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From: Jasper
Date: 9/19/00
Time: 11:57:41 AM
Jean,
I agree.
In A Problem of Evidence, Joe Bosco quotes Pat McKenna as saying that Rosa was upset about the time Bill Pavlic put down in his report that she saw the Bronco. Pavlic told Cochran that she would testify that she saw it parked at 10:15 on the 12th exactly where the police found it on the 13th. When she heard that she went into a panic because that wasn't what she said and she understood the importance of that testimony. Marcia Clark was arguing that the Bundy killings started at 10:15 and by saying that she saw the Bronco at that time Rosa would be giving O.J. an airtight alibi. She liked O.J. She never thought for a second that he killed anyone but she was not going to lie about what happened.
Rosa told Pavlic that she looked at the clock around 10:00 and did what Pavlic interpreted as a SERIES of things before she took the dog out to relieve itself. Pavlic estimated how much time that it would have taken her to do each of those things and added up his estimates to get 15 minutes. McKenna, on the other hand, WATCHED HER do the things Pavlic added up in series. McKenna saw that she had worked out a very efficient routine that allowed her to do some things simultaneously and to be out of the house and back in about two minutes. She didn't want to get O.J. into trouble but she couldn't lie, either.
Rosa was faced with a moral dilemma and McKenna could see that it was tearing her up. He assured her that it was all right to tell the truth. As far as he was concerned the important thing about her testimony was that she saw the Bronco before 10:15 on the 12th parked exactly the way the police found it the next day. When you see the acute angle that O.J. had to turn from his driveway to Rockingham it becomes immediately apparent why it was parked slightly away from the curb at a SLIGHT angle (2 degrees). It's the only way to make that turn and park without parking another car length or two forward of the gate or backing up on Rockingham and driving straight in. The distance of the tires from that curb and the parking angle were not great enough to bother with. Rosa said that O.J. always parked that way.
This is where McKenna screwed up. Instead of using what she said about the Bronco being parked "crooked," he dismissed it as the influence of what the police said. The difference is crucial. The car was parked crooked - but only slightly so. There was nothing UNUSUAL about it. Fuhrman was claiming that it was parked at an EXTREME angle, so extreme that it called for an extreme explanation.
Then there was the harassment she got from the DA's office, and their deliberate distortions of what she said to make her appear to be liar and a lackey for O.J. And there were the treats they made to deport her friend Sylvia who could back up what she said about the Bronco.
I think that the problems Rosa had with everyone's interpretation of what she told them in English had a lot to do with her decision not to speak English in court. But the real problem was not with her. It was with everyone who confused her social class, her lack of education and her poor command of the language with a lack of intelligence or a lack of integrity. She seemed to me to be more on the ball than most of the witnesses and all of the DA's. It really came through when she got a decent translator. The more Darden tried to impugn her credibility the more she demolished his. If you notice the points he attacked her on, they involved subtleties in the language and cultural differences that had no real bearing on credibility. I though that she stood up to him well.
The biggest problems I had with reading her testimony had to do with the questions the lawyers asked and didn't ask, all the objections they made and the way they skipped around from one time frame to another. We can't even say for sure whether she heard the thumps or not because nobody asked. The air conditioner sometimes banged when it started up. That is something that she had heard many times in the years she worked for that Salengers and she may not have considered a sound anything like that important enough to note. What was important to her were the footsteps and the voices she didn't recognize. Both sides tried to create confusion about the time to fit the theories they were trying to sell. To some extent they both succeeded. None of it was the fault of Rosa Lopez. --Jasper