All right. Back on the record in the Simpson matter. All parties are present. Miss Clark.

Yes. We are preparing a writ and request from the court a written ruling indicating the basis for its ruling concerning the jury instruction proposed--

That request is denied.

--case authority that supports the giving of the instruction that the court has proposed.

All right. I'll prepare a--have the clerk and the court reporter prepare a transcript of the proceedings today. That will be your record.

Okay. And the case authority that the court has relied upon for the instruction?

That request is denied.

We would request an emergency stay at this time. We would request until tomorrow morning before the court considers instructing the jury on this matter. We do need the time to prepare the papers in order to submit it to the court of appeals. If I may remind the court, the court had previously given the Defense time to submit appeals.

I don't know that I've given them time, but I've encouraged them to do so.

In any event, the court has previously given the Defense time to prepare their appellate papers in order to file them, and I'm asking leave of the court to give the People the same opportunity.

Till 9 o'clock tomorrow morning?

I will consult with appellate. I think that at least that long would be required. I would also urge the court to consider the fact that immediate instruction to the jury is not necessary. The jury will be given a number of instructions at the end of this case, and that will be ample time to give that one if it is deemed appropriate by the court at that time. So it's not like this is something that needs to be done at this very moment.

All right. Mr. Cochran.

Your Honor, we'd like--the court has already ruled. You've indicated you ruled. The jury is here. They've been sitting on their hands since 10 o'clock this morning. We want to proceed on. We want to get to a point where we can effectively rest. Miss Clark misstates--what the court said to me last Thursday was, "Mr. Cochran, you know where the court of appeals is, right down the street, if you want to do that," and--

Right down the street a block and a half.

A block and a half. Well, you have total recall. You invited me that and you didn't give us any time to do anything. You just told me where the court of appeals was.

You didn't ask for any.

I didn't. No, I didn't ask. But she said you gave us time. You didn't give us any time. We didn't ask for that. Your Honor, we have to bring this case to a conclusion. They knew this day was coming. Everybody knew that. It's not going to save them till tomorrow morning. What you are doing is minimally--it's entirely appropriate. We want to move on with this case, Judge. We have a jury that's going to be mutiny very shortly as this court knows, and we need to resolve this matter.

We saw them walk through here. They want--they're distressed. They should be able to hear something, find out, as we talked about this morning, that this case will be over within the next seven or eight days given rebuttal and surrebuttal on both sides, and I think that's at least some good news for these folks. And they have a right to that. And we want to resolve this matter. There's no reason to wait until 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. It's not going to change anything. If they want to bring a writ, they can bring a writ. It's not going to stop anything. You are not abusing your discretion in this regard. We want to proceed. You've ruled. You told them you ruled, and let's go on with it.

All right. Thank you, counsel. Miss Clark, Mr. Cochran, as Dean Uelmen mentioned, this is a unique factual and legal situation, something I've never seen before, never had to contemplate before. Of course, that's nothing unusual in this particular case. I'll give the Prosecution until noon tomorrow--

Thank you, your Honor.

--a stay on that. And we will have final instructions my guess is in the next 10 days to two weeks. But I might--that might--giving a stay might cause me to modify the instruction to say that at the close of the presentation of the Defense case, Detective Mark Fuhrman was not available, et cetera, so the point of time is set in the instruction. All right. Mr. Cochran, anything else?

Well--

Your Honor, that has put us in a position, we can't rest until--I guess till noon tomorrow. So effectively what they've done is wasted the rest of the day and half day tomorrow. We can't really do anything, can we, based upon this? And nothing's going to come of this, your Honor. It's a matter of your discretion. We argued the law. And I can understand your Honor being patient, but I just think you ought to reconsider this because we do have--the whim of this one Prosecutor here, we have these 14 jurors back there. So what if we lose all of them? This is going to be a wasted action. And tomorrow at noon, you'll do what you're going to do right now. We would have lost all that time. Right before the break, your Honor indicated be prepared for rebuttal tomorrow. That means we cut off one more day or at least half a day. So that's all I'm saying. I'd urge the court to reconsider that or we're going to be in exactly the same position, Judge, it seems to me.

Well, Mr. Cochran, really, at this point, given the unique situation, factual and legal situation presented by the Fuhrman situation, I doubt that a court of appeal frankly is going to intervene on an interim jury instruction. I would be surprised if they did.

I would too, your Honor.

