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I watched bits of the trial.

Like I said. I'm psychic.

Dominick Dunne was there every damned day, and he was of course certain that OJ was guilty as hell. Even Freakin’ Geraldo, who covered it, was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.

The entire press corps and the evening talking heads adopted the standard babble about how the testimony of the day was "devastating" for the defense. Watching the trial and the commentary about the trial was two different worlds.

I was in school at the time. The only people who could watch the whole damned thing were the unemployed and unemployable.

Kindergarten, I presume, with your logic. People who were retired, working a night shift, or intelligent enough to set a video recorder had no problem watching the trial. I suspect your main knowledge of the case comes from a Netflix series. I am waiting to hear the burning baby moved you to the core.

I’m talking about men who were not sub-85 I.Q,s (the only category who’d be stupid enough to believe OJ’s defense team)

I hate to break it to you, but I am pretty far removed from the sub-85 I.Q. group. It is you who cannot discuss the evidence intelligently because you have never known what evidence came in at the trial. You can only mutter the mantra Mountain of Evidence. Quantity does not make quality.

You brought up the socks. Perhaps you would like to explain how they seemed to appear and disappear, how blood passed through three sides, from the outer surface of one side to the inner surface of that side, through an ankle, and to the inner surface of the opposite side. And, of course, the EDTA.

September 27, 1995

Cochran closing argument.

