ARTICULATING HIS `OUTRAGE' : BUGLIOSI OFFERS VIVID COMMENTARY ON PROSECUTION OF SIMPSON CASE.

Byline: Cassandra Smith Special to the Daily News

Title: ``Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder''

Author: Vincent Bugliosi 

Data: Norton, 356 pages; $25

Our rating: Four Stars

After reading Vincent Bugliosi's book on the O.J. Simpson trial, you can't help but wonder if the verdict in the case against the former football Hall-of-Famer would have turned out differently if Bugliosi had prosecuted the case.

Bugliosi, who successfully put Charles Manson and his ``family'' in prison for the Tate-LaBianca murders and authored ``Helter Skelter,'' says he had no doubt that Simpson was guilty of the double murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman. ``If your blood is at the murder scene,'' Bugliosi said, ``that's the end of the ball game.''

And he discounts the theory that evidence was planted, because the blood drops at Bundy Drive were recovered before any blood was even drawn from Simpson's arm.

During the trial, I was working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, and I spoke with Bugliosi often about various aspects of the law and the attorneys in the case. Bugliosi was critical of the prosecution team at the time of the trial. So, he cannot be accused of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

His opinions have not changed. In his new book, ``Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder,'' he makes an airtight case for his views. He backs them up with numerous examples and he cites many legal cases as precedents.

There have been several books written about this case. But Bugliosi, who won 105 convictions out of 106 felony jury trials during his tenure as a Los Angeles County prosecutor, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss, has written his analysis of what went wrong during the so-called Trial of the Century.

Bugliosi's book is the most compelling of the dozen or so that I have read. In it, he exhaustively details why the prosecution failed to nail their man, and offers colorful illustrations of how they might have secured a guilty verdict or, at least, a hung jury.

The first major error, Bugliosi said, was made by District Attorney Gil Garcetti. Transferring the trial from the West judicial district in Santa Monica, where the crime occurred, to the Central District downtown, where the percentage of African-Americans in the jury pool is much higher, was a fatal flaw.

Bugliosi made this same point in a December 1994 interview with Playboy magazine before the start of the trial.

``There can be little question - though no one could expect any of the Simpson jurors to admit it - that most members of the Simpson jury were biased against the prosecution and in favor of Simpson,'' Bugliosi writes.

The seminal question, Bugliosi asks, is whether this murder trial had to be cursed with this jury. Bugliosi recalls a conversation he had with Garcetti shortly after his article appeared in Playboy. Garcetti reportedly told him that things had changed since Bugliosi worked as a prosecutor. Once you take a case to the grand jury, Garcetti said, the case has to stay downtown.

``Gil,'' Bugliosi told the district attorney, ``not only wasn't it that way when I was in the office, but it still isn't that way.'' Bugliosi referred Garcetti to a representative for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, and Garcetti retreated from his position, Bugliosi said.

Although Bugliosi criticizes the District Attorney's Office and the jury, he reserves his harshest words for the prosecution team of Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark, calling them grossly unprepared and incompetent. He faults them, in part, for putting on a disorganized case and for failing to introduce all of the incriminating evidence they had against Simpson, including his statement to the police, the suicide note, the Bronco chase, the alleged stalking and domestic violence.

What Bugliosi terms the prosecution's inexcusable lack of preparation for closing arguments and embarrassingly bad rebuttal arguments are the subject of a 78-page chapter that includes example after example of how the duo blew it. ``The reality is that the two prosecutors could have hardly been worse,'' Bugliosi writes.

But Bugliosi is quick to note that the first vote taken by the jury was 10-2, with two jurors voting for guilt. So, even with such a poor performance by the prosecution, two members of the jury were ready to convict. That leads Bugliosi to believe that if the prosecution had done its homework and put in longer hours preparing the case, it could have secured a guilty verdict.

While the prosecution comes in for the heaviest reproach, no one escapes Bugliosi's criticism. He blames Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito for allowing race to be improperly injected into the case. He claims Ito made one erroneous ruling after another, beginning with allowing the defense team to cross-examine witnesses on the race issue. He terms Ito's judicial manner ``snippy and thin-skinned,'' and he charges him with being disrespectful and abusive to the lawyers in front of the jury.

