SEPTEMBER 18 - The prosecution called its last rebuttal witness -- at least for the time being.
Because of the unusual order of the proceedings, prosecutors will be allowed to reopen their rebuttal case if new defense witnesses are allowed to testify. If Judge Lance Ito blocks the testimony, the defense could rest its case.
Judge Ito has not yet decided whether the defense can call witnesses to attack the credibility of Detective Philip Vannatter and FBI Special Agent Roger Martz.
Vannatter and other detectives justified their warrantless search of O.J. Simpson's property several hours after the murders on the grounds they feared that someone inside was hurt or in danger. But the defense claims that two witnesses, a mob informer and a law enforcement agent, heard Vannatter declare over beers following court one day that police suspected Simpson was responsible for the murders.
The informant, Tony (The Animal) Fiato, also known as Tony Rome, has been seen publicly with Nicole Brown Simpson's sister, Denise Brown. She has denied having a relationship with him.
The defense also hopes to recall Martz, who testified that his analysis of blood found on a sock retrieved from Simpson's bedroom and on a gate behind Nicole Brown Simpson's house did not contain any signs of a preservative.
On Monday, prosecutors finished questioning FBI Special Agent William Bodziak. He testified that only one murderer walked through the crime scene. There was so much blood at the scene that a second assailant would have had to step in blood and leave behind footprints.
"It's impossible unless the person that committed the crime can fly," he testified.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Barry Scheck suggested that a second assailant could have come and gone from the scene without leaving tracks. This could have happened if Ronald Goldman died before Nicole Brown Simpson's throat was slashed.
"Are you asking me to assume there were two independent murders at the same place 10 minutes apart?" Bodziak responded.
The defense then began its rebuttal by recalling blood spatter expert, Herbert MacDonnell, to testify about the shrinkage of gloves Simpson was seen wearing during football broadcasts.
SEPTEMBER 19 - Two organized crime brothers turned government informants contradicted the testimony of the lead detective in the case when they testified that Philip Vannatter said he immediately suspected O.J. Simpson killed his former wife and a friend.
Larry and Craig Fiato, who are in the federal witness protection program, testified that in two casual conversations earlier this year, Vannatter said police went to Simpson's house because he was a suspect. Vannatter has testified that he and other detectives went to the Rockingham estate to inform Simpson of his former wife's death, and subsequently scaled a fence onto his property because they feared someone inside might be injured or in danger.
"The exact words I don't know," Larry Fiato said. "But it was something to the effect that he went over there as Mr. Simpson was the suspect."
Fiato's brother, Craig Anthony "Tony the Animal" Fiato, testified that he only heard Vannatter say "the husband is always the suspect. He didn't say O.J. Simpson." But Craig Fiato later said he believed Vannatter was talking about Simpson.
Vannatter told jurors Tuesday that he didn't recall making either statement and reiterated his claim that the four detectives went to Simpson's estate to notify him of his ex-wife's murder and to find someone to care for the couple's two young children.
"Mr. Simpson was no more of a suspect at that point than you were, Mr. Shapiro," Vannatter said when questioned by defense attorney Robert Shapiro. "Anybody that has personal contact with a murder victim before they're eliminated is a potential suspect and can be a potential suspect. I wish I was good enough to go to a crime scene, and within less than an hour be able to figure out who committed a murder, that would be great."
The judge ordered the television camera and the microphones turned off to avoid any photographs or recordings of the Fiato brothers because of their claims that they could be endangered if their identities became widely known.
The two men presented a markedly different appearance than others who have appeared at the trial. Larry Fiato, a heavy-set man dressed entirely in black except for a black checkered vest, was affable and willingly answered the defense's questions.
But Craig Fiato, an imposing figure with a black goatee, snow-white hair and a gold loop earring in his left ear, challenged many of the questions posed by defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran Jr.
The Fiato brothers live in Boston and were in Los Angeles in January to testify in a 1982 murder-for-hire trial when Vannatter came to see them in a hotel room.
Larry Fiato said he was drinking a beer, "laughing and joking ... shooting the breeze" when Vannatter made the comments.
A month later, he said Vannatter made a similar comment while the two were smoking cigarettes in a courthouse stairwell. That testimony was bolstered by FBI Special Agent Michael Wacks, who said he overheard the comment.
He said he felt the statement had "no import" because Vannatter was "totally sarcastic" when he said it.
Wacks said he didn't tell anyone at the time but that he notified his supervisor of the statement last week because he believed the defense had become aware of it.
During his testimony Tuesday, Vannatter said Simpson became a suspect only after police a bloody glove on his property. Shapiro then read part of Vannatter's cross-examination from March, when Shapiro asked the detective why four officers had to go to Simpson's house to tell him that his former wife had been killed.
