All right. Back on the record in the Simpson matter. All parties are again present. The jury is not present. Mr. Cochran, did you want to make any further comment on the--
I would ask, your Honor, would the court allow Dean Uelmen to make that for me at this point?
Thank you very kindly, your Honor, for this opportunity. What I wanted to indicate to the court, and I will do it as briefly as possible, is that I believe my colleague Mr. Darden opened the door when the testimony was elicited about a cover-up. Further, I think if--I think you have to, first of all, look at the thrust of their cross-examination. The impression they gave to this jury was that Miss McKinny was in some way trying to profit from these tapes, profit from the transcripts, and nothing could be further from the truth. I need hardly remind this court that we got your Honor to issue a subpoena that I went to North Carolina and we were rebuffed at the superior court, the comparable court, the superior court. We had to go all the way to North Carolina court of appeals. And these lawyers, Messers. Regwan and Schwartz, did an excellent job in fighting us to get this. She resisted coming to California. When she finally got here August 1, you saw the problems we had even getting the tapes then.
I think they have opened the door clearly to that. But other than that, your Honor, in addition to that--so that is the impression they give to this jury. She doesn't want to be out here. She didn't favor one side or the other. You will recall that when we were in court that day--I will get to the point--Mr. Simpson, you will recall--usually I'm sitting next to him when we talk about that, your Honor.
I understand. You will recall that when we argued about the tapes belonging to the Defense or at least we have the right to it, she went down that same day and gave a copy to the Prosecution. She interviewed with him for hours. That is why she was so taken aback about what she perceived as negativity. You last week, your Honor--I know you don't like to be quoted, but this is a time I think I can quote you appropriately--but you said last week that it was clear--after listening to the tapes it was clear that Fuhrman wasn't describing a fictional character but describing his point of view. I mean everybody in the world knows now, if that is true, these tapes are the best evidence of what they are trying to make it, not like she is trying to embellish this. She again throws out with Michael Viner a nondisclosure agreement is to test the water. Viner or his office never ever saw these tapes or transcripts. That should be abundantly clear. I can bring that out also. The lawyers felt it was not malpractice not to know the overall value of these things.
Mr. Cochran, let me just cut to the chase here. The issue that I was concerned with--I agree with you that it is probably appropriate redirect to go back and discuss the procedural fight to get those tapes and that Miss McKinny resisted all the way to the appellate courts in North Carolina, and that once she was compelled to come here to the state of California then she cooperated with both sides. I don't have a problem with that.
The issue about selling the tapes or I'm sure Miss McKinny has had the opportunity to discuss with her lawyers the fact that the tapes and transcripts were never transmitted to dove audio or to anybody else for commercial exploitation purposes, that is fair game, because that is an issue that was brought up. I'm more concerned about the issue that was our last side bar.
Let me address that, your Honor. I think that clearly when Mr. Darden got the answer about a cover-up or cover-ups he then went back, as he indicated, to try and repair the damage, his own words, and what he did was try to elicit from her, well, you were just talking about when you talked about cover-up the LAPD covering up Men Against Women and that sort of thing. That is not correct at all. And this witness will say, as an offer of proof, that first of all, there were many cover-ups, as you know, from the tapes. There were cover-ups in the very beginning when officers would go out and they didn't have probable cause to arrest anybody and tear up their driver's license. There was cover-ups in manufacturing evidence all throughout. But specifically with regard to Men Against Women, and the instance you will recall--
I think--my recollection of Miss McKinny's transcripts is which she talks about cover-ups, she talked about it in terms--she used the term cover-up in the terms of an incident of police misconduct having occurred and then there being a concerted effort by the officer--
--by the officer involved to make sure that nobody was disciplined. For example, my recollection of the plot was that one of the female officers was supposed to have arrested somebody, then the transporting officers then beat the arrestee out of her presence.
Ruptures his spleen with the batons and then she come in and says, I didn't see any of that, I don't know who transported, et cetera, et cetera, and becomes part of it. That was my understanding of her discussion of cover-ups.
Right. Well, you are right on with regard to that. It is much more than what he has elicited, and clearly he has opened the door on it. It is about a cover-up where to be one of the boys this female then covers up the death of a suspect whom she has choked out, but she doesn't kill the suspect. The suspect is killed by these other male officers who beat this person to death by rupturing his spleen.
