Some of the nation's leading criminal defense lawyers think the so-called "dream team" representing O.J. Simpson is embarrassing their specialty by failing to focus on one theory of the case.
They say they hate to criticize their colleagues in public, but they can't help themselves. They're upset with the prosecution's tactics and the judge's showboating, but most of all with their fellow defense lawyers."The first lesson is: one hairdo, one alibi and one lawyer," said Gerald Lefcourt of New York, one of a panel of defense lawyers who discussed the case Saturday at a meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"You would think that with all the money that O.J. Simpson has, you would have really great trial lawyers," added Gerry Spence of Jackson Hole, Wyo., who has done extensive television commentary on the trial.
Instead, Spence said, "What we are looking at is a large sum of money being spent for a very small service."
The Simpson case is a "total embarrassment to . . . the criminal defense bar," said Albert Krieger of Miami. The problem, he said, is that "they have no coherent, articulate, plausible theory of defense."
"They are throwing anything and everything that any one of the 970 lawyers think about up against the wall and hoping something is going to stick," said Krieger, who defended mob boss John Gotti.
"The best example of the inanity in the defense is Johnnie Cochran saying, `My poor client is so bound by arthritis he can't shuffle a deck of cards,' but whammo! He's swinging golf clubs a few minutes before he goes to Chicago," Krieger said in an interview after the panel.
Krieger said prosecutors apparently had not adequately prepared some of their witnesses before questioning them on the stand. "If I were a California taxpayer, I'd lodge a tax protest."
Los Angeles lawyer Howard Weitzman, who represented Simpson during the murder investigation's first days but opted out of the case, said the trial has been distorted so that "the defendant, Mr. Simpson, has become lost in the mix, and that's not what the criminal justice system is about."
A day earlier, Weitzman told his colleagues, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. Why? Because I'm not on the ninth floor of the criminal courts building in Los Angeles."
He told his audience that Simpson talked with prosecutors outside of Weitzman's presence on the day after the killings of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman because, Simpson told him, "`I've got nothing to hide."'
Weitzman found fault with the prosecutors, saying, "I've never heard more complicated, unintelligible questions than you've heard in this case over and over and over again."
He asked audience members if they believed Simpson should testify in his own defense. No, the defense lawyers in the audience called out, but Weitzman said, "I bet he testifies."
During Saturday's panel discussion, Ira London of New York took issue with Judge Lance Ito's handling of the trial.
"The O.J. Simpson case is an aberration born of a judge who is not respectful of the jurors' time," London said.
After the panel ended, Lefcourt noted that in most cases with sequestered jurors, judges work Saturdays to speed the trial. With the Simpson trial dragging on for months, "We have a new hostage crisis," he quipped.
Roy Black of Miami, who successfully defended William Kennedy Smith against a rape charge, contended the trial has not been so embarrassing as many of his colleagues believe. But even he suggested there are too many lawyers in the courtroom.