Darden criticizes most players in Simpson case, but not Clark
March 16, 1996
Web posted at: 2:00 p.m. ESTFrom Correspondent Larry Meagher
(CNN) -- In his memoirs of the O.J. Simpson trial, Christopher Darden slams the judge, the defense, the jury, his colleagues and even himself.
The book, "In Contempt," will be released Wednesday. Excerpts appear in Monday's issue of Newsweek magazine. Darden appeared on ABC's 20/20 Friday to discuss some of its revelations.
Asked for his opinion of Judge Lance Ito, Darden said, "He gave the defense the keys to the courthouse. He surrendered his gavel ...(defense attorney) Johnnie Cochran ran that courtroom, not Judge Ito." Ito declined to comment on Darden's accusation, a court spokeswoman said.
Darden admitted that during a private exchange, Cochran urged him to steer clear of former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman as a witness.
"Cochran knew ... about the racist tapes Fuhrman made with a North Carolina screenwriter, and I think he was honestly trying to warn me away," Darden writes in his book. "Perhaps he felt badly over what he'd done to my reputation during the n-word argument."
But unlike his white colleagues in the district attorney's office, Darden says he had profound misgivings about the man who found the bloody glove at Simpson's estate.
"I had this ill feeling about Mark Fuhrman, this inner mechanism deep down, that lets you know that the man you are talking to is a bigot," Darden told ABC's Barbara Walters in the interview broadcast Friday night.
Darden refused to conduct Fuhrman's direct examination. Still, he said, Cochran's warning did not repair the damage Cochran had caused by suggesting Darden only got the Simpson case because of his race.
"I thought that I should probably hit him with a right cross," Darden said. "What he was really saying to African Americans was that I was a sellout."
Darden writes that his colleague Marcia Clark first suggested the now-famous glove test. But he takes responsibility for insisting the jury see Simpson try on the bloody gloves.
Afterward, he writes, "Marcia didn't talk to me for a few days. For weeks after that, I was left out of major decisions involving the case."
In the end, Darden says, the jurors who acquitted Simpson followed their own agenda, not the evidence. And, he said, he saw the not-guilty verdict coming.
"From the very moment I saw that jury, I didn't believe that we had a snowball's chance in hell of convicting O.J. Simpson," he told Walters.
Darden said he believed the jury used the verdict as a form of "payback" for past racial injustices.
But Cochran disagrees. "I do have strong feelings about people who attack the jury system," Cochran said. "I think that's flat out wrong."
In both the book and the interview, Darden is guarded in discussing his relationship with Marcia Clark.
"Pressed into an impossible case with unbearable scrutiny, Marcia Clark and I moved from professional respect to deep friendship," he writes in his book.
"It could have been a romance but Marcia Clark and I ... did not have the kind of relationship that people would like us to have had and people suggested that we had," Darden told Walters.
Darden writes that he won't say any more about it, because, "My parents taught me locker-room talk isn't at all gentlemanly."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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