Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
I watched a lot of the trial as well and I was astonished at the glove episode which gave Johnny Cochran his famous line in closing. What a colossal mistake that the veteran prosecutor Marcia Clark never in a million years should have allowed to happen. And the decision not to put in evidence of the attempted flight was also, to me, inexplicable.
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Yeah. You don't do stuff in trial unless you know its going to work. I saw that firsthand when I second chaired (or maybe third -- there were two of us who were young lawyers from the same class) a trial that involved a kid who got blown up and sustained 3rd degree burns over 78% of his body and lived. It was amazing. Walton v. Black & Decker. Greg Walton is now a plastic surgeon, which is also amazing. In any event, the defense in that case had basically three defenses and did an in-court demonstration to prove how what we said couldn't possibly have happened. Instead, it destroyed them and proved our case. Ed Abel, my senior partner at the time, was the most brutal cross-examiner I still have ever seen. He just killed the defense expert to the point that the jury was laughing at him whenever he answered a question. It was ugly.
Ten million dollar verdict in 1989, all of which was collected. Wish I'd had a bigger part of that case. But I didn't. Life goes on.