Okay. I understand, Mr. Baker, you informed my clerk that you have a change of plans.
Well, Your Honor, I wanted to make the Court aware that we probably will go all day today. I know we sat down and tried to consolidate this, but as this Court is aware, the plaintiffs went a day and a half, and that would be a day and a half for us. I apologize for not being able to do it quicker, but after 4 months, I think, in my client's defense, the time that we need to put that level of time in. Believe me, sir, we are not trying to filibuster, we're just trying to get through the points. As you know, a lot of evidence, an awful lot of witnesses, and serious allegations, and so we would request the Court's indulgence in that regard.
Well, based upon our discussion yesterday evening that you would go half a day today, and plaintiff would conclude in the afternoon, and we would instruct this evening, the plans for tomorrow's conferences were not changed by me. So that being the case, we will allow you to argue all day, and then we'll resume Monday and we'll be adjourned tomorrow. Bring in the jury.
Well, I know -- I told you I'd do the best I could. I didn't say I could confirm that I could do it. You know, I don't think it's fair --
I'm satisfied that you informed me that you would, and so I did nothing, and I don't think it's appropriate under those circumstances to put the Court in that position.
Well, on the flip side of that coin, Your Honor, plaintiffs get up for a day and a half, and I have to get up and do my final, and my rebuttal concurrently after a 20-minute break. Now, what you're saying is that they can have three days to do their rebuttal and to plan their rebuttal. I don't think that's fair to my client. What you said at the sidebar is that it wasn't obligatory. You didn't say you would cancel it. You didn't say it was obligatory.
Mr. Baker, when Mr. Petrocelli started his argument, he wanted to stop at 4 o'clock. At your insistence I made him go to 4:30, disrupting his argument and his time line. I think that you're not in the position to be too complaining under those circumstances. Okay. Bring the jury.
KEY QUOTETHE BAILIFF: Jury walking. (The following proceedings were held in open court in the presence of the jury.) (Jurors resume their respective seats.)
Yesterday I told you that we were going to hear all of the argument today, and I would instruct you later, possibly in the evening, and give you the case. I also informed the attorneys that this Court was going to be dark tomorrow.
Well, the Court made that representation to you about finishing up the case and giving the case over to you today, this evening, based upon what the attorneys had informed me about their plans to complete the case today. I'm now informed that there have been a change in plans and the case is not going to complete. So based upon their representations yesterday the Court made no changes in the Court's plan for tomorrow. So originally, the plan was to instruct you on the case and then have you deliberating tomorrow, but in as much as they're not going to finish today, and the Court did not change the plans for tomorrow's conference, we're going to just go to the end of today hearing what portion of the argument that the attorneys complete, and then instead of resuming tomorrow, we will resume Monday and hear the rest of the argument Monday, and instruct you on the law, and give you the case over on Monday, instead of tomorrow. So tomorrow we will be dark. All right. I'm sorry if you are inconvenienced by this. I hope you aren't. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Baker, you may resume.
