However long the O.J. Simpson proceedings drag on, some bedeviling questions may never be answered. One important unknown, however, has always been guaranteed a resolution, even before the opening bell of the trial. To wit: Would the prosecution, rolling high, try for the death penalty, or would it lower the stakes — and possibly raise the chances of conviction — by demanding mere life imprisonment?
On Friday Simpson’s lawyers heard the verdict. In a letter to attorneys Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran Jr., Assistant District Attorney Frank Sunstedt explained that after “consideration of all available aggravating and mitigating . . . evidence,” the sentencing committee he chairs had opted to seek life without the possibility of parole.
District Attorney Gil Garcetti seemed to anticipate the scrutiny his announcement would attract, acknowledging in a press release the “deep public concern” about the death-penalty decision in the Simpson case but asserting that the decision had been made “independent of this concern.” Yet that bland avowal, combined with a stated intention to comment no further until after the trial, invited immediate speculation that public concern — or, more specifically, the concern of one potential juror who might create a hung jury — was indeed Garcetti’s paramount consideration. “I’m not suprised,” says Wendy Alderson, a prominent Palm Springs jury consultant. “I don’t think they would have found 12 people to put Simpson to death.” Adds Laurie Levenson, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University: “You would have heard Johnnie Cochran up there every time saying, ‘He’s fighting for his life.’ ” Cochran’s colleague Shapiro announced simply that he had not addressed the committee, since his innocent client expects to face no penalties whatsoever.
Meanwhile, as their colleagues were putting finishing touches on their letter, prosecutors Marcia Clark and William Hodgman were investigating an intriguing, if tenuous, lead. With new Simpson revelations ever scanter, the connected tale of his longtime friend A.C. Cowlings has moved to the fore. Last month Cowlings was described as a gofer to an alleged Los Angeles cocaine kingpin, whom he improbably thanked in court papers for helping him end a freebasing habit.
As with the Simpson proceedings, a circus odor envelops the grand jury examining Cowlings’ connection to the O.J. affair. Last week a man named John Dunton was jailed for refusing to testify. Dunton, who had earlier gone on television claiming that two men killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman and that a private eye hired to follow Nicole witnessed the murders, now said he would be killed if he talked. Anthony Pellicano, the private investigator who worked for Michael Jackson amid the pop star’s tangle with child-abuse allegations, then emerged to deny that he was the private eye Dunton referred to on TV. Calling Dunton’s story “ridiculous,” Pellicano, however, confirmed that he was connected to the Simpson case. He is working for Mark Furhman, the L.A.P.D. detective who found the mysterious bloody glove at O.J.’s Brentwood mansion and has been accused by defense sources of planting the evidence to implicate the football great.
Finally, a lawyer for a 23-year-old former porn star named Jennifer Peace claimed that the actress had not only gone before the Cowlings grand jury but also had spent last Thursday chatting with Clark and Hodgman. Peace, who under the name Devon Shire made roughly 80 X-rated films between 1990 and 1992, dated Cowlings and bills herself as his friend. Her conversations with the authorities may well have resembled interviews she gave recently to TIME and other news outlets. According to Peace, Cowlings told her that Simpson was guilty of both murders. The murder weapon “sleeps with the fishes,” i.e., + was thrown in a body of water. Peace claims Cowlings told her that on the Friday before the murder, O.J. had been “stalking” Goldman, whom he “hated with a passion.” But Cowlings also allegedly said that when O.J. arrived at Nicole’s residence on Sunday, June 12, “he didn’t go there to kill Nicole. He had the knife on him, and he got so angry, he went into a rage and almost blacked out over what happened.”
Peace also says Cowlings talked to her about what went on in the white Bronco five days later, during what the press dubbed — correctly she says — Simpson’s “escape attempt.” “They weren’t going to no grave site,” she says. “They weren’t clear on anything. But then they saw 40 cops and 15 choppers, and they said, hmmm, maybe escaping isn’t such a good idea.”
Peace’s lawyer says the prosecutors appeared satisfied with the actress’s truthfulness. Others will need more convincing. As further information about the erstwhile porn star leaked out — that she had tried to sell her story to the supermarket tabloid the Star; that she had claimed to be pregnant by baseball star Barry Bonds — it seemed possible that Cowlings’ and Simpson’s lawyers, both of whom have called her story ludicrous, might be able to impeach her as a reliable source.
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