And especially in light of the nature of the instruction. Given that fact, I think it would help us all if you rested at this point subject to asking to reopen if an issue is presented by the change in--by the court of appeal of the jury instruction. But I don't know what other witnesses you would call even if the instruction changed significantly or was withdrawn.

Well, if I could have a moment, I might consider that. I might consider doing that, your Honor.

The reason I say that is, we've got the jury. If they knew that you were resting today and that the Prosecution can move forward with their rebuttal case tomorrow morning with the witnesses that they have planned and that we will spend the remainder of today going over the evidence that the Defense is going to offer and resolving those disputes--tomorrow at 2 o'clock, we have motions on calendar for public agency access to the Fuhrman tapes. We can conclude hopefully the evidence issues after we conclude that hearing and we can move along with--unhesitatingly into the conclusion of the rebuttal case next week.

The only problem with that, your Honor--and certainly we want to cooperate with the court. But we're doing all the giving. We're doing the resting. We're on track to resolve this. They're standing over there being petulant saying, "We want to wait until tomorrow." So I'm saying I want to be reasonable. I'd like a moment to confer with my colleagues, but I mean think that--

Well, I'm just suggesting to you that even if the court of appeal were to intervene, would you call any additional witnesses in light of that given the court's other rulings, et cetera?

I don't know, your Honor. Perhaps we might--if they insist on this, we might join in the writ and ask the court to allow us to play the rest of those tapes, you know. Be careful what you ask for. You've said that many times, right?

And I'll say it again.

Be careful what you ask for. May I have just a couple minutes, your Honor?

Certainly.

Your Honor, may I ask that--the court has been very clear that it does not appreciate personal attacks. Mr. Cochran stands before this court daily and engages in that very thing at sidebar and before the court calling--saying that the jury is being made to sit at my whim. It's not a whim when the People feel that there's been a violation of law that may seriously impact on the People's right to a fair trial. That's no whim. That's serious. And I am the advocate for the People. It's my duty to make sure that when I think a violation of the law has occurred to the detriment of the People or the Defendant for that matter, it is my duty to do all that I can to make sure that that is remedied. That's no whim, your Honor. And I'm not being petulant in insisting on enforcing those rights nor did I ever accuse the Defense of being petulant when they asked for time to prepare a writ to reinstate a juror which the court generously gave them and to which we did not object.

Thank you.

I have what I hope is a reasonable proposal, your Honor. We'd like to do everything that you asked with regard to--there's a stipulation on Matheson. There is the argument regarding the evidence and any of those things you want to do. We want to do everything with the exception of resting until such time as this matter is resolved because we think the natural and logical thing is to give that jury instruction at that point. So everything else we can do and we would ask leave of the court to do it that way. Is that coherent?

As we do everything you've asked, your Honor, except we would just--we will rest, you know, at that time, if it's noon tomorrow or 11:59 or so and then ask you to read the instruction at that point. I think--we don't lose anything by that, your Honor. And you've already told the jurors we're at that point. But I think just from the standpoint of discussing it with my colleagues and my client, we just don't feel it would be appropriate for us to rest at this point, your Honor. But we'll do everything else and be available as late as you want or as early as you want tomorrow. Your Honor, one reason why we--and I'm sure you can appreciate this. The next logical thing--as you've said so many times, this is a smart jury. The next logical thing based upon the evidence we've presented over the last two days is that they--and they know Mark Fuhrman was never excused because in their presence, you said he was on 72 hours' call. Is it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that would be the next logical witness. And so we think it inures to Mr. Simpson's detriment to talk about resting at this point and we want to rest at the point when the instruction is read. I think that explains it and makes sense. And that's why we made that decision, your Honor. But other than that, we're ready to proceed with everything you want, as late as you want to stay today and tomorrow and all the other issues. So we don't really lose anything.

The problem is, then we can't start with the--then why don't we reschedule the argument on access to the tapes at 9 o'clock, and we'll start the rebuttal case tomorrow at 2 o'clock.

That's fine with us. We're fine. We're fine with that.

All right.

Your Honor, we're not.

Why?

The court represented to us at sidebar this morning that we would not begin rebuttal until Monday. I went up and instructed everyone to have the witnesses stand by for Monday, and I don't know that we can get someone in now on short notice.

Have them here Monday--excuse me. Have them here tomorrow 2 o'clock. 2 o'clock.

I cannot represent that we can based on the court's earlier representations to us.

Well, then you'll rest. Have them here 2 o'clock.

I'll see counsel in chambers.