Book editors have become accustomed to the Paradox of the Hot Topic -- that phenomenon that occurs when the best book about a controversy isn't the first breakthrough, or even the next dozen treatments; it's the last book, the one that comes when everybody's yawning their heads off (until yet another H.T. grabs their attention).
In the O.J. Simpson sweepstakes -- pardon me, case -- for example, Faye Resnick's raw, crude and angry book about Nicole Brown Simpson raced up the best-seller list faster than you could say "I Want To Tell You," Simpson's own cache for cash that came later. Big, fill-in-the-gap books by New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin and others hit the lists briefly but then began the Book-of-Substance Slump, dying off faster than motions for the prosecution. Enter the clean-up crew of participants (Christopher Darden, Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, etc.), which ushered in the JJs (judgmental jurors, kicked off and otherwise), followed by the conspiracy theorists (Robert Kardashian), your sieg-heil-give- me-the-money hacks (Mark Fuhrman) and culture-gossip mongers (Dominick Dunne).
Now, when it's all over and everybody is sick to death of O.J. Simpson, along comes the Paradox of the H.T.: The best book on the subject turns out to be the most recent and probably the last one, a massive book whose very weight and size says, Yes, America, You Have to Go Over It Again, TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE by the plaintiff attorney in Simpson's I5 Rose civil case, Daniel Petrocelli (Crown; 644 pages; $24.95).
In San Francisco to talk about the book, Petrocelli doesn't mind expressing a little emotional explosion. He shakes his head with weariness when asked about defense accusations in Simpson's criminal trial that the Los Angeles Police Department was inept, sloppy and capable of tampering. "All those broad-based accusations simply break down under the light of reason and analysis. The defense wanted to throw it all out there, inflame the jury and hope they'd (the jurors) wouldn't think through the evidence.
"So they asked things like, 'Why didn't the police take aerial photos of the crime scene? Or get on a ladder and shoot down? Or measure blood stains with rulers?' Well, they didn't because they're not that smart, maybe! Who cares why they didn't do it? The fact is they didn't do it! This is not a malpractice case against the Los Angeles Police Department. It's not a case about whether they're the best police department in the country. This is a murder case! Let's stick to the evidence that was found."
Petrocelli believes that defense claims of a police frame-up are so "ludicrous" that "even a person with half a brain" should see that Fuhrman would have been "crazy" to try planting the bloody glove found on Simpson's property and that Judge Lance Ito should never have allowed "hypothetical scenarios" into the record.
"Now here's the defense asking the DNA expert, 'Well, Dr. Cotton,Phone Cover isn't it true that if blood spilled during the testing process, bindles could get contami nated?' If forced to answer the witness might say, 'Perhaps, if blood did spill, contamination could occur.' But there was no evidence that blood did spill! It's all speculation."
Petrocelli thinks the prosecution made a big mistake by not introducing the statement Simpson gave police before he fled. "It's true, Simpson denies things in there, and the jury would hear his denials, but he also makes some devastating admissions. He admits calling Paula Barbieri from his cell phone after the recital; well, the only record of such a call shows the time as 10:03 p.m., when Simpson was supposed to be at home. But he said he made that phone call while driving the Bronco.
"He also said he cut his finger before going to Chicago; later he said he cut his finger in Chicago. These are contradictions, you can argue to a jury, that show his guilt, and they might have made the defense respond by putting Simpson on the stand."
It is this image -- Simpson, at last, on the witness stand -- that starts and ends "Triumph of Justice." While the book tells us a great deal about the difference between civil and criminal trials, why Cochran got away with playing the race card and the kind of "blueprint for impeachment" Petrocelli constructed during his 10-day deposition of Simpson, there is a magnificence to the author's dismantling of the defendant that is unmatched in any of the Simpson books.
Here we see this once-ambivalent attorney deciding to "discipline" Simpson, to "impeach" him, to be "curt" with him and get the judge to "force" him to answer questions.
Every time Simpson tries to evade questions about Nicole's bruises by stating, "I felt totally responsible -- " wham! Petrocelli stings him with the whip. "I'm not asking about your responsibility," he says coldly, meaning: Answer the question. And when Simpson tries to hopscotch around by replying, "I don't remember," whack! Petrocelli grabs the deposition record and reads Simpson's words: "I remember exactly what I did."
Part of Petrocelli's strategy, he says, included his understanding that "Simpson was an inveterate talkaholic. You can tell: He can't contain himself. He needs to talk. To overcome that desire to speak, he tried with all his might to restrain himself, so he came off as uninspiring, not very convincing, almost vacant." By contrast, Petrocelli remembers, "I was seething with outrage at the end. I was harsh, angry, confrontational. The message was: I'm in control, you're not."
While other books discuss Simpson's power as quarterback of his own Dream Team, this last one finds a hollow core that revolving leather sheath for ipad will live on in memory, long after Simpson himself recedes from public life.
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