The last thing Mr. Baker intended to say before his voice left him and now you're going to hear from Mr. Blasier about some of the physical evidence. I first want to just make a couple of personal comments. Let me be, hopefully, one of the last lawyers to thank you for your attention. It's been a long trial. It's been a lot of detailed testimony, and very difficult testimony to absorb. But we've all noticed how many notes you've been taking, and that's always a good sign that you're paying attention. Just so you kind of know where I'm coming from here, I, back in May of last year, had back surgery after the criminal trial ended, and had to have another surgery at Christmans time. That's why I'm in this chair. I can walk. This is not a gimmick or anything. But I'm just recovering from some fairly serious surgery, so I'm going to be sitting down during most of the time. I've been a trial lawyer for 27 years. I'm kind of used to my cohorts here rambling around and engaged warriors and trapped in exhibits and doing all that sort of thing. I possibly won't be doing a whole lot of that. My colleagues are going to be helping me in the back here. I had lots of screws and plates put in my back. I've been told that the good news is I have $20.30 more scrap value than I did before Christmas, so. . . (Laughter) I also -- as you know, I missed a couple of weeks of testimony after Christmas, and I've reviewed that testimony to the best of my ability, and I will not intentionally misstate anything. As you know, we have Gina, who's been here during the entire trial, and she's the one -- she's the rule-keeper. She's the one who will tell you what the witnesses really said. If you have any question about anything that I say or any of the other attorneys say about a piece of evidence, and you're not sure what the witness said, you ask the Court Reporter, it's all down there on paper, and on computer, actually, much easier to find it on computer. Let me tell you what I view your role to be in this case. You are -- and the Judge will tell you all this when he instructs you. You're the judges of the facts; the sole judges of the facts. And there are certain burdens, and I'm going to talk about some of the instructions, briefly, that apply to you. They all apply to you, of course. But there are some that I think are a little more significant than others. The plaintiffs have the burden of proof in this case. What that really means from your standpoint, I submit to you, is that you're supposed to be like 12 people from Missouri; and by that I mean you're supposed to be sitting there with your arms crossed, figuratively, saying, show me, show me, before they're entitled to your verdict. You have to be convinced to the burden of proof that the Judge will tell you. I am also not going to -- well, let me not get ahead of myself here. Now, you have heard a lot of witnesses. You already have a sense of the credibility of some of these witnesses, particularly the law enforcement witnesses. And I'm not going to sit up here all day and talk about every piece of evidence that came in and talk about every witness. You've heard all of that. So I'm not going to sit here and repeat that. Hopefully, I'll be relatively short. Comparatively. That's lawyer time now, so I apologize in advance if I don't keep with that. Now, I want to do a brief -- make a couple comments about Mr. Petrocelli's argument. We've all been doing this for a long time. There are things that come out in argument that may not be accurate; techniques that are used that may mislead, or may appeal to passion, or whatever, and I want -- and I just want to talk about some of those things. I'm not suggesting anything volitional on Mr. Petrocelli's part at all. This is a very intense case, as you know, and, you know, we're in the heat of battle, and this is what we do, so -- but I think there are some important things because this is -- you have a very difficult job because you have to work your way through all of this. There's a lot of stuff you've heard that is not something that you're supposed to consider. All of the appeals to a motion, that's not -- you're not to consider that.
Thank you. We have an adversarial system; that's us against them. And I want to show you first, and I'm going to try when I talk to you, to -- to refer to transcript, page and line, because I think that's only fair, because that's what the evidence is, not what -- what I or someone says is a conclusory statement. The first quote I would put up from Mr. Petrocelli's argument is he argued the impossible one. (Displayed on Elmo.)
Mr. Petrocelli yesterday or -- I'm sorry, day before yesterday, I think it was, made a comment at page 49, line 20: (Mr. Blasier read a portion of Mr. Petrocelli's closing argument from the civil trial transcript.) Well, they never proved that the blankets had any head hairs of Mr. Simpson, or any fibers, or anything regarding Mr. Simpson.
Well, what we know is -- if you go to the bottom of that slide, Phil -- is the blanket was left by the police on the ground to be picked up. I think you saw pictures of the crime scene with the tape down and the blanket just lying there, so it's -- obviously, we don't have that blanket. We don't have the ability to prove something like that, even if that were a requirement of proof, we don't. So there are a lot of times when the attorney might say, they didn't prove this, they didn't prove that, or it's completely impossible matters of proof to begin with. The next slide I put up is argument not supported by evidence. Again, the heat of battle statements are made that -- that may not really reflect the evidence. And Mr. Petrocelli stated, in his closing argument, on page 37: (Mr. Blasier read a portion of Mr. Petrocelli's closing argument from the civil trial transcript.) These blood drops (indicating), of course, are on the left side of the shoe prints. They're on the left side of the shoe prints indicating that the person who dropped this blood was injured on his left side, such as a left finger or left hand.
