Simpson Says He Was Worried About Ex-Wife

O.J. Simpson took the witness stand Friday and told his story: that he is no vengeful killer, but a loving and levelheaded man who was deeply concerned when his ex-wife began hanging out with prostitutes and living what he considered a dangerous lifestyle shortly before her murder.

Looking relaxed and rested, Simpson answered friendly questions from his defense attorney for nearly three hours. In contrast to his first appearance on the witness stand--when he responded to hostile accusations with clipped one-word answers--Simpson talked easily and at length about his relationship with the woman he is accused of killing.

He described Nicole Brown Simpson as a “fabulous mother,” always terrific with their two children. But he also alluded to a darker side.

He told jurors that she lied to police after ramming an elderly man’s car with her Ferrari. He said she took a prostitute into her home. He testified that she dated many men and got pregnant by one, and he implied that she tried to two-time her boyfriends. He said she acted erratic, got the shakes one evening and almost had a nervous breakdown. He said she was doing things--he did not specify what--that broke down her health.

“I was trying to get her to look at what was going on in her life,” Simpson testified. “I told her to go to therapy.”

But, he said, she resisted. A few weeks later, she was slashed to death on the steps of her condominium as their children slept upstairs.

Lead defense attorney Robert C. Baker did not ask Simpson whether he was the one who slit her throat and stabbed Ronald Lyle Goldman several dozen times on June 12, 1994. And the judge did not permit Baker to inquire about whether the murders could have been related to the unsavory world that Simpson alleges swirled around Nicole. But based on arguments they have made outside the jurors’ presence, the defense team clearly hopes that jurors will conclude the real killer came from that sleazy crowd.

Simpson was acquitted on criminal murder charges in October 1995, after a nine-month trial. The stakes in the current trial, unfolding in the Santa Monica Courthouse, are much lower: Simpson’s money, not his liberty.

If he is found liable for the killings, Simpson could be ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to Goldman’s mother and father and to Nicole Simpson’s estate. Ironically, the estate’s beneficiaries are the Simpsons’ young children--who are now in O.J. Simpson’s custody.

Baker did not deal Friday with any of the evidence against Simpson. He will have a chance to ask about the blood, hair and fiber when his examination resumes Monday morning.

On Friday, Baker focused instead on humanizing Simpson, on presenting him as a real person rather than an arrangement of DNA. And Simpson responded, talking with his trademark charm about asking his mother for advice about his love life and taking his kids to the Big Apple Circus in New York.

“He’s a good witness, no doubt about it,” Loyola Law School professor Victor Gold said.

“It’s consummate O.J.,” agreed Loyola Associate Dean Laurie Levenson.

Always addressing his client as “O.J.,” Baker asked about his wealth and celebrity, about his good looks and charm, about his loving family and loyal friends. Simpson responded eagerly, describing how he emerged from the ghettos of San Francisco to become one of the National Football League’s greatest running backs and most popular personalities.

Dropping names of buddies like basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, Simpson reminded the jury through his answers that he had everything going for him before the stunning moment 2 1/2 years ago when a police officer clamped handcuffs on him in the driveway of his Brentwood estate.

He certainly was not pursuing Nicole, he testified--far from it. The couple divorced in 1992, then attempted a yearlong reconciliation starting in May 1993. But after they broke up for good in May 1994, Simpson said, he had no desire to get entangled with her many problems.

“I was happy with my life,” he testified. “I was earning more money than I had ever earned in my life. I was happy with my golf game. My kids were happy. . . . I told her I wasn’t interested in getting back together.”

The plaintiffs pressing the civil lawsuit against Simpson have painted a much more sinister picture of his attitude in the weeks before the murders. Through various witnesses, they have described him as melancholy, brooding, obsessed with getting Nicole back. He snapped and killed her, they contend, because she made it clear that she was leaving him for good.

Point by point, Baker sought to refute that theory. In response to his lawyer’s sympathetic questions, Simpson portrayed himself as the pursued, not the pursuer. Nicole Simpson sent him cookies, letters and tapes filled with love songs, he said. She even took up golf and showed up at his golf course.

“The whole picture portrayed today was O.J. saying, ‘I’m a good guy. . . . I had my hands full with a woman who was at times irrational, but she didn’t really get to me,’ ” Levenson said.

As he did when he first took the stand in November, Simpson categorically denied ever hitting or punching Nicole. He specifically rebutted two witnesses who said they saw him slap her. And he described his obscenity-laced shouting during a 1993 fight--part of which was captured on tape when Nicole Simpson called 911--as harmless “venting.”

