Cochran To Jury: `Stop This Coverup!' -- Simpson Attorney Attacks Police Motives, Ethics

LOS ANGELES - "Stop this coverup! Stop this coverup!" O.J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. bellowed to jurors today.

Cochran is in the second day of a fire-and-brimstone closing argument. "You and I, fighting for freedom and ideals and for justice for all, must continue to expose hate and genocidal racism and these tendencies," he said. "We, then, become the guardians of the Constitution."

Playing a full deck of race cards, Cochran denounced retired detective Mark Fuhrman as a "genocidal racist" with power, similar to Adolf Hitler, and said lead Detective Philip Vannatter was a liar from beginning to end.

"The two of them need to be paired together because they are twins of deception who bring a message that you cannot trust," Cochran said.

"Stop this cover-up! Stop this cover-up! If you don't stop it, then who? Do you think the Police Department is going to stop it? Do you think the DA's office is going to stop it? . . . It has to be stopped by you."

Simpson, Cochran said, is an innocent man framed by Fuhrman and Vannatter and the "black hole" that is the Los Angeles Police Department.

Cochran's summation prompted a vicious response from the father of victim Ronald Goldman. His voice cracking, Fred Goldman said of Cochran: "This man is sick. He is absolutely sick. . . . This man is a horror walking around amongst us. He's a sick man and he ought to be put away.

"We have seen a man who perhaps is the worst kind of racist himself," Goldman told reporters, "someone who shoves racism in front of everything, someone who compares someone who speaks racist comments to Hitler, a person who murdered millions of people. This man (Cochran) is the worst kind of human being imaginable."

After a break, defense attorney Barry Scheck started his portion of the closing arguments, telling jurors the prosecution's scientific evidence can't be trusted.

"Somebody played with this evidence and there's no doubt about it," he said.

Cochran continued. "Please don't compromise your principles or your consciences. . . . Don't rush to judgment. Don't compound what they've already done in this case," he told the jury of 10 women and two men.

"You are the consciences of this community. You set the standard," Cochran said. "It's not about winning. It's about what's right."

Cochran accused Vannatter of lying when he testified that he did not initially consider Simpson a suspect in the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Cochran then noted the testimony of Fuhrman, whose denial that he had used a racial epithet in the past 10 years was contradicted by witnesses and taped interviews.

"This is wrong! What they have done to our client is wrong!" he said. He said Fuhrman's problem went beyond the use of the epithet. "Forget that. . . . It's about the lengths he would go to get somebody."

Cochran's attack on Fuhrman began yesterday.

"Mark Fuhrman is a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist. . . . This man is an unspeakable disgrace. . . . He is sinful to the prosecution," he said.

Fuhrman's festering vendetta against Simpson, Cochran contended, began in 1985, when Fuhrman responded to a domestic violence call between Simpson and his then-wife, Nicole. The couple sickened Fuhrman - a black man married to a white woman, Cochran said.

"From that moment on, any time he could get O.J. Simpson, he would do it," Cochran said.

The golden opportunity arrived early June 13, 1994, when Fuhrman was called at home and dispatched to a double homicide at 875 South Bundy Drive in Brentwood, Cochran suggested. At the scene were the slashed bodies of Nicole Simpson and her waiter friend.

"He knew what he was going to do on this particular night," Cochran said.

And what he was going to do was carry a bloody glove from the crime scene to Simpson's house a few miles away, a house Fuhrman remembered from that 1985 call, Cochran said.

Fuhrman testified he found a glove at Simpson's house that morning, still sticky with blood.

"Why would it be moist and sticky unless he brought it over there and planted it there to try to make this case?" Cochran asked. "And there is a Caucasian hair on that glove. This man cannot be trusted. He is central to the prosecution, and for them to say he's not important is untrue and you will not fall for it."

Cochran also accused other, unnamed police of taking a pair of socks out of Simpson's hamper during a search of his house and planting them near Simpson's bed. Then, Cochran said, police smeared blood on the socks to incriminate Simpson. DNA tests found Nicole Simpson's genetic markers in the blood.

And, Cochran said, Vannatter has lied from beginning to end, lying even to a judge to obtain a search warrant for Simpson's estate.

"You are seeing and you have seen this code of silence, this coverup," Cochran told jurors. "You can't trust this evidence, you can't trust the messenger. You can't trust the message."

"O.J. could not, would not, did not commit these crimes," he declared, echoing words spoken by Simpson last week while jurors were absent.

Displaying his flair for theatrics, Cochran at one point yesterday put on a dark knitted ski cap to rebuff a prosecution suggestion that Simpson wore a similar cap as a disguise.

"If I put this knit cap on, who am I?" Cochran asked jurors. "I'm Johnnie Cochran with a knit cap on. From two blocks away, O.J. Simpson is O.J. Simpson."

The prosecution will get to offer a rebuttal to the defense summation.

Earlier yesterday, the prosecution wrapped up the first part of its closing arguments by playing Simpson's recorded rage and the haunting pleas of Nicole Simpson on a dramatic 911 tape.

Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden depicted the football Hall of Famer as a spurned ex-husband driven to kill. He described Simpson as a man with a "short fuse" that burned until the climactic moment when he took up a knife and released his rage.

On the 911 tape, played for jurors in a hushed courtroom, Simpson accused Nicole Simpson of failing to think of her children on an occasion when she was with another man. In a calm voice, she tried to quiet her husband because their two small children were in the house.

Darden said many people have asked how Simpson could have killed his ex-wife and Goldman while his children were asleep in her condominium.

"Who could do something like that?" Darden asked. "He could."

Cochran rejected as "preposterous" Darden's description of Simpson's alleged jealous rage on June 12, presenting a videotape and a still photograph of a smiling Simpson at his daughter Sydney's recital. "Where's the murderous rage? Where's the fuse now, Mr. Darden?" Information from The Washington Post was used in this report.