the pitch black, and he stalked her like prey, and he murdered her and he murdered Ron. And that's what you're going to punish him for. And the reprehensibility of this despicable conduct jolts the sensibilities of all our minds. And you have to act on that. Ron Goldman died bravely, and as a result of unfortunate circumstances. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he died valiantly; he died protecting a friend; he died protecting a woman, and he died protecting a mother. And Nicole died for one reason and one reason alone: And that's because Mr. Simpson wanted her dead. He planned her murder; he executed her; and then he acted to cover up and conceal his actions. And nothing is more reprehensible than a calculated killer. And here's a man, or a charade of a man, I should say, who had the presence of mind afterwards to get rid of the murder weapon, the killing clothes. He manipulated his demeanor on his way to Chicago and upon his return. He changed his purported alibi to fit facts. As they emerged, he lied to you on the stand. And when confronted with uncontroverted facts, under oath, he accused the world of a colossal conspiracy. And utterly without remorse, he assassinated the character of witnesses. He jeopardized careers. He embarrassed ordinary citizens who just came in here to tell the truth. And he brutalized Nicole's character. He attacked her very moral fiber, when she wasn't here to defend herself, all to cheapen her life and make him look better in your eyes. This is the kinds of man he is. All in an attempt to save Orenthal James Simpson. Now, just about everything we do as citizens, we sort of do passively or incorrectly in a democracy to change things, whether it's voting, writing to elected officials. Even the people demonstrating outside this courthouse, they want to say something that is of a passive nature. But you collectively, as jurors, are a rare institution that can collectively and directly make a decision or send a message that could affect public policy or change public perceptions. And by you having the power to impose punitive damages on Mr. Simpson, the law has given you people, as representatives of the community, the authority and discretion to go beyond this case and make a community statement to your peers as to what you think of Mr. Simpson's conduct and what is necessary to prevent this from happening in the future. You people can say and set what your community standards are and what your community statement is going to be about this man. And the particular message has to be that the fame and fortune and celebrity status does not enable any man to act in the manner Mr. Simpson did; that no husband has a right to batter his wife; that no man has the right to embarrass, humiliate a woman; and that no man has the right to take a mother from her children or a son from his parents or a daughter from their parents. You just can't do it. And you people will can take the measures to do everything possible to ensure that that never happens again. I don't know if you remember my rebuttal statement a while back. I thought I'd mention this about, bring Nicole's children under her wing; let an angel protect them. But right now, Nicole's like an angel with one wing; and you, the jury, collectively, are like an angel with one wing. Only the combination of the two of you that will enable this message to fly, that will protect mothers, children, sons, daughters, and parents in the future. You have to say that you're not going to accept this conduct. And you're being asked to determine what's the appropriate amount of dollars and cents to be levied against Mr. Simpson. What type of monetary award will convert the otherwise water in this man's veins to make it boil? I don't know if it's possible. But you have to use your everyday sensibility in reaching this decision, and that's why you jurors are asked to do it. You don't need a machine to do it. You don't need a computer to do it. You don't need a calculator to do it. We need you people to do it. And to quantify the taking of a human life is no easy task. And collectively, between you, you are going to have to engage in some discourse, some logical starting point in doing that. When Mr. Baker, in his opening statement yesterday, he had the gall to mention this $250 stipulation regarding Nicole's estate, suggesting, perhaps, that that might be the appropriate amount to punish Mr. Simpson for the taking of a human life. That's roughly like a fine that might be imposed for smoking in a public place. That amount was simply a vehicle, a mechanism to get to this phase of the case. You'll hear the Judge instruct you on the reprehensibility and nature of Mr. Simpson's conduct in the cause, what we consider to be considered by you in making your determination. To quantify or put a dollar sign on anything is almost impossible to do. There's only one man who I can think of: That's the deal-maker who you've tried, to do anything like that. Five or six million dollars. That's what Mr. Simpson wanted to impose upon himself as a fine, as a punishment, by a written contract, if he ever even hit Nicole again. That is what he felt his punishment should be just for striking a woman, for striking the mother of his children. He is the one that always wanted to put a value on relationships. It's unfortunate that you people have to even think in these terms, but this man also did. "You're not going to have a fucking dime left, bitch. I've already talked to my lawyers about this." Sound familiar? June 3, 1994. That is still what Mr. Simpson would want today. What does he do? He sends in Leroy "Skip" Taft, his lawyer, to try to deliver on that deal, still. It's outrageous. And the unfortunate thing is, in Mr. Simpson's mind, as we said, in the empty chair over there, it still may all be worth it to him if he's left to play golf while these people lay in their graves. You know, Mr. Petrocelli discussed the financial aspects of this case. But unfortunately, in our society, sometimes we tend to elevate, glorify, almost deify villains. It was Mr. Baker who said that there's been no case like this in the history of the world. And by implication, there's been more -- no man more vilified than his client, which we've heard could be making him the most well-paid villain in the world down the road, too. And sure, there might be some speculation in there. That all we can ask you people to do is err on the side of safety, on the side of good. Because if he doesn't have the money to pay it down the road, he won't. But if it's there --
Don't let Mr. Simpson laugh at you people down the road. Don't let him mock you people, what you do with this phase of the trial, the way he did with every good witness who took the stand. Don't be swayed by pleas for compassion or sympathy. Only remember -- only remember the enormity of Mr. Simpson's conduct, nothing else. Now, probably the hardest thing to do right now is say thank you and sit down. Because, after all this time, I'm not going to have the chance to speak again. But I know one thing that's been developed during the course of this trial is belief and trust and faith that you people will do the right thing. One of God's great miracles is enabling ordinary people to do extraordinary things. And if you can deter one man from killing one woman, and deter one man from leaving a child motherless, or deter one man from taking away a son or a daughter from their parents, then you people have done something extraordinary, and you should be proud. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll adjourn till 1:30. Don't talk about the case. Don't form or express any opinions.
(At 12:00 noon, a recess was taken until 1:30 p.m. of the same day.) SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA; FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1997 1:41 PM DEPARTMENT NO. WEQ HON. HIROSHI FUJISAKI, JUDGE. APPEARANCES:
He killed two people. He's a free man. He will get to enjoy the rest of his life as a free man while his two victims lie in their graves and while their families suffer for the rest of their lives.
The unconscionable irony of all this, ladies and gentlemen, is that this man is making more money because he murdered two people than ever before.
He took the witness stand and he turned to you, looked you straight in the eye, and lied, and lied, and lied, and lied to deceive you into rendering a false verdict.
Nicole's like an angel with one wing; and you, the jury, collectively, are like an angel with one wing. Only the combination of the two of you that will enable this message to fly.
You're not going to have a fucking dime left, bitch. I've already talked to my lawyers about this. — June 3, 1994.