In the meantime you may want to avail yourself of the offer to at least hear them, and Mr. Hahn, Miss House, same thing for your position. All right. Okay. Menzione. Miss Snider, good afternoon.
Yes. When last this issue was before the court, Mr. Douglas was arguing that Miss Menzione's testimony should be admitted and the court asked him to lay a proper foundation and the court felt that he had been unable to do that and I think indicated that we needed to just get a little bit more and perhaps the court would reconsider admitting Miss Menzione's testimony. So we are revisiting that issue today, and if I could just for a moment go back and reiterate what Mr. Douglas said very briefly. And he indicated that Miss Menzione, if she were to testify, would say that she was a travel agent for Thomas Cook Travel corporate emergency travel services and that she would testify under oath and penalty of perjury that on the morning of June 13, 1994, she spoke to a male who identified himself as Orenthal Simpson, that he also indicated his ex-wife had just been murdered, that he had two children, age 9 and almost 6, and that he needed to get back to Los Angeles from Chicago. Also that he had taken the redeye the night before. It was Mr. Douglas' position that this information was very specific and particular and it was his feeling and position that this was specific and particular enough to lay the proper foundation. The court, however, deemed it an inadequate foundation and the Defense has since that time made certain efforts to hopefully augment the foundation that was previously laid by Mr. Douglas. And in that connection, Mr. Pat McKenna and I traveled to Chicago two weeks ago to follow up on business records which we had subpoenaed I believe to this court, and the business records that were SDT'd were records from Hertz Corporation, records from American Airlines. I believe the court has a copy of all of these records. I gave them to Ms. Robertson. The American Airlines records are called the p and R, which is the passenger number record, and those are documents that pertain to the airline ticket that Mr. Simpson had. Any activity surrounding that ticket is indicated on those records, the American Airlines p and R. We also subpoenaed records from Thomas Cook Travel and Thomas cook's watts line, which we are still waiting for and won't be available for several weeks. We also have the hotel phone records, and at least two of these business records are corroborative of Miss Menzione's statement. The hotel phone records indicate that Mr. Simpson--
My recollection is that part of the offer of proof made by Mr. Douglas that--excuse me--the offer of proof by Mr. Douglas did not include the phone records.
Okay. Well, included in your packet, and also we provided a packet of material to the Prosecution, there is a copy of the telephone calls that were made from Mr. Simpson's hotel room. I believe those records were included in the discovery originally provided by the People in the murder book. And those records indicate that there was a call made from Mr. Simpson's room at 8:27 to American Airlines. Additionally, further corroborative, is the American Airlines p and r which indicates that a call was made again surrounding that airline ticket at 8:24 to American Airlines. On that American Airlines p and r there is a number which is 21pu, and that is the employee number of the person who took the call. We also believe that that is the person who connected Mr. Simpson to Lori Menzione; however, American Airlines will not reveal the name of that person to us until they've had an opportunity to okay it with that person and they have been unable to reach her. They did indicate, however, that if the court wanted to call them, they would give that information to you. So it is our belief that it is that individual who connected Mr. Simpson to Lori Menzione. It was very, very troubling because Thomas Cook Travel agency was purchased last year by American Express Travel Services and all of their in-house notes and back-up records were destroyed. The Hertz records--we went to Hertz in Chicago. We talked to those employees and an exhaustive search revealed that no employee of Hertz took the call, so we are relatively certain that it was American Airlines that made this connection. It is our feeling then, therefore, that because we have these two corroborative records, the hotel phone records, in addition to the American Airlines p and R, that hopefully that will augment the foundation enough such that Miss Menzione could then come in and testify about the telephone conversation that she had with Mr. Simpson on that morning.
Yes, your Honor. Very briefly. Even if we assume that the p and r is admissible as a business record and they can lay a foundation for that independently, it still does not match up with the time on the phone bill that indicates a phone call was made to American Airlines. American Airlines call indicated on the phone bill is timed at 8:27. The p and r call to Thomas cook is indicated at 8:24. Beyond that, I see--the bigger problem I see, your Honor, which is--I would like to cut to the chase. I think we are all tired. The bigger problem with this issue is that even if they meet the foundational requirement for linking up the identity of who the caller was by phone record, we have a much more grave problem with the exception to the hearsay rule under 1240. There is no indication, either in--in either the notes of Miss Menzione, which were made closest in time to the phone call and most representative of her recollection, nor in a subsequent interview that was conducted with Miss Lewis, that indicates that anytime the Defendant was at all upset or excited or any of the other foundational requirements that would have to be laid for the admissibility of this hearsay. And it reflects in her statement, your Honor--does the court have a copy of this? All right. The statement indicates that Mr. Simpson was calm, was not upset, was not excited, that the--there was a shattering motion as--a crashing sound as though a phone had fallen.