Actually, that is not fictional, by the way, as this community is going to find out. The other issue, your Honor, is this: That she talks about other cover-ups also. I mean, she talks about cover-ups all the way through, so I'm saying you can't just limit it to this instance of the Men Against Women situation. They opened the door.
Which hence brings me to my question, where are you going? What specific instances are you going to?
Well, I would like to--let me tell you the question I would like, your Honor, specifically. I would like to ask her what did you mean when you said cover-up? And I think she will then tell us about these in the Men Against Women context, but also in the other contest where Detective Fuhrman talked about covering up. And the court can ask her. I'm not testifying. She would be the one so indicating. And I think we are permitted to go after that. And the final thing I will say on this was I think they have opened the door by virtue of the fact that their attack on this witness, this unnecessary needless attack, and you told them about not going into this, and yet they did it, when they did that they opened the door to these tapes. And I think we would get a chance to do that. Your Honor, for instance, Mr. Darden's questions about as though she was egging Fuhrman on using racial epithets or you didn't try to stop him or whatever, that is almost when they would in Roots--and they used the "N" word in Roots, that you couldn't talk about racism. This play is about sexism. This lady is opposed to sexism. In literary circles, in art, that is how you address things so people start to discuss it and maybe bring about changes. You don't buy into it necessarily so. Now that that has been done, this door has been opened, it seems to me that we should be permitted to do this, and that is why, you know, I wanted to make this statement to the court. Certainly you cleared the first part of it, but I think the rest of it is also clear, your Honor. I'm being handed something. May I read something to the court my counsel just shared with me, your Honor? This has to do with--let me just read this and I think it puts it in perspective about lying and covering up. This is describing--there was our no. 10 describing the necessity of police officers to be willing to lie. "Well, I really love being a policeman when I can be a policeman. It is like my partner now. He is so hung up with the rules and stuff"--
Remember that? "You just don't fucking even understand. The job is not rules. This is a feeling. Fuck the rules. We will make them up later. He's a college graduate, as you know, a catholic college," et cetera. "He was going to be a priest," et cetera, "And he has got more morals than he has got hair. "What do you mean he has got more morals?" "He doesn't know how to be a policeman, especially can't lie. Oh, you make me fucking sick to my guts. You know, you do what you have to do to put these fucking assholes in jail. If you don't, you fuckin' get out the fuckin' game. He just wants to be one of the boys. He doesn't want to play--pay the dues, so how does he deal with it? He doesn't lie. Well, I know for a fact in this Internal Affairs investigation he has a 10-day suspension, he will roll." He goes on to say:
"He will drop a dime on me. He will squeal." Now, Judge, that is cover-up and that is another cover-up, and clearly I think you understand that and that is the point we are trying to make. We are now permitted to at least play this to the jury, to at least ask questions about it. He can't talk about cover-ups and then try to put it on this will little tiny frame, that he was only talking about Men Against Women, because that is not even clear. We can clear that up plus show, I think as a representation to this court, that there are other instances of cover-up and they opened the door. You ruled, we all understood that, but they opened the door, Judge. So I'm asking you to allow to us do this and let's get it over with so we can finish our case. They have opened the door.
Also, you know, one of the other issues that we are going to be talking is cover-ups e probable cause, lying to try and put together probable cause, but that is another issue, but I think that this is a very germane thing. We have sat over there. It has now happened and it seems to me we should be permitted to do this, Judge.