MR. COCHRAN: Now, where it says 3:13 P.M., Mr. Willie Ford says--all right. Back it up, please. This is Mr. Willie Ford going up into the bedroom. It's 3:13 where he says it's 4:14 because it hadn't been changed. It's 4:13 P.M. on June 13th, 1994. Okay. Thank you, your Honor. You look at the foot of the bed there where the socks are supposed to be. You'll see no socks in this video. And you'll recall that Mr. Willie Ford testified about this. And I asked him, "Well, where are the socks, Mr. Ford?" "I didn't see any socks." So now, that's interesting, isn't it? At 4:13 on June 13th, 1994, these socks are supposedly recovered, these mysterious socks, these socks that no one sees any blood on until August 4th all of a sudden, these socks that are picked up that Luper says he picks them up because they look out of place. "I don't see any reason to pick them up. I'll just take these socks because they look out of place." The only items that they took out of that place on that date is Lange. Lange takes the Reebok tennis shoes, the ones that he takes home. You remember that. That's all they really take because they don't come back until the 28th before they get that one brown glove. But these socks will be their undoing. It just doesn't fit. None of you can deny there are no socks at the foot of that bed 4:30 P.M. where then are the socks? Where are these socks, this important piece of evidence? Well, let me show you something. This board here was a board used by Dr. Henry Lee. This is interesting. Bear with me for a moment as you look at this.
THE COURT: Is this 1352?
MR. DOUGLAS: 52.
THE COURT: Thank you.
MR. COCHRAN: In this photograph here, the one on the left, your Honor, if you'll notice, the socks are at the foot of the bed. If you look close at this photograph, you'll see there's no little white card there. You notice how they put these little evidence cards there when they're going to collect something. No little white card on this photograph here. And this is interesting, because you see these straps on the bed. Now, Luper told us when he testified, these straps were like--he called them some kind of luggage straps. And these luggage straps are down at this point, aren't they? See how they're down? No evidence card and the socks are there. We come over to this photograph here. Notice how the strap is now up on the bed? No longer hanging down anymore. It's been moved up. And Luper says that's when he looks under this bed and he sees that photograph. By the way, how wrong can they continue to be? That's no wedding photograph. That's no wedding. That's a photograph they took at some formal event. You look at that photograph and see. That's how they speculate. And most times, they've been wrong. But this is interesting. The strap is now up on the bed. And you look at the socks. Now it's been posed for you. Here is this no. 13 out here with these socks. Now, you look back at that video, and you'll have it. You'll notice that the video has the strap down. So the video is at a time before this card was placed, before the strap is up, before this is about to be collected. Now, isn't that strange, because at 4:13, there are no socks there. Now, how do we tie all this together? Do you remember, Fung and Mazzola have a log. And on their log, they tell when they collected things. They tell us that they collected the blood in the foyer at 4:30, that they then came upstairs, that they collect--here it is as we speak.
MR. DOUGLAS: 1091, your Honor.
THE COURT: Thank you.
MR. COCHRAN: Can you move it over a little bit, Mr. Harris? Now, you see this where they collected things sequentially and they kept this log. And I think that you'll remember the testimony that at 4:30, they collected the blood in the foyer. Remember that? Let me see if I can point that out for you. In the foyer, red stain. And there's testimony--they testified 4:30. 1630 is 4:30. This is--well, this is at least 17 minutes after Mr. Ford is up there with that camera where there are no socks, right? So 1630, right there. They're downstairs. Then they say they go upstairs and they leave this time blank. But at 1640, they go and they look at this little red spot in the bathroom. Remember that? And they say in their testimony that the socks are collected between 1630 and 1640. So let's give them the benefit of the doubt, 1635. How could the socks be there at 4:35 when you just saw they're not there at 4:13? Who's fooling whom here? Setting this man up, and you can see it with your own eyes. You're not naive. Nobody is foolish here. Then they forget about this little strap exercise and they're posing stuff here. They move this off the bed, move this under the bed. They're going to make a big thing about this photograph under the bed. Then they put this number down here and they take these pictures for you later. But they didn't know that we would know or find out about Mr. Ford's video. So they took that video--you know, we talked about this early on. LAPD should always take videos of everything at that crime scene. They don't do that. But they took this video not because they wanted to help Mr. Simpson. If anything was missing or got broken, this was a civil liability video. Remember, they were going around taking photographs of things that might be missing of whatever if there was ever a suit later on.
But they got hoisted by their own petard again because the video has the counter and the number. They will never, ever be able to explain that to you because we've got the testimony in black and white as when they went upstairs and collected them. Those socks from the beginning is going to bring them down. So those are the socks, these socks. No dirt, no soil, no berries, no trace. Nobody sees any blood until August 4th. All these miraculous things start happening, and then--Mr. Scheck will talk more about this. Then we find out it has EDTA in it. Is it planted along with that back gate? How would it be on there? Why didn't they see the blood before that? There's a big fight here. Where is the dirt? Why would Mr. Simpson have on these kind of socks with a sweat outfit? Wait a minute. Now, you don't have to be like from the fashion police to know that. You don't wear those kinds of socks. You wear those kind of socks with a suit. You don't wear those kind of socks with a sweat outfit. Doesn't it make sense to you that those socks were in that hamper from Saturday night when Mr. Simpson went to that formal event? Those kind of socks is what you wear with your tuxedo when he was dressed with those other ladies. They went and took it out of the hamper and staged it there, and you see what happened. Is that not reasonable under these facts? I think you'll agree it is. It's the only reasonable explanation. It's posed there. And the reason for doing this is because they were out of place. But isn't that interesting, in the hamper in which Luper went and they all went, they didn't take anything else? You'd think the police would ask Mr. Simpson, "What were you wearing? In addition to the suit, what were you wearing that night?" They didn't take one thing. Yet we hear all this talk about, I wonder where the clothes went, I wonder where the clothes went. You'd think Mr. Simpson, who told them everything, cooperated with them fully, told them, like he told them about those shoes, what he was wearing. They didn't bother collecting those, did they? No towels, no nothing. She's worried about him taking this quick shower. If he took a shower, there's so much blood, he's covered with blood, why didn't they bring the towels in here? Something is wrong in this case. It just doesn't fit. When it doesn't fit, you must acquit. So the socks-- I could talk about these socks forever, but I'm not going to do that because Mr. Scheck will talk about the forensic aspect of it. But let me just remind you of two quick more things. Dr. Herbert MacDonell came in here and he told you there was no splatter or spatter on these socks. These socks had compression transfer, and he used his hands to show you somebody took those socks and they put something on them and it went all the way through to side 3. Now, with all their experts bringing people back three, four times, they never had anybody to contravene that. How did that get over to side 3? How did it get over there? It wouldn't get there if there was a leg in the sock. Can anybody explain that? Can any of you explain that? Maybe Miss Clark can explain that. Experts can't explain it. Something is wrong. Then finally the EDTA which indicates the anticoagulant from a purple top tube is where that blood is from. The socks, as you know, are something that you want to get emotional about because we've known about these socks for some time. This is to say the least disturbing. It's worse than that though. In my opening statement, I told you about evidence that would be compromised, contaminated and corrupted and I told you something then. I said in this case, there's something even far more sinister. The socks are one example of that. Now, if you want to be fair deciding this case, you've got to deal with these socks. You'll get a chance to see them. Look for the dirt that you expect on them. Look for the spatter that you expect on them. Look and see why it went over to side 3. There's a leg in it. Now, isn't it interesting how you get this blood on this sock with your pants? Your pants have to be almost up. This would take a real contortion to do it. There's no way they could explain it. So let's just leave it where it is and Mr. Scheck will pick up on that. Then we've heard a lot about the so-called blood in the Bronco. Now, I want to tell you, I'm not anything like a scientist. In fact, when my mother and my father wanted me to become a doctor, I didn't because I wasn't that good in science. So I became a lawyer so I could talk. But let me tell you something. Even I know about amounts of blood, especially after this case. They tell you about all this blood in the Bronco. And you remember one of the early witnesses testified the total amount of blood on this console--on this console is .07 of drop of blood. Now, that's supposedly a mixture of Goldman and someone else. Now, this is--I'm going to do a little Henry Lee experiment and I hope that it doesn't cause any--cause you any problems. Now, .07 of a drop--