Judge Lance Ito previously chastised Vannatter for engaging in "reckless disregard" for the truth when obtaining the search warrant for Simpson's home. The jury never heard about the judge's findings, but on Tuesday were informed of the problems with Vannatter's credibility.
In an effort to exclude the area of questioning about Vannatter, Deputy District Attorney Brian Kelberg dismissed the detective's comments as "a nothing statement" made by a bunch of men smoking cigarettes and "shooting the breeze."
Kelberg also suggested that Vannatter made the remarks partly out of frustration over the battering his department had taken in the case.
"Have you felt that you have been falsely accused, you as a Los Angeles Police Department officer, of entering into a conspiracy to convict an innocent man, Mr. Simpson?" Kelberg asked.
"You bet I have," Vannatter replied. "I've dedicated over 25 years of hard service to this city. And I've done a lot of work, and I've seen a lot of people murdered, innocently murdered. And I've attempted to do the best I can to come to successful conclusions on those."
In other developments:
Judge Ito released procedures for deliberations, revealing that there will be at least a one-hour warning for attorneys to get to court before a verdict is read. The judge also said he will read jury instructions before closing arguments, a somewhat unusual step. Normally, instructions are given after closing arguments, just before the jury begins deliberations. He told jurors that he expects to give them instructions Friday, and that closing arguments will begin Tuesday.
The defense filed an emergency appeal to the California Supreme Court asking it to reinstate Judge Lance Ito's original instruction to jurors that they can draw negative inferences from Mark Fuhrman's unavailability.
SEPTEMBER 20 - After nearly eight months in sequestration, the Simpson jury may have heard testimony from the final witness in the case.
LAPD commander Keith Bushey told the court that on the night Nicole Brown Simpson's murder, he ordered police detective Ron Phillips to find and notify O.J. Simpson "as soon as humanly possible." Prosecutors called Bushey to counter defense claims that Simpson was already a suspect when police went to Simpson's home.
Bushey said that the welfare of Simpson's children was at the heart of his order. He said he did not want the family to find out about the murder from the media.
Sending four detective -- Philips, Mark Fuhrman, Tom Lang and Philip Vannatter --was "not at all unusual" considering that there were potential witnesses to interview and that the children might have to be placed in police custody, Bushey said.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. pointed out that LAPD policy was for the next of kin to be notified first. In this case, that would be Nicole Brown's parents.
Bushey agreed, but said that he was "driven by practicality" in deciding that Simpson, who lived nearby, should be notified first.
Cochran got Bushey to admit that he could not remember another case in which four detectives were asked to carry out the notification responsibility at one time.
Earlier in the day, Judge Lance Ito sustained the prosecution's objection to the testimony of FBI special agents Roger Martz and Frederic Whitehurst, whom the defense wished to call to undermine the prosecution's DNA evidence.
"The presentation of more complex and scientific testimony on a collateral issue would only serve to aggravate and confuse the sequestered jury," Ito wrote in the ruling.
In another ruling, Judge Ito granted the defense request to use videotaped testimony during their closing arguments. The taped segments must depict only witnesses and be available to both sides.
Prosecutor Sherri Lewis had earlier argued that taped segments may be taken out of context and will prolong the trial. She said that the courtroom camera is often not focused on the witness stand. And when it is, the high angle may cause a witness to appear on TV with a different demeanor from the one originally seen by the jurors.
Prosecutors were more successful in defeating a defense motion to limit the length of closing arguments. Cochran asked Ito to allot one day to each side, arguing that sequestration has been a tremendous hardship for the jury.
Clark said the defense's ulterior motive was to limit the prosecution's rebuttal portion of the closings.
Judge Ito denied the defense request, but warned that he will curtail arguments as he sees fit.
Later in the day, when lawyers were arguing over use of the word "syringe" in a stipulation involving the testimony of Thano Peratis, the nurse that drew a blood sample from Simpson's arm, Judge Ito's frustration with the trial was apparent.
"It's astonishing what we have sunk to here," he said, admonishing both sides for constantly bickering.
SEPTEMBER 21 - The jury will be allowed to consider both first- and second-degree murder when deciding the fate of O.J. Simpson.
Prosecutors sought the instruction to give jurors a choice in evaluating Simpson's conduct. But Simpson's lawyers -- dealt a strong blow by the ruling -- argued that allowing the jury to consider anything else but first-degree murder or an acquittal will "undercut the defense" and invite compromise.
But Prosecutor Brian Kelberg successfully argued that a reasonable juror could conclude that Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, yet remain unconvinced he had the premeditation and deliberation required for a first-degree murder conviction.