Your Honor, in 10:14 and 44 seconds I asked this question: "When Mark Fuhrman used these words in your presence why didn't you just tell him to stop?" And after an objection Miss McKinny volunteered:
"For the same reason I didn't tell him to stop when he told me of police procedures, cover-ups and other information" and so an and so on. So I didn't invite this witness to bring cover--the term "Cover-ups" into these proceedings in her testimony, Judge. I asked her about a specific word. We are talking about a specific epithet. But she brought it in. And yes, I did attempt to repair some of the damage and so now the issue before the court is now that the witness has volunteered this, does that now allow counsel--and by the way, Miss McKinny is his witness, not the Prosecution's witness--does that now allow counsel to drag in more inflammatory and irrelevant material before this jury? I don't think so. I don't think that is fair. I don't think it has any probative value at all. And what I was attempting to show the witness was an excerpt from a transcript of a conversation she and I had on August 17th in my office, and if I could just read into the record briefly what that excerpt says, and this is Miss McKinny at page 5, line 19: "He expressed very strongly that it would be wonderful if someone would write a story from his point of view, from the men's point of view, about why women weren't succeeding in those areas and what they couldn't do and what kind of cover-ups were occurring in terms of that and that interested me." Okay. So even my subsequent follow-up questions were directed to Mark Fuhrman's belief that the department was covering up the fact that female officers did not perform well in violent situations. Okay. I wasn't getting into all this other stuff. And you know, Mark Fuhrman did discuss other kind of cover-ups and other issues like that in his taped interviews with Miss McKinny and I concede that and we have conceded all of this all along, but my point today is this: Well, it is a personal point of view. Well, in any event I don't think this opens the door to any of this. I think it is time to take control again of these proceedings and let's move along with the issues that are relevant.
Certainly, your Honor. Thank you. This, your Honor, is about their attack on her credibility and the court has said many times, been very concerned many times about leaving an unfair and misleading impression upon this jury. You told the Prosecution last week how they should conduct this cross-examination. What Mr. Darden did was he asked the famous "Why" questioned.
Both sides, yes, but you made a suggestion. They didn't follow it. They asked the why question. This answer that he got and then he went into it further in cover-up, and when he does that there is much more to it than that, and it is wrong and they attacked her credibility, Judge. And you have heard those tapes and that is unfair. That is a misleading impression to this jury and they are using your ruling as a shield. Using the shield as a sword against us and against Mr. Simpson specifically. And so that is not right, your Honor, and we have a right, it seems to me, under these circumstances, to plumb this area, to him bring out what you deem appropriate in this area, and we are not going to belabor it but we have an absolute right. They opened the door. I mean, this isn't anything we did. And we did our examination and sat down. We are back up here now because of something they did and I think we have a right to do that. And in the interest of justice and truth we have a right to do that also. Also in the interests of a lady who fought getting out here, to malign her in front of this jury and give that wrong impression is not right, so I think the court would want to allow to us straighten that out on each of these areas and point out there is more to this cover-up regarding Men Against Women but also there are other cover-ups that she was talking about. And when you ask "Why" questions you get those answers, your Honor, and that is the thing. That is the point that come about and I think that the record is very clear in this regard and I would ask the court to rule and allow to us do it and we will be--I will be--you said five questions. We will be very quick. I will try to do the whole thing in ten or fifteen questions. In fact, I will take your advice if you want to give me some of that.
All right. Thank you, counsel. All right. As to the question regarding the procedural history as to how the tapes and transcripts got to California and the fact that Miss McKinny did resist through the appellate courts in the North Carolina courts, that is an appropriate line of questioning. As to the discussions regarding dove audio and the nature of that agreement, that is appropriate redirect examination based upon the cross-examination. As to the mention of cover-ups, the problem I have here is that the answer where Miss McKinny mentions cover-ups was a nonresponsive answer. The question was concerning tolerating the use of the "N" word or at least not mentioning it in response to the--not making any mention in response to the use and then adding gratuitously the issue regarding cover-ups. However it is phrased in the context of a specific statement by Miss McKinny made to the District Attorneys, that statement has been made available to the Defense. Mr. Cochran, you may recross--excuse me--redirect your examination as to that statement made to the District Attorney's office. All right. But that is the limitation.
So that I'm clear, I can plumb that particular area as to what you meant by "Cover-up" in that area; is that right?
They opened the door. I mean, this isn't anything we did. And we did our examination and sat down. We are back up here now because of something they did and I think we have a right to do that.
I could probably do that in five questions.
I didn't invite this witness to bring cover--the term 'Cover-ups' into these proceedings in her testimony, Judge. I asked her about a specific word. We are talking about a specific epithet. But she brought it in.
As to the mention of cover-ups, the problem I have here is that the answer where Miss McKinny mentions cover-ups was a nonresponsive answer.
You are using your ruling as a shield. Using the shield as a sword against us and against Mr. Simpson specifically.