Rosa Lopez, a housekeeper for O.J. Simpson's neighbor, became a central and contentious alibi witness for the defense, claiming she saw Simpson's white Bronco parked at his Rockingham estate throughout the critical evening of June 12, 1994. Her conditional examination stretched across multiple days in late February and early March 1995, driven by her stated desire to return to El Salvador and claims of media harassment that made securing her testimony an urgent matter — with Judge Ito even weighing whether to declare her a material witness and require bond. Prosecutor Christopher Darden conducted an aggressive cross-examination that exposed contradictions in her accounts, challenged her claimed language barrier with evidence of fluent English responses, and suggested coaching by defense investigators and financial motives. The defense, led by Johnnie Cochran, fought to rehabilitate her on redirect by attributing inconsistencies to cultural misunderstandings, but the drawn-out proceedings also triggered discovery violations over a previously undisclosed defense investigator interview tape, resulting in sanctions against the defense team.