The label ``dream team'' to characterize the defense lawyers of Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz rankles Bugliosi, since he concludes the term was grossly inappropriate. These lawyers were hardly the best in their field, Bugliosi said. For instance, lead defense lawyer Cochran had never won a murder case before a jury, Bugliosi said. (I tried to independently verify that fact, but when I called Cochran's office, the receptionist said I would have to contact a New York public relations agency for that information. I called the firm, but I got only a recorded message.) In fact, in Cochran's 32-year career as a trial lawyer in Los Angeles, the only murder case Bugliosi could recall that got minimal newspaper coverage was in 1972, when Cochran defended Black Panther Elmer ``Geronimo'' Pratt for murdering a white schoolteacher. Cochran lost that case, and Pratt was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Shapiro, who Bugliosi said was a well-respected lawyer in the legal community, had never distinguished himself as a trial lawyer. He was known mainly as a plea bargainer. Although Shapiro represented Christian Brando in a homicide case, he pleaded Brando guilty and Brando was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Bugliosi calls F. Lee Bailey an experienced and savvy trial lawyer who had distinguished himself in several murder cases. But Bailey lost his last big case defending Patti Hearst for bank robbery.

And Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz was known as a prominent appellate lawyer, not a trial lawyer.

Bugliosi does credit the two New York lawyers, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who specialized in DNA for the defense. But he calls them ``top-flight technicians rather than top-flight lawyers.''

The media also comes in for attack. Just about every major publication is raked over the coals for what Bugliosi calls illogical or lazy commentary by writers and reporters. He attacks the ``outlandish spectacle of the TV talking heads'' and calls the premise of discussing the case on day and evening shows senseless.

``People didn't need talking heads to tell them what happened that day, because they could get that on the news. All these legal commentators did was argue with one another over their interpretation and analysis of the significance of what had taken place that day in court,'' Bugliosi writes. This amounted to speculation and theorizing that took the form of light entertainment.

Despite all the criticism, Bugliosi offers some compliments. He says all the lawyers in the case were intelligent and experienced trial lawyers. He credits Darden with giving an articulate and persuasive opening statement and a thorough cross-examination of the El Salvadoran housemaid Rosa Lopez. He liked Clark's discussion of the hair and fiber evidence and her explanation of how the murders were committed as well as her closing words to the jury in her final summation. And he gave prosecutor Brian Kelberg high marks for his cross-examination of Dr. Robert Huizenga, the medical doctor who examined Simpson shortly after the murders.

It was refreshing to read Bugliosi's candid account of why Simpson is a free man. His reasoning is logical and clear, and his writing is easy to follow. He pulls no punches. He calls them like he sees them, with little regard for hurting anyone's feelings.

But Bugliosi warns the reader in his introduction to be prepared for an ``almost unremitting, scathing indictment of what took place in this case.'' And on this point, he delivers. His anger over the outcome leaps out at you on every page.

At times, his strident denunciation of the attorneys is off-putting. For instance, he criticizes Clark and Darden for enjoying an evening at the House of Blues. When a prosecutor is on a big case, he or she should be in one of only three places, Bugliosi writes - in court, at the office or home. ``Even to and from work is valuable work time, and a driver should be found to free up the prosecutor.'' Bugliosi said he routinely put in 100 hours a week on all of his complex murder cases.

In an epilogue, Bugliosi uses a question-and-answer format to discuss a number of issues that did not fit into the structure of the book. Three appendixes include the complete LAPD interrogation of Simpson, the entire text of Simpson's so-called suicide letter read on nationwide television by Robert Kardashian and an evaluation of the blood evidence. The last section is labeled ``Notes,'' and it breaks down the book by sections and adds more detailed information.

There is no question that this book was well-researched, comprehensive and was given much thought. For Simpson junkies, it provides a meaningful account of what went wrong. As persuasive as Bugliosi is, however, there really is no way to know if Simpson would have been convicted even if he had prosecuted the case. But I, for one, think the ex-football player would be behind bars for life.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Vincent Bugliosi was critical of the Simpsonprosecution team at the time of the trial. So he cannot be accused of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

(2) The label ``dream team'' to characterize lawyers Johnnie Cochran, left, and Robert Shapiro in defending O.J. Simpson rankles Bugliosi.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News