Okay. Thank you. But he was calm about that. The only time there is indicated any kind of concern that might approach excitement is when Miss Menzione suggested to him that his children might have seen the murder. There is lots of import in that, but nevertheless, I'm sure that is not the focus of what the Defense wants to get in through Miss Menzione. That would be the only even arguable basis for the admission where they have some foundation. And so the People submit that the foundation has not been laid either as to the identity of the caller but certainly completely not been made as to 1240.
Well, again it is our position that the foundation has now been laid and we also think that it is an exception to the hearsay rule, both under 1240 as well as under 1250. We think that all of the--
Well, as your Honor knows, an issue in this case is when Mr. Simpson cut himself. And there has now been testimony from Detective Berris at least that there was a broken glass in the hotel room. There has been testimony from Dr. Baden about the origination of that cut and so it would certainly be relevant.
KEY QUOTEI agree with you as to that, but doesn't 1250 have to do with mental state and that sort of thing?
The point I'm making is I don't think 1250 is a particularly good argument to make. I think the argument is 1240, spontaneous declaration. The argument that Miss Clark is making is that reading between the lines she is going to say that a macho professional athlete like Mr. Simpson could--he could play Superbowls with injuries like that, he wouldn't care, that that is something to him would be a minor inconvenience and would not--would be something that he would ignore.
And that this is an event that is not likely to engender the kind of spontaneous declaration that you are attempting to offer here.
Well, I disagree with that. I think that all of the exceptions to the hearsay rule are exceptions because they are statements that have inherent trustworthiness and because we have someone who is stating something as it is occurring. We also have the further corroboration of Miss Menzione hearing the sound, then I think that that further establishes the trustworthiness which gives rise to the exception in and of itself.
All right. Let me ask you this: Miss Chapman, do you believe that we have any dispute as to what it is Miss Menzione is going to say if she is called to testify, given the reports and interviews that have been conducted?
I guess maybe there is a lesson here. All right. Counsel, the issue that I was most concerned with--actually, the issues here are two-fold: One, since Ms. Menzione was not personally acquainted with Mr. Simpson is there enough here in the record for me to believe that there is--in terms of reliability, that the person to whom she was speaking was in fact Mr. Simpson? I don't think that there is too many people needing to go from Chicago to Los Angeles whose name--whose name is Orenthal Simpson who needs to then on an emergency basis change his plane reservations and those reservations are in fact changed and he does in fact come back to Los Angeles on an earlier flight. And if you can produce the phone records--and I'm not concerned about a three-minute difference between American Airlines and a hotel bill because I don't think that they are necessarily--they have to be in sync with each other, that is close enough for this purpose that I am persuaded that they probably reflect the same call so far as the foundation as to whom it was Miss Menzione was talking to--I'm persuaded that there is enough indicia of reliability there for me to believe that it was in fact Mr. Simpson making the phone call. As to the reaction of Miss Menzione and her description of Mr. Simpson's reaction, I don't have a clear enough flavor from the offer, so I'm going to put you between a rock and a hard place. I'm going to tell you that you've made the indicia of who it is you are calling. I don't know if you are over the 1240 hurdle as far as the excitement of the event, because to have somebody say it is a crashing sound I think I need--I want to hear a little flavor to it, so you probably need to bring her out and have her testify out of the presence to see what is there.
In order to save everybody some trouble with this, Miss Chapman and I agree that her testimony would be as represented in the statement which indicates that he was calm and reported to her calmly that he had broken a glass.
He was very--he was somber. There is no indication at all that he was excited at the time of the occurrence. To the contrary, she indicates he was not, so if all of a sudden she is going to take the witness stand and say something different, we are going to have a real trustworthiness problem, your Honor.
I don't know yet. That is the point I'm making. It is hard for me, reading just this here, to make a ruling on the admissibility. I would like to hear from the witness herself. Unfortunately she is in Chicago. So what I'm telling you, Miss Chapman, is that I would like to hear from the witness, but I think you are over the--who it is who is calling aspect, assuming you can lay the foundation for those records.
It is one of those factual calls that is kind of hard to do it from here. I would like to hear from the witness. Is that unreasonable? All right. Anything else. What do we have scheduled for Friday morning? Swatch drying. Got it. All right. We are in recess. Thank you.
I don't think that there is too many people needing to go from Chicago to Los Angeles whose name is Orenthal Simpson who needs to then on an emergency basis change his plane reservations and those reservations are in fact changed and he does in fact come back to Los Angeles on an earlier flight.
Miss Chapman and I agree that her testimony would be as represented in the statement which indicates that he was calm and reported to her calmly that he had broken a glass.
I'm going to put you between a rock and a hard place. I'm going to tell you that you've made the indicia of who it is you are calling. I don't know if you are over the 1240 hurdle as far as the excitement of the event.
As your Honor knows, an issue in this case is when Mr. Simpson cut himself. And there has now been testimony from Detective Berris at least that there was a broken glass in the hotel room.
Swatch drying. Got it.