Free Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark

funeral, Simpson dropped off the screen. He’d apparently attended a gathering at Nicole’s parents’ home down at Dana Point before returning to “seclusion” at Rockingham. By Thursday evening, I was climbing the walls. I called the cops to check up on him. That’s when I learned, to my amazement, that they did not have him under surveillance.
    “Lack of manpower,” they said. “Besides, where’s he gonna go?”
    This was too much even for Gil. He called us all into his office that evening and put the question to us: “Do we go to the grand jury or wait for the police to file?”
    We all agreed the case was well past the stage of being filable. The cops were playing strictly cover-your-ass politics, which might have been fine if they’d had the luxury of working without the constant scrutiny of the press. But that wasn’t the situation we had here. The media was broadcasting every tidbit it could get its hands on, and a lot of that information was amazingly on target. Some creep with access to documents was leaking like a rusty tub.
    As the evidence piled up, so did O. J. Simpson’s incentive to flee.
    “What if Simpson pulls a Polanski?” I asked Gil.
    Film director Roman Polanski—allowed to remain at large while under investigation on charges of statutory rape—had fled to France. Why couldn’t it happen here? The clock was ticking, and we didn’t want to be the saps who failed to move because the cops didn’t give us permission.
    There were other concerns as well.
    “I’m worried about losing that guy Kaelin,” I told the others. “He’s very shaky. We need his testimony—now.”
    “David,” Gil said at last, “tell Terry White [our office’s grand jury adviser] to arrange to convene the jurors for Friday afternoon. We’ll hear Kaelin’s testimony.”
    Finally, we were moving. It wasn’t until everyone stood up and began to leave the conference room that Frank Sundstedt finally asked the question that was uppermost in my mind.
    “So, does Marcia have the case?”
    I held my breath. Suddenly it felt very important to me. While part of me—probably the rational part—recognized that this would not be a smooth prosecution, I wanted to hear that Gil had the confidence to let me handle a big one.
    “Marcia has the case,” he said finally, catching my eye. “But not alone. She’s going to do it with someone else.”
    There was a nervous shuffling in the room. Someone cleared his throat. Truth is, if you really trust a prosecutor, you make her the lead chair. No doubt what he intended was to pair me with another strong personality who would keep me in check. My pride wouldn’t let me show my disappointment.
    But as David walked me back to my office, I fumed sotto voce.
    “Why does he think I need someone else?”
    David urged me to calm down. Think of it from Gil’s point of view, he said. The guy’s under a lot of pressure and he’s probably just hedging his bets. Your feelings are the least of his problems right now.
    He was right, of course. For Gil, this wasn’t personal. If I had to pair up with someone, maybe Gil would let me have David?
    “How about you?” I asked him. He shot back a look as if to say, “In your dreams, babe.” David was up to his ears in Menendez. He had all the alligators he could handle in that swamp.
    Even before I left the office that night, I was hearing rumors that the LAPD brass were in negotiations with Robert Shapiro to allow O. J. Simpson to surrender voluntarily. Our threat to go grand jury must have lit a fire under them. But the news was a mixed bag. On one hand, the idea of a negotiated arrest made me nuts. Once again, O. J. Simpson’s celebrity status had gained him a legal advantage. A negotiated voluntary surrender signals to the public and potential jury pool that the suspect is someone who deserves special privileges. I’d much rather see a righteously arrested suspect step out of a squad car in handcuffs. Still, my annoyance was