Juditha's Last Call

The documents representing Juditha Brown's phone calls to her daughter Nicole on the night that Nicole and Ron Goldman were murdered is proof that anything can be disputed.

The validity of Juditha's phone bill that Marcia Clark used in O.J. Simpson's criminal trial was agreed to by the judge and the defense. According to this document, Juditha made her last call to Nicole at 9:40 and talked for a maximum of two minutes. The scope of the things she told Marcia that she discussed with Nicole in that call could not have been contained in a two-minute conversation. Nevertheless, Marcia elicited testimony from Juditha that she last talked to Nicole at the last time indicated on a reproduction of her phone bill.

This document served the prosecution by making it possible for Marcia to mark the start of the killings between 10:15 and 10:20. This was enough time for O.J. to have committed the murders, left all of the incriminating evidence that was found on Bundy and Rockingham and disposed of the incriminating evidence that was not found.  This document also served the defense by locking the prosecution into a timeline that O.J.'s attorney's could prove made it impossible for him to be the killer.

The proof was in a call that Juditha made to Nicole at  10:17 that lasted 11 minutes. That 10:17 to 10:28 time of Juditha's last phone call to Nicole did not appear on the phone bill Marcia used in the criminal trial. It was presented separately in court during the preliminary hearing when Robert Shapiro brought it to the attention of Judge Ito. He said that he got the report from the prosecution and offered to stipulate that it was accurate. Marcia did not dispute the authenticity of Shapiro's copy of the 10:17 call. She said that she would not make the stipulation only because she did not have her own copy of the document with her. She never mentioned it again.  The defense team proceeded to ignore the fact that it had ever seen it. Instead, they produced a long line of credible witnesses to dispute Marcia's claim that O.J. committed the murders between 10:15 and 10:20.

Some people have argued that the lawyers on both sides simply dropped the ball. But a close examination of the plaintiffs' strategy shows that the plaintiffs accepted the criminal defense team's timeline, which happens to agree with the 10:17 call on Juditha's phone bill, and shifted their timeline for the murders accordingly.

One could therefore argue that whether the prosecution missed the critical time on the bill or thought they might slip it past the defense makes no difference. Either way, one could then argue that the defense sat on it to keep the prosecution from shifting to a more realistic timeline the way the plaintiffs ultimately did and to use it as an escape hatch on appeal if O.J. was convicted.

These are only speculations. The fact remains that the prosecution introduced the 10:17 -- 10:28 call into evidence and the defense offered to accept it without objection. --Jasper