UNITED STATES:NEITHER SIDE in the courtroom disputed that OJ Simpson and five associates marched into a hotel room in September 2007 intent on getting back the former actor and NFL star's footballs and plaques.
But during closing arguments this week in Mr Simpson's armed robbery and kidnapping trial, jurors were presented with conflicting accounts of almost everything else about the alleged crimes.
Throughout the four-week trial, prosecutors argued that Mr Simpson was the mastermind of a brief, chaotic robbery, while his defence team maintained that their client was the victim of opportunist acquaintances and overzealous prosecutors and police.
"This case has taken on a life of its own because of Mr Simpson's involvement," defence lawyer Yale Galanter said in his 90-minute closing remarks.
Mr Simpson and co-defendant Clarence Stewart are charged with a dozen crimes in connection with the six-minute altercation at Palace Station Hotel Casino. Prosecutors say they took as much as $100,000 in collectibles at gunpoint from a pair of memorabilia dealers.
Four former co-defendants - two of whom said they were armed at Mr Simpson's behest - testified for the prosecution. Mr Simpson maintained he never saw a gun or asked anyone to bring one to Room 1203.
In a one-hour presentation, district attorney David Roger played snippets of secretly recorded conversations. Mr Simpson spoke on the recordings about getting back stolen mementos with "the boys", whom he wanted to "look menacing". Simpson, Mr Roger said, also asked two associates to "bring some heat" - one of the few exchanges not captured on tape.
During the trial, jurors repeatedly listened to the resulting encounter, in which Simpson associate Michael McClinton could be heard shouting at others in the room to stand up "before it gets ugly in here". Mr Roger said that "intimidation, force, violence - those are just a few of the adjectives of things that happened in that room".
Several witnesses in the room testified that Mr Simpson told them afterward that "there were no guns". But in a conversation after the incident, which Mr McClinton surreptitiously recorded, Mr Simpson is heard asking whether Mr McClinton had pulled out "the piece" in the hotel hallway. Mr Roger argued that it made little legal difference whether the items in the hotel room originally belonged to Mr Simpson. In a "civilised community", he said, people go to police or file a lawsuit to retrieve purportedly stolen goods.
Mr Galanter said Mr Simpson's former co-defendants were willing to slant their testimony to stay out of prison.
Mr Galanter agreed that Mr Simpson's confronting the memorabilia dealers might not have been the best plan. But being stupid and being frustrated is not being a crook," he said. - (LA Times-Washington Post)