In between Cochran's two appearances was Simpson lawyer Barry Scheck, who flailed away at blood and other evidence that prosecutors claim prove Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994.
Today, prosecutors are to take the center stage again for a final rebuttal to the defense's closing arguments.
Judge Lance Ito said late yesterday that jurors would begin deliberating Monday and go six days a week. Sessions will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., rather than being extended, as had been considered.
Yesterday, prosecutors sat silently and took furious, final notes in the most widely watched trial in history, while jurors listened to Cochran's last and most impassioned speech for his celebrity client.
In spite of his success, Simpson - movie actor, sports hero, celebrity pitchman - suffered from racism, said Cochran, who resumed the argument he started late Wednesday. The predominantly black jury showed no emotion, but listened hard as Cochran picked up speed.
The police lied from the beginning of their investigation and never looked for any suspect other than Simpson, said Cochran. He quoted from the New Testament's Book of Luke:
"If you are untruthful in small things, you should be disbelieved in big things," he said.
And the biggest thing confronting the Los Angeles Police Department early the morning of June 13, 1994, was building a case against Simpson, said Cochran. One police officer in particular, Detective Mark Fuhrman, was ready to do anything to frame the former NFL running back, he said.
Fuhrman, he reminded jurors, lied to them in March, when he denied having uttered racist slurs in the last 10 years. He also was a racist, Cochran said,
recalling Roderick Hodge, a black man who testified last month that Fuhrman had called him "nigger."
