SUNDAY INTERVIEW -- The Man Who Spoke for O.J. / Johnnie Cochran, whose name became a household word when he became a defense attorney for O.J. Simpson, talks about the trial, blacks and whites and justice

Johnnie Cochran became internationally famous during the O.J. Simpson trial as the loquacious, media- friendly lawyer who kept insisting that race was a fundamental issue in this and every other American event in history. But in Los Angeles he was already known as the attorney who backed up that claim by representing African Americans who sued the Los Angeles Police Department for brutality and abuse.

In the last 10 years, Cochran has won 45ドル million in civil judgments, and in his book, "Journey to Justice" (Ballantine), he writes that "the problem of unchecked police misconduct was the defining issue among black Angelenos of every social class" from the 1960s to the present.

The son of Louisiana sharecroppers who worked in East Bay shipyards during World War II and eventually settled in Los Angeles, Cochran became one of the first black students at Los Angeles High School, the University of California at Los Angeles and Loyola Law School. He was also one of very few black lawyers in the city attorney's office and later worked for then-District Attorney John Van de Kamp, investigating and prosecuting racism and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department.

There, with a young assistant D.A. named Gil Garcetti (later the Los Angeles D.A. during the Simpson trial), he instituted reforms such as the "Rollout Unit," which "put a deputy D.A. and a district attorney's investigator on the scene of every police shooting within our jurisdiction," Cochran writes.

A flashy dresser who drives a Rolls Royce with custom plates ("JC JR"), Cochran has been the subject of a blistering autobiography, "Life After Johnnie," by his ex-wife, Barbara Berry, and is both criticized and admired in such current books about the Simpson case as "The Run of His Life" by Jeffrey Toobin and "American Tragedy" by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth.

Affable and garrulous, in person he seems less slick or smooth and more straightforward and thoughtful than his media persona -- open to criticism but wary at the same time.

Q: What do you think about the recent perjury trial of Mark Fuhrman, who was found guilty but given probation?

A: I thought it set a terrible example. If you commit perjury in a so- called first degree-murder case, and you're caught red-handed for the entire world to see, and you get only a 200ドル fine, what kind of message does that send about lying in our courts?

That is going to come back to the root. That's the tremendous double standard we see so often in the Los Angeles Police Department. I don't know how you can ever send anybody to prison who's guilty in a perjury case based upon that sentence.

Q: Do you think the LAPD is a typical police department or an aberration?

A: I think the LAPD has more problems than the average department because of its peculiar history. Go back to (former chief) William Parker, who created a paramilitary police force, then to (Parker's successor) Daryl Gates, who sat at his very knee and learned how to police this large area with very few officers. New York City has, what, 28,000 on the force. We have 7,000 plus. So if you're a cop, you've got to be tougher. But the question is, at what price?

But I wouldn't call the LAPD an aberration. I think the problems are endemic in all departments because of the conspiracy of silence that exists among police officers in general. We see the worst in the LAPD because of a hard core that LAPD officers don't do anything about. I mean, imagine how Fuhrman existed for 20 years in that department. Everybody looks the other way. He's not an aberration. He'd been there all along.

Q: As you look back on the trial, can you see a point where an acquittal first looked possible?

A: I thought the key, the place where things might change, was the prosecution's time line. F. Lee Bailey said from the beginning it didn't work. He did all these overheads (photos) from a helicopter; he walked the route, and that was his big contribution. I said to the jurors, "If you find under the time line that this crime couldn't have been committed, this is really over. You don't have to go the rest of it."

Now in the civil trial, (plaintiff attorney Daniel) Petrocelli is trying to move the line back, but there's not enough time -- in fact, they're going to run out of time; it won't work. I think any jury who really looks at the timing will see that Simpson couldn't have done it. So that was a big, big issue for us.

Q: When you say "any jury," you mean a jury that could be predominantly white or predominantly black?

A: Right. The time line evidence is so convincing.

Q: But in the criminal trial you did prefer African Americans as jurors.

A: I felt African Americans had to have some life experiences that would lead them to question the official view. This is where Marcia Clark miscalculated, and as a result we ended up picking the same kind of jurors.

It's hard to find any black mother in Los Angeles whose son, husband, brother or friend hasn't had a terrible experience with the LAPD. And if you're middle aged, you've also lived through two riots. You remember the riot in '65 where people were shot and nobody did anything about it. I mean, there's a lot of history with the LAPD that the prosecution forgot.

Q: What did you think of Marcia Clark as a prosecutor?

