Attorney Pounds Home Theme of Simpson Guilt

His voice pulsing with passion, the attorney leading the civil lawsuit against O.J. Simpson on Tuesday whirled toward the defense table, pointed his finger at the charismatic football star and told jurors: “There’s a killer in this courtroom.”

In his fierce closing argument, which continues today, lead plaintiff attorney Daniel M. Petrocelli swept in tone from anger to sorrow to sarcasm, from a clinical presentation of his evidence to a sneering dismissal of the defense’s conspiracy claims. He never talked too long, however, before yanking the focus back to Simpson, calling him “a guilty man, a man with no remorse, a man with no conscience.”

Petrocelli implored jurors to read the clues that he said Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman left as they struggled in vain to wrench free of their assailant’s lethal grip:

They ripped off one of their killer’s gloves. They knocked a knit cap off his head. They dug their nails into his left hand. They injured him so badly that he dripped blood as he left the crime scene. And at the end, slumped and unconscious, they spilled their own blood so profusely that their killer had to step in it as he slipped away, leaving an incriminating trail of prints from a pricey pair of rare Italian shoes.

“These crucial bits of evidence are the voices of Ron and Nicole speaking to us from their grave, telling us, telling all of you, that there’s a killer in this courtroom,” Petrocelli said. Pointing at Simpson--who briefly met his gaze, then returned to scribbling notes--Petrocelli added: “That is the man who attacked them, who confronted them, who killed them that Sunday in June [1994]. That man, the defendant, Orenthal Simpson.”

Simpson was acquitted on criminal charges, but Goldman’s parents and the estate of Nicole Brown Simpson are suing to hold him responsible for the slayings in civil court. If the plaintiffs win, Simpson could be ordered to pay them millions in damages. Jurors are expected to begin deliberations late Thursday after the defense gives its closing argument and the plaintiffs present a brief rebuttal.

Petrocelli opened his remarks Tuesday by showing photos of the murder victims in life: Goldman grinning as he hefted a bat at a baseball game; Nicole Simpson smiling over her shoulder as she walked through a crowd. Then he flashed pictures of them in death: Goldman crumpled over a tree stump; Nicole Simpson curled in a pool of blood at the foot of her front stairs.

“Ron Goldman will never get to open [the] restaurant [he dreamed of], ladies and gentlemen, and Nicole Brown Simpson will never see her children grow up,” Petrocelli said as the victims’ relatives, sitting in the front two rows, dabbed at their eyes with tissues.

From that brief eulogy, Petrocelli moved on to the heart of his closing argument: turning Simpson’s own words--and silences--against him.

In a crescendo of rhetorical questions, Petrocelli asked the jurors whether Simpson ever explained why his blood was at the crime scene. Or in his driveway. Or in his bathroom. Or in his Bronco.

Did he ever explain, Petrocelli demanded, how the victims’ blood got in his car? Or on a glove discovered at his Rockingham Avenue estate? Did Simpson tell them why his hairs were entwined in the knit cap that lay by the bodies? Or why the victims’ hairs were found on the blood-caked Rockingham glove? What about the rare carpet fibers, matching those in Simpson’s Ford Bronco, that turned up at the crime scene? Did he talk about that?

Voice dipping low as he locked eyes with one juror after another, Petrocelli answered his own questions. “Not one word,” he said. “Not one word did you hear.”

To be sure, various defense experts have attacked the physical evidence, suggesting that it was contaminated or planted or transferred to incriminating places by wholly innocent means. But Simpson himself did not venture an explanation during his four days on the witness stand.

“This was his chance to tell us what the answers were,” Petrocelli said. “Confronted with this highly incriminating--conclusively incriminating--evidence pointing right at him, what did he choose to tell you about? . . . How he broke [football] records and won awards.”

Petrocelli then showed jurors some of his most dramatic evidence: the 31 photos depicting Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes, the same brand that tracked bloody size 12 footprints by the bodies. “This is one of the single most crucial pieces of evidence in this case and can you believe it, last week [under questioning from his attorney] Mr. Simpson did not say one word about it?” Petrocelli said. “Heisman Trophy, but no Bruno Maglis.”

