The Run of His Life by Jeffrey Toobin

Author:Jeffrey Toobin [Toobin, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82916-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

Shapiro sulked. In court, he sat at the opposite end of the defense table from Bailey, and for the next nine months the two men did not exchange a word. Outside the Criminal Courts Building, Shapiro’s petulance took another form. Slowly but inexorably, he began broadening the circle of people to whom he told his true feelings about his client. From the start of Shapiro’s representation, his wife, Linell, had never had any compunction about sharing her views at social gatherings: “Guilty, guilty, guilty.” Both inside and outside the defense-team offices, particularly as the racial polarization about the case intensified, Shapiro decided to prove his kinship with the West Los Angeles world that meant so much to him. Their view of the case was his, too. “Of course he did it,” Shapiro would say.

For his part, Bailey, who never worried too much about any client’s guilt or innocence, just wanted to return to the big time. Indeed, one irony of Shapiro’s attack on Bailey is that it was launched before Bailey had uttered a single word in Judge Ito’s courtroom.

In the last legal argument before opening statements, Bailey would finally speak in that court for the first time. Prosecutors had urged Ito to let them introduce evidence of Simpson’s pattern of domestic violence against Nicole as proof that he murdered her. This was an important controversy for Ito to resolve, but in a rather minor sideline to the main issue, prosecutors called to the stand a Canadian expert to testify about domestic violence in general. Late on a sleepy Thursday afternoon, Bailey rose to cross-examine Dr. Donald Dutton of Vancouver.

Nature has favored Bailey with a glorious voice, which summons a stream of Dewar’s tumbling down a pebbly brook. His hands tremble a good deal, but with one in his pocket and the other on the lectern, Bailey can still command a moment. He speaks a language that has almost vanished from American courtrooms, a kind of British English that combines wry whimsy and baroque locution. When Dr. Dutton didn’t understand a question, Bailey attributed it to “the vicissitudes of give-and-take,” and when the Canadian witness was not clear on another matter, Bailey asked to “see if we can surmount the barrier of our common language.”

In his redirect examination, prosecutor Scott Gordon at one point asked Dutton to explain a phrase he had used: “narcissistic personality.”

“A narcissistic personality,” the expert explained, “will be someone who has an exaggerated or a grandiose view of their own importance, who needed a constant kind of reinforcement, who over-reacted to any kind of slight criticisms, and was incapable of developing empathy with other people.”

In the silence before the next question, Bailey took a long look at his colleagues on the defense team. Then he leaned over and whispered to Gerry Uelman: “Sounds like everyone at this table.”

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