A: Marcia's a fine lawyer, and I respect her, but she only knows one speed, and it's all out. She doesn't modulate. She doesn't have a day when she's going to be easy on anybody. She is tough all of the time, and I felt that mitigated against her.

Jurors want courtroom lawyers to have some compassion and be nice. That's why they liked (defense witness) Henry Lee. He would come in every day and say to the jury, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," and walk right up to them, and (Judge Lance) Ito would allow it. Everybody loved him. But the prosecution team was hard -- nasty to us, nasty to everybody.

Q: Did you think that black women on the jury disliked Nicole Brown Simpson and would therefore dislike Marcia Clark?

A: I didn't think a lot about their feelings for Nicole. I liked these ladies because I thought they knew the history. I thought they would like O.J. Simpson, that they would identify with his family and his background -- the good parts about it. And I thought they would be turned off somewhat by Marcia's stridency, on occasion.

Meanwhile, (Christopher) Darden just walked around the courtroom with a chip on his shoulder, so these were not the kind of lovable prosecutors that you wanted to wrap up and take home with you. My message to the jury was, look, you can't trust these messengers or their message, and here's why. And in addition to that, the time line doesn't make any sense. And in addition to that, the gloves don't fit, and so forth.

Q: You've been accused both of bullying and of mentoring Darden throughout the trial. What was your feeling toward him?

A: There was that one day when they had to peel me off the ceiling because Darden was trying to get a witness to say he could identify someone's voice as a black man's voice. And I said, wait a minute. You may be able to tell some kids who don't use verbs and speak in these (Black English) terms, but come on.

I'm from the South, where if you walk down the street and there's somebody behind you talking with a Southern accent, you can't tell whether it's a black or a white person. So I think that sort of stereotype should be kept out (of the court record), which we did. But he should have known better.

Q: What about Darden's attempt to disallow the jury from hearing Fuhrman's use of the word "nigger"?

A: I thought that was a real insult to everybody, and surprising of him. Because when you talk to Chris, he likes to talk about his blackness. For him to say these jurors would be upset hearing the word "nigger," I mean, first of all, many African Americans use the word themselves, so they're going to hear it all the time. And they have been slighted by the word every day. How would they ever get anything done any day if they ran around being "blinded" by it?

I also thought this was another case where the guy just discounted everything he ever knew. Here's a kid who grew up in Richmond, for heaven's sake, hardly a place where "nigger" is never heard. But Darden also knew that Fuhrman was a bad guy. He knew he collected Nazi memorabilia; he knew his past record. I went over to him at the trial because I had respect for him, and I said don't, as a black man, take Fuhrman (as a witness); you'll be used. After all, I didn't question Fuhrman -- I had Bailey do it. Well, Chris read all kinds of things into that, but I wanted to help him.

Q: It's hard to know what he should have believed from you. Didn't you have Bailey goad Darden into asking Simpson to try on the gloves by telling Darden he didn't have "the balls of a stud field mouse"?

A: Yes, we did do that. I have to admit there were times -- and I like Chris a lot -- when that happened. But trial is war. I told him, this is business; afterward it'll be personal.

Q: Speaking of wartime tactics, is it true that you and your defense team took down pictures that were too "white" at O.J. Simpson's house and put up art showing black people when the jury visited Simpson's house?

A: No, we didn't. I never, ever went out there to look at any photographs or take anything off the walls. That was not even an issue with us. I remember that O.J. has a lot of photographs of people like Elizabeth Montgomery, Ava Gardner, Lucille Ball -- you know, celebrities he met early on in his career. His house staff had a lot of flowers around, and there was a fire in the fireplace, but Ito went through asking the housekeeper, "Was this photograph always here?" or saying, "Cut that fireplace off." Whatever the staff did, they never discussed it with us.

Q: Did you ever say that Simpson might be guilty, or that the defense case was "a loser," as one author quotes you?

A: No, I didn't say that. Lawyers have disputed almost everything in this case, but every lawyer who represented Simpson will tell you he always said, 'I'm innocent. I didn't do this, guys. This is my life.' He never wavered from that, and I believed him.

Q: You've also been charged with trying the case in the media as a way to get out-of-court information to jurors through conjugal visits by their spouses.

A: No, I wasn't worried about those jurors, you see. From the beginning I felt we were losing the battle with the media because the LAPD would release information like the 911 tapes or leak rumors that were devastating to the defense.