In fact, Simpson did talk about the photos last week--but only when grilled by Petrocelli. He denied ever owning the shoes in question. And he insisted that he was not wearing them at the Buffalo Bills football game at which all 31 photos were taken. The snapshots, he declared, must be phony.

As Petrocelli pointed out, however, Simpson had no backup. The defense’s expert photo witness testified that the one snapshot he examined was most likely a fake. But no one other than Simpson suggested that the other 30--which surfaced late in the trial--were bogus.

“If that photo is real, O.J. Simpson is the killer,” he said, pointing to one of them. “That’s it. It’s the end of the ballgame. There’s nothing more to talk about.”

Just as he sought to put the bloody shoes on Simpson, so too did Petrocelli try to link the defendant to the killer’s gloves, cap and clothes.

He showed jurors photos of Simpson wearing gloves identical to the pair apparently used in the murders. He told them that police found a knit cap just like the one at the crime scene in Simpson’s closet.

And he reminded jurors that a wardrobe stylist testified that she gave Simpson a black cotton sweatsuit during a video shoot about two weeks before the murders and never got it back. The plaintiffs contend that Simpson wore that sweatsuit to the murders, arguing that it was the source of the matching blue-black cotton fibers found on Goldman’s shirt, on the Rockingham glove and on the socks in Simpson’s bedroom.

Petrocelli acknowledged that he has no idea what happened to the sweatsuit or the shoes, or for that matter, the knife. But he urged jurors not to get hung up on the lingering mysteries.

“We’ll never know the answers to all these questions and we don’t need to,” he said. “All we need to do is to prove he did it. And we know he did it. Because every piece of evidence tells us he did it.”

Dismissing the defense’s case as “preposterous,” “crazy,” and “hocus-pocus” that “insults your intelligence,” Petrocelli boasted that his evidence proved Simpson’s liability “beyond any doubt.”

The standard of proof in a civil case, however, is much lower than that. To prevail, the plaintiffs must prove Simpson’s liability only by a “preponderance of evidence.” In effect, that means jurors can vote against Simpson even if they find there is just a 50.1% probability that he committed the murders. And the jury can reach a verdict with just nine votes; it need not be unanimous.

Unlike prosecutors in Simpson’s criminal trial, Petrocelli never apologized for going after a man millions once regarded as a hero. Instead, he sought to strip Simpson of his sparkle, to shove away any lingering image jurors might have of “the Juice” as a courageous athlete, a generous celebrity, a winner.

Challenging jurors to look beyond the polished image, Petrocelli threaded his speech with a series of questions about Simpson’s character.

“What kind of man,” he asked, “kicks open a door so hard as to knock it into pieces, then says it was just a reflex? . . . What kind of man says his deceased wife is lying on a 911 tape? . . . What kind of man says that cheating on your wife isn’t a lie?”

Again, he answered his own questions: “I’ll tell you what kind of man. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. A guilty man . . . so obsessed with trying to salvage his image and protect himself that he will smear the name of the mother of his children while she rests in her grave. . . . This is the kind of man, I submit to you, who has lied and lied and lied and lied and lied to you about every important fact in this case. Every one of them.”

Petrocelli used the word “liar” over and over when talking of Simpson, spitting it out almost tauntingly. “He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying,” Petrocelli said at one point. “And he got caught, got caught, got caught.”

Simpson seemed agitated by the repeated accusations; he clenched his jaw, muttered aloud and beckoned his attorneys into huddles.

To back up his accusations, Petrocelli pointed out that Simpson’s testimony contradicts dozens of witnesses--including two of his own lawyers, his ex-girlfriend, and a few of his closest friends. Under oath, Simpson has also denied the accuracy of phone records, tape recordings, photos and Nicole’s diary.

Petrocelli argued Tuesday that after weighing all the contradictions, jurors can reach only one conclusion. Pointing at Simpson, he told them: “There’s only one person in this case who has any reason to lie about anything, and he has every reason to lie about everything. That’s the guy sitting in this courtroom.”