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O.J. Simpson Arraignment Special, Part 3

CNN

July 22, 1994

SHOW: NEWS 1:11 pm ET

O.J. Simpson Arraignment Special, Part 3

BYLINE: ART HARRIS

SECTION: News; Domestic

LENGTH: 587 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Simpson defense team plans to prove their client couldn’t have had time to murder Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, clean himself up annd make his plane to Chicago. They’ll also point out police errors.

JIM MORET, Anchor: CNN’s Special Assignment Correspondent Art Harris has been delving behind the scenes into the O.J. Simpson case, and he’s uncovered a num-ber of interesting tidbits.
 
Art joins us now with what he knows about the defense team’s own investigation into the killings.  Art?
 
ART HARRIS, Correspondent: Jim, the new chief investigator for the defense, John McNally, is already on the job out here.  Last night, he met with other investi-gators to plan the strategy.  We talked with Bill Pavelic, one of McNally’s troops.
 
Pavelic was once a detective with the LAPD and is an expert on police procedure.  He comes across as a Colombo without the cigar.
 
BILL PAVELIC, Defense Investigator: Nothing is in, and nothing is out.  This case is like an Agatha Christie play, Murder, She Wrote.  We have only seen the opening scenes; we haven’t even begun to look at the other real issues.
 
HARRIS: So there could be other killers?
 
Mr. PAVELIC: There is no question in my mind that there are other killers.
 
HARRIS: As bizarre as that may sound, investigators for the Simpson side will also try and close the window of time in which the murders could have been com-mitted to show Simpson couldn’t possibly have had the time to do the crime.
 
It’s a three-pronged attack - that our guy couldn’t have done it; someone else did; and the police have mishandled evidence in the case.  Jim?
 
MORET: Art, what are you hearing about how the defense team will try to do that?
 
HARRIS: Jim, defense sources tell us they’ve been looking at TV news coverage of the crime scene, looking for errors in police procedure.  They’re also going to try to show that Simpson couldn’t possibly have had the time to drive to Nicole Simpson’s house, kill two people, drive home, clean up and make his flight to Chicago.
 
So they’ll be trying to show Ron Goldman got to Nicole Simpson’s house later than police believe.  They plan to interview Goldman’s friends to track his movements and also suggest that he may have been the killer’s target, not Nicole Simpson.
 
But one thing that’s been haunting the defense is what O.J. Simpson told police when he agreed to talk to them the day after the murders.  Sources close to the case tell CNN Simpson contradicted himself about his activities, and that’s a trump card the prosecution has yet to play.  Jim?
 
MORET: Now Art, how will the defense team try to deal with that?
 
HARRIS: One defense source tells us any inconsistencies will be explained away by Simpson’s condition - that he was exhausted during the interview, traumatized by the tragedy and on medication.  The strategy is to put everyone on trial, ex-cept O.J. Simpson.
 
So we can expect to hear more about the private lives of the police officers on the case and the people around Nicole Simpson.  But that’s dicey, because if they trot out too much trash, it could spill over on the victim, who, after all, was the mother of O.J. Simpson’s two young children.  Jim?
 
MORET: Thank you Art.  When we come back, we’ll have more on what the defense team has been doing this week.  We will examine court motions they’ve filed and get opinions of our experts when we return, right after this.  Stay with us.
 
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed.  However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distri-bution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.

LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Transcript # 363-3

TYPE: Package