We had an obligation to present the other side, I felt, because you have to remember that at the start we were hoping for a hung jury -- we didn't start thinking acquittal until later -- so I was worrying about the next jurors and what they would have been exposed to by the time they got to trial. Increasingly, I wasn't as worried about the present jurors -- I liked my jury and didn't think about their conjugal visits.

Q: It's interesting you would say "your jury," since you've been criticized for making a number of promises to jurors in your opening statement that were never fulfilled.

A: An opening statement is like a guide or a road map. It's a very delicate thing. In most cases, the defendant doesn't make an opening statement at the outset. He'd rather reserve and see what's going to happen. But Marcia Clark's opening statement was very impressive. She kept saying "it's a match" about hair and blood tests, and I felt we had to get up with evidence of our own.

I believed (neighboring maid) Rosa Lopez, (domestic violence expert) Lenore Walker and (possible witness) Mary Anne Gerchas would be called. I thought there was only a language problem with Rosa, for example, but the focus group we used outside the courtroom didn't believe her.

That's the difference between the defense and the prosecution: When the focus groups told me not to put Rosa Lopez on the stand, I didn't put her up on the stand. If the prosecution had continued to use focus groups, they wouldn't have put Fuhrman on the stand. Anyway, when I didn't call those witnesses, I stood up in my closing argument and reminded the jury what I had promised at the start and why I hadn't put those people on.

Q: In your book, you characterize yourself as a family man and a religious man, yet your first wife has accused you of being a philanderer, a wife beater and nearly a bigamist who fathered a son in a "second family" she knew nothing about. Is that true?

A: I never said I was pure as the driven snow. Or that I was the most stable husband in the world. But I didn't have a "second family." When my son Jonathan was conceived, I was separated from Barbara, and I got back with Barbara after that. I never struck her. Without equivocation, I tell you in the strongest terms, I have never struck anyone.

This idea that she didn't know about Jonathan is all wrong. There's one photograph in the book that was taken in my back yard and shows Jonathan as a little boy, Barbara Berry Cochran, my present wife Dale, and my parents. Everybody knew about everybody.

Q: What do you think the Simpson criminal trial has taught us?

A: It allowed us as a nation to pull back the carpet and look at some of the dirt we've swept underneath. I think many people in the majority community used to think, well, gee, things are fine in this country. But for the vast majority of African Americans and other minorities, the justice system hasn't been fair.

On October 3 (when the acquittal was announced), black people were not cheering O.J. Simpson per se. They were cheering an African American, someone who looked like them, someone who maybe had the resources to go all the way through the system and had a lot of lawyers, but in any case got justice. This was new.

Q: So the trial said something different to whites than it did to blacks?

A: One difference became clear. African Americans know more about Caucasian Americans than the reverse. Whereas in the majority community, you don't have to really know very much about minorities, black people are very aware of a "twoness" or double identity in life that says, for example, that I'm not just a citizen or a lawyer in this society; I'm a black citizen and a black lawyer.

So the Simpson case gives us the chance to look at each other without stereotypes or judgment. In my speeches I say, "let's not run and hide; let's acknowledge the divide." Let's get off our safe streets in suburbia where we view the police far differently than the person in the inner city, or the person who is not as accepted by the majority community in society. Surely trying to talk and understand each other better will lead to a a fairer society.

Q: What do you say to African Americans following the Simpson trial?

A: I talk about our duty as citizens to get out and vote. It doesn't matter who you vote for, but vote for the politician that shares your vision of America so you have the America that you think about. And when your jury summons comes, don't throw it in the trash. Be proactive, get involved. Somebody in the system needs somebody who looks like you.

Q: What do you think will happen in Simpson's civil trial?

A: The time line is crucial again, but I think the big issue is O.J. Simpson himself. He's willing to testify, and I think the jury will find he's not just a smooth talker but a very compelling witness. The 33 minutes he spoke to the police detectives on tape (before the trial) is consistent with what he says now. When he says, "I didn't kill these people," you'll believe him just like we did.

Q: What about his future?

A: If he prevails in the civil case -- if he gets his children back -- he'll get some life and some peace. He probably will never be the darling, the icon, he was before, but here's what's been troubling me: When people in the mainstream talk about the man charged with the Oklahoma City bombing -- and keep in mind that was allegedly the worst act of domestic terrorism in history -- they speak in much gentler terms than they do about O.J. Simpson. It's a big difference, and it puts things in perspective. If you want to have a fair society, you have to understand that race always plays a part.

JOHNNIE COCHRAN