Now, this is the myth of this case that got started way back at the very beginning of the criminal case, that all of these drops are to the left of the shoe prints. They aren't. Phil, you want to put the bottom of the slide up. And we'll look at some of the boards. (Document displayed.)
KEY QUOTEThat simply is not a true fact. One or two of them could be. But there aren't -- this is not a trail of blood that is right to the left of the shoe prints, even though if you read virtually every book about this case, that seems to be the myth. So it's your job to work through all of that and look at the actual evidence, and you make up your mind; are these blood drops to the left of shoe prints or aren't they. Look at the diagrams and you make up your own mind. Mr. Petrocelli also made some statements during his closing that simply were inaccurate. He made conclusions or told you what some of the evidence was that simply was not accurate. Now, Phil, you want to put the cable misstatements up there. (Document displayed on Elmo.)
He said on page 81 of the transcript, line 6, and this is one of their big points, and we're going to talk about this more:
The actual evidence on that was read to you. It's a stipulation. That was read on the last day that we took testimony, on January 16th. Reading from page 183, Mr. Baker -- Phil Baker read the stipulation: (Mr. Blasier read a stipulation from the civil trial transcript.) All parties stipulate that criminalist Gary Simms of the California Department of Justice, were he to return to testify in this trial, would testify under oath that at the request of the prosecutors in the criminal case, he performed a presumptive blood test on Item No. 11, a stain collected on the southern walkway of 360 North Rockingham, and that test was negative for the presence of blood.
There is no blood back there. That's a false statement. You need to work through these things and figure out what are the accurate statements. And one last before I move on to another topic. And this one kind of irks me a little bit; admissions misstatement on page 40. During his argument, and with much emotion and flare, and doing things that lawyers do, told you the defense in this case, and it's important you understand this, they don't contest these results, they don't contest that these DNA test results matched Mr. Simpson's blood. Do you remember when Mr. Lambert read to you something called defendant's responses to requests for admissions? I don't know if it was very exciting, but he sat here and read to you -- those were the defense's admission to those blood tests results and they're conclusive on this issue. Then he says and they establish that those blood drops are Mr. Simpson's blood, and you have to accept that they don't contest that. Folks, that's what this whole trial is about. That's what this whole trial is about. Now, these requests for admissions were a bunch of -- I think there were a total of 1500 of them, or something. The purpose of this is to say, look, can both sides agree that maybe there is something we can agree on, and not disagree on everything, and save a little bit of time. So we worked on these all summer to try and see if we could reach some agreement on some of this evidence, and what we agreed to do, and I want you to go to the --
I object. This is completely outside the record, misstates -- they were ordered -- there was no voluntary agreement.
I'd have the jury admonished there was -- he told them there was an agreement. They were court ordered --
Let me tell you, part of the request for admissions that was read to you, and these are all kind of form questions, and they all say the same -- I mean they have the same basic format. Here's what was actually admitted. For instance, Request No. 208, admit that the item identified at the criminal trial as LAPD Evidence Item 508 contained human blood that had an ABO blood type
I don't think it's fair -- after 4 months, I think, in my client's defense, the time that we need to put that level of time in. Believe me, sir, we are not trying to filibuster, we're just trying to get through the points.
Mr. Baker, when Mr. Petrocelli started his argument, he wanted to stop at 4 o'clock. At your insistence I made him go to 4:30, disrupting his argument and his time line. I think that you're not in the position to be too complaining under those circumstances.
I've been told that the good news is I have $20.30 more scrap value than I did before Christmas, so. . .
You're supposed to be like 12 people from Missouri; and by that I mean you're supposed to be sitting there with your arms crossed, figuratively, saying, show me, show me, before they're entitled to your verdict.
This is the myth of this case that got started way back at the very beginning of the criminal case, that all of these drops are to the left of the shoe prints. They aren't.