[ Home | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Jasper
Date: 9/19/00
Time: 7:45:32 PM
John,
I think I may see where you thought Rosa heard Arnelle at 12:30. Is it because Johnnie Cochran kept saying the voices near Rockingham where Arnelle parked her car?
That drove me nuts when I was writing Iago until Gary Carrier sent me a tape of Steven Singular's Legacy of Deception. Although the Simpson's and the Salenger's both lived on Rockingham, in the context of everything that had gone before, O.J.'s Rockingham estate had frequently been referred to as Rockingham. That, all by itself could have cause much of the confusion in Rosa Lopez's testimony.
This is one time that Darden was right in objecting to one of Johnnie Cochran's questions as being compound and leading. It was Cochran, not Rosa who identified the midnight voices as having come from Rockingham. According to the story Singular's anonymous source told him about Fuhrman and another detective sneaking over to Rockingham at 3:30 and getting into an argument, the street would have been a logical place for that to have happened. Darden knew the story as well as Cochran knew it and he knew damn well what Cochran was doing by constantly repeating the voices "on Rockingham." There really was no foundation for that and Cochran wasn't about to lay one. He wanted confusion about the time but not about the voices because it matched singular's story of the arguing detectives. He was attempting, though Rosa Lopez, to tell as much of Singular's story as possible. Darden didn't want anything to do with it or with any of Rosa's testimony.
Rosa did not correct Johnnie Cochran. I don't think she knew how to without sounding disrespectful. However, when she was allowed to tell the whole story her way she said that the voices came from the back. The one thing she did say every time was that she heard the voices of men. This is the part of her testimony where she says she was interviewed by Mark Fuhrman:
DID HE SAY ANYTHING ELSE TO YOU AT THAT POINT? A AFTER THAT, BECAUSE I HAD SEEN SO MANY POLICE OFFICERS AND SO MANY CAMERAS AND SO MANY THINGS, I ASKED, "WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT'S HAPPENING?" AND HE SAID, "SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAS HAPPENED ON THE OTHER SIDE." AND I ASKED HIM, "IS MR. SIMPSON DEAD OR WOUNDED," AND HE SAID NO. Q AND WHAT HAPPENED THEN? A AND THEN I SAID -- AND THEN HE SAID, "WHY?" "BECAUSE LAST NIGHT, VERY LATE, I HEARD VOICES. I HEARD MEN THAT WERE TALKING IN THE BACK OF THE YARD." Q YOU TOLD THIS DETECTIVE THAT? A YES, SIR. Q ALL RIGHT. AND WHEN YOU TOLD HIM THAT, WHAT DID HE SAY, IF ANYTHING? A AND HE ASKED ME IF I HAD HEARD A WOMAN SCREAMING OR SCREAMS OF A WOMAN AND VOICES, WOMEN VOICES. Q AND WHAT DID YOU SAY, IF ANYTHING? A I SAY -- I SAID NO, THEY WERE MEN.