Juditha's Last Call

Juditha Brown's phone record for the night of the murders is proof positive that anything can be disputed. Some people who believe that O.J. is guilty say the same thing about DNA and a hundred other things that the prosecution and the plaintiffs presented in court as evidence of O.J.'s motive, means and opportunity to kill Ron and Nicole.

There is, however, one big difference.

The validity of Juditha's phone records that Marcia Clark presented in court was agreed to by the judge and the defense. The time on the bill of Juditha's last phone call to Nicole was 10:17 to 10:28. In TV interviews before Juditha changed her story to fit an undocumented five-minute call that Marcia said she made to Nicole at 9:40, Juditha Brown's recollection of her last conversation with Nicole fits the eleven minutes of the 10:17 record.

Marcia's argument revolved around a killing time between 10:15 and 10:25, based on the earwitness testimony of three people concerning the time Nicole's dog began to bark. She then proceeded to ignore the 10:17 call. 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 it.

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 accepted it without objection. --Jasper