Under such a scenario, Kelberg argued, jurors would be faced with a "Hobson's choice" of letting a guilty man go free or convicting him of a more serious charge to ensure a conviction.
"Jurors are not to be put in that position," he argued.
Judge Ito agreed, explaining that Goldman's murder could indeed have been committed at the spur of the moment and without premeditation, requiring a second-degree murder charge.
If Simpson is convicted of two first-degree murders, or a first-degree and a second-degree murder, he will automatically face a life sentence without parole. If, however, he is convicted of two second-degree murders, the sentence includes the possibility of parole.
Meanwhile, Judge Ito rejected almost all of the 38 proposed special instructions submitted by the defense. The defense was particularly angered by the judge's rejection of instructions defining how the jury should look at the scientific evidence.
The judge rejected five special instructions dealing with blood, hair and fiber analysis. The defense wanted the jurors to be instructed to first determine whether that evidence was preserved in an "unaltered and unchanged condition from the time of its seizure until the time it was analyzed." The defense also wanted an instruction for the jury to consider whether the evidence was left at the crime scene by the killer or "deposited" (I.e. planted) at a later time.
The prosecution argued such instructions would unfairly emphasize the chain of custody for certain items, and unfairly suggest the planting of evidence.
Judge Ito decided to give the traditional chain of custody instruction. The instruction tells jurors that they may disregard any evidence if they find that a reasonable chain of custody was not established.
The defense did however win a bid for an instruction saying random match statistics are not the same as statistics that indicate the likelihood of whether a defendant committed a crime. But, the judge rejected an instruction which would have told jurors that when a witness offers an opinion that hair or fibers bear similar characteristics, it does not necessarily mean they came from the same source.
Judge Ito, meanwhile, came up with his own special instruction about his decision to allow a prosecution witness to testify about a dream. Simpson acquaintance Ronald Shipp told jurors that after the murders, Simpson confided he had had dreams of killing his ex-wife. The judge will instruct jurors to first determine whether they believe Simpson made the statement. If they do, they then must decide what he meant by "dream."
In other developments:
The California Supreme Court denied an appeal that jurors be told more about why retired Detective Mark Fuhrman wasn't called back to testify after they heard a tape of him uttering a racial slur in contradiction to his trial testimony.
Fuhrman invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination outside the jury's presence when asked whether he planted evidence. The defense wanted jurors to be told he was "unavailable" to return and that they could consider that in weighing his truthfulness.
Judge Ito, who has plans to go on vacation next Friday through Monday, encouraged attorneys to consider extending their closing arguments into the evening. Prosecutors said they would consider the matter. Defense attorneys indicated a willingness to extend arguments into 9 or 10 pm.
SEPTEMBER 22 - "I did not, could not and would not have committed this crime," O.J. Simpson told the court outside the presence of the jury.
Despite objections from prosecutor Marcia Clark, Judge Ito asked Simpson to make a routine waiver of his right to testify. Clark had wanted Simpson to put the waiver in writing to stop him from making an emotional plea that might be leaked to the jurors through conjugal visits and phone calls.
"Much as I would like to address some of the misrepresentations made about myself, and my . . . and Nicole, concerning our life together," Simpson said in open court, "I am mindful of the mood and the stamina of this jury."
"I have confidence, a lot more it seems than Miss Clark has, of their integrity . . . and that they will find as the record stands now that I did not, could not and would not have committed this crime. I have four kids -- two kids I haven't seen in a year. They ask me every week, 'Dad, how much longer?' I want this trial over."
Simpson sounded choked up and received a pat on the back from defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Jr. as he sat down.
Outside the courtroom later in the day, Cochran told reporters that Simpson was asked a question by the judge and had a right to respond. He said Simpson was speaking from the heart and would have made an outstanding witness. But the prosecution's cross-examination would have "gone on forever," and "that would have been unfair," Cochran said.
Listening to Cochran, Fred Goldman, the father of murder victim Ronald Goldman, exploded in anger shortly after, calling Simpson "a coward" for not testifying.
"It is disgusting what he [Simpson] did. It is disgusting that his Dream Team -- Scheme Team maybe is more accurate -- would come here and stand in front of you and tell you it was his right to make a statement to the court. It is disgusting to me that the judge tolerated it."
Goldman said it was unrealistic to believe that the jurors would not receive word of the incident in some form. These people are not "sequestered to a point where they don't know anything that is going on in the outside world."
When the jury was brought into the courtroom, Judge Lance Ito read instructions to them for about 36 minutes. In a major victory for the prosecution, Judge Ito told them they could convict Simpson of first-degree or second-degree murder.