The only time he may have hurt Nicole, he testified, was during a New Year’s Day fight in 1989, when they were both drunk and he was trying to wrestle her out of the bedroom.

“I did not slap her, I did not hit her,” Simpson said. “It was not my intent or purpose to injure her. But I was very physical with her.” The bruises and swollen red marks on Nicole Simpson’s face following that fight, he testified, may have been inflicted during the struggle, through accidental contact. “She would have looked very different if I hit her,” Simpson said.

To show his remorse about the incident, Simpson said, he drew up a legal document promising to nullify his prenuptial agreement if he ever touched her in anger again. Breaking the prenuptial agreement would have allowed Nicole Simpson to claim half his wealth, then estimated at about $10 million.

“At that time, you were a wealthy man?” Baker asked.

“At that time, yes,” Simpson answered, smiling.

“That was before you met a lot of lawyers?” Baker asked.

Looking rueful, Simpson responded: “Yes. Now I know a lot of wealthy lawyers.”

Although several jurors smiled at some of his anecdotes, most kept impassive faces throughout most of Simpson’s testimony. A few even looked a little bored as he ran through the history of his 17-year relationship with Nicole.

They may well have been confused, analysts said, because Simpson talked as though he were sitting down for drinks with an old friend, tossing out first names and elliptical references without fully explaining himself. His testimony at times “assumed a knowledge about the case that maybe the jurors don’t have,” Gold said. “It’s not his fault so much as the lawyer’s. Baker should see it, backtrack and fill in [the gaps].”

Simpson, who sported a new haircut and a gray-green suit, alluded only once to the more than 15 months he spent in jail before and during the criminal trial. And he never mentioned the custody battle for his two young children.

But he did make a point of noting that the children are living with him now. And he made sure jurors knew that he is no pariah, mentioning a couple of times that his house is always full of friends.

Baker concluded his questioning Friday on a quiet note.

“Mr. Simpson, from 1977 up to and including the present, did you love Nicole Simpson?” Baker asked.

“Very much so,” Simpson answered.

“And you told this jury you never harmed her, never touched her physically after Jan. 1, 1989?”

Simpson’s response: “That’s absolutely correct.”

The plaintiffs will have a chance to cross-examine Simpson after Baker finishes his questions. The defense plans to rest early next week--they originally predicted Monday--after calling a few more witnesses, including Simpson’s oldest daughter, Arnelle.

Before Simpson testified, jurors heard a videotaped cross-examination of renowned criminalist Henry Lee, focusing mainly on his testimony that “something’s wrong” with police handling of an incriminating blood drop from the crime scene.

LAPD technicians have previously testified that they sent cloth swatches containing that particular blood drop to a DNA lab only after drying them overnight. Yet Lee told jurors that he found stains on the paper package indicating the swatches must have been wet. What’s more, he said the stains did not match up to the shape and size of the swatches, adding to the mystery.

The defense accounts for the wet stains by arguing that someone daubed fresh drops of Simpson’s blood on the swatches before sending them out for DNA analysis. On cross-examination, however, Lee acknowledged that he has “no independent knowledge” of any evidence tampering. And he agreed that the swatches may have contained enough moisture to cause stains even if they were left to dry overnight.

Lee also conceded that he has no way of knowing whether a bloody footprint he observed at the crime scene two weeks after the murders was created during the assault or much later.

Even on cross-examination, however, Lee managed to score some points for the defense. He pointed out with folksy anecdotes that hairs and fibers can easily be transferred, so they should not be regarded as conclusive trails of a person’s movements. And in response to one question about the frame-up theory, Lee said: “In the past we have had some law enforcement officers plant evidence for no reason.”

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The Testimony

Here are excerpts from O.J. Simpson’s testimony Friday during questioning by defense attorney Robert C. Baker:

Baker asked Simpson about a Jan. 1, 1989, fight with Nicole Brown Simpson.

BAKER: “Did you slap her, did you hit her, did you knock her down?”

SIMPSON: “I did not slap her, I did not hit her. It was not my intent or purpose to injure her, but I was very physical with her in my attempts to get her out of my bedroom. I was totally 100% responsible for what I did that night and for the injuries she sustained that night.”

*

BAKER: “Did you ever ever physically harm Nicole again in your life?”

SIMPSON: “Never.”

*

Simpson explaining that he learned through football to control his anger:

“I knew early on ... that the guys would probably try to get me in fights to get me out of the game, so I had to sort of harness and focus my energy on the game.”

*

On the early years of his marriage to Nicole:

“We were very much in love, Nicole took being a mom probably as seriously as anyone I’ve ever known in my life ... Nicole all her life wanted to be a mother.”