LOS ANGELES -- Denise Brown enters the courtroom, her shoes clicking on the blonde marble tiles. She walks down a long wooden pew and takes a seat.
Perhaps it is just an accident that the seat she takes is as far away from O. J. Simpson as she can get.
Denise is the elder sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was murdered on June 12 along with one of her friends, Ron Goldman. Simpson is charged with both murders.
Denise, 37, looks like a raven-haired version of Nicole. She is tall and pretty. She is wearing a black blazer and green slacks. And when she sits down, she runs her left hand through her dark, shiny hair. On her left wrist is a Swiss Army watch and a man's ID bracelet with large silver links.
In her right hand she carries a black volume that is zippered shut and has a tassel hanging from it. In Los Angeles this could either be the Holy Bible or her address book.
She looks straight ahead until O. J. Simpson enters the courtroom, and then she turns her head toward him.
Simpson is wearing a dark suit, white shirt and patterned tie. He carries a clear plastic bag containing his writing material -- he writes constantly during each court session -- and what looks like mail.
He gets about 3,500 fan letters a day.
He sits down at the end of the defense table in a swivel chair.
Then he slowly swivels until he is looking directly at Denise. And then he . . . smiles.
It is not a huge smile, not even a grin. It is sort of a half-smile that ends in a grimace. It is a hey-I-know-I'm-accused-of- murdering-your-sister-but-can't-we-still-be-friends kind of smile.
Since I am sitting directly behind Denise, I cannot tell if she smiles back.
But I doubt it. She and Simpson have a difficult relationship now.
Denise lives at her parents' home, where Simpson's two children are in the custody of her parents. Simpson calls the children from jail all the time (though he tells them he is away on a business trip).
Denise sometimes answers the phone, and she must talk to Simpson. For a long time, she would not let herself think about whether he was guilty or innocent of murdering her sister.
"You don't want to think about it," Denise told ABC's Diane Sawyer, "because if he's innocent, then you think, 'Oh my God, this poor man had to go through all this,' and you feel so bad. And then, on the other hand, if he's proven guilty, you think, you know, why?"
But that was before Denise began going to court and hearing Simpson's lawyers fight tooth and nail to get evidence against Simpson thrown out. To Denise this was not fair.
She got so angry, in fact, that she took an elevator from the ninth-floor courtroom of the Criminal Courts Building to the 18th-floor pressroom, where she burst in and asked reporters: "If O. J. is so innocent, why are they trying to suppress all the evidence? I've never seen this before."
Her anger was understandable. But it had to be explained to her that a trial is a great game, a great contest, and that actual guilt or innocence does not count.
What counts is only what the state can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and it is the duty of Simpson's attorneys to make this as difficult as possible.
But while Denise seems to grow angrier and angrier with each passing day in court, Simpson is unchanged. When he does not seem downright cheerful, he remains blandly unthreatening. He is not your usual accused murderer.
He smiles at everybody, including each and every reporter and the sheriff's deputies who guard him. These deputies carry huge sidearms and are authorized to use them should a defendant try to make a break for it or try to jump the judge.
And being law enforcement officers, their attitude toward prisoners usually ranges from professional indifference to icy disdain. But with Simpson it is different. They smile and joke and laugh with him.
It seems that nobody doesn't like O. J.
Marcia Skolnik, the highly respected director of the public affairs office for the courts, has also noted the effect Simpson has on the public, who come to the court each day for the few seats that are available.
"When he stands up at the end of court, people in the public seats will start shouting: 'Hey, O. J., we're for you!' and the bailiffs will have to stop them," she said. "And when the actual trial starts, then we are going to have his mother here and his sisters and probably his celebrity friends, too."
It ought to be quite a show. But it will be one in which Simpson ought to do very well. Because if he knows anything, he knows how to use his star power.
And these days, these critical days, he is using it on his jury.
As each prospective juror filed into the courtroom this week, Simpson stood and looked each in the eye. Sometimes he would stick his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed, at ease, not a care in the world. Because innocent men don't have any cares, do they?
The bulk of the press corps and all of the public are being excluded from the court during jury selection, but a small pool of reporters is being allowed in. And each reporter says the same thing: "He appears to want to look very pleasant to the jurors," Linda Deutsch, a pool reporter for the Associated Press, said. "He tries to make eye contact with each of them."
There are so many prospective jurors stuffed into the small courtroom that they spill out of the jury box and fill the seats directly behind Simpson. He does not view this as an inconvenience. He views this as an opportunity.
"He was very careful to be affable to the people behind him," Jeff Michael, a TV pool reporter, said. "He is trying to be affable to the women jurors and give them a big smile. I don't know if he's being coached to do that, but he's certainly doing it."
I am guessing O. J. Simpson doesn't need to be coached to be affable. He has spent a lifetime being affable. And the best thing the defense in this case has going for it is the defendant.
Because, after all, how many sympathetic jurors does Simpson really need to get off?
You all know the answer to that one. You have heard it and read it again and again for weeks now: All the defense needs is JUST ONE juror to hold out, hang the jury and set O. J. free.
Stephen Adler, legal editor of the Wall Street Journal and author of a hot new book on the jury system, said on "Nightline" a few weeks ago: "All they need is one or two people in that courtroom who will not convict no matter what and they get off. It's a simple as that."
Except for one thing: It's not true.
Erik and Lyle Menendez had a long trial for the murder of their parents that resulted in two hung juries. And did they "get off"? Are they free today?
Nope. They are sitting in jail today waiting to be tried again for first-degree murder.
Criminal defense lawyers always consider hung juries a victory. And it is for them. In their minds they have saved their clients from a conviction. But defendants rarely see it that way. They see themselves being led back to the same jail cell having to go through the agony of yet another trial.
If the state were to decide to try O. J. Simpson again -- and there is little doubt that the state would decide to try him again -- then a hung jury is no victory for him.
So from Simpson's point of view, he needs exactly what the prosecution needs: a unanimous verdict from 12 jurors. Which may be why he is being so charming as each prospective juror files before him.
Not that the defense is depending on Simpson's charm alone. It has hired expert jury consultants, as has the prosecution. The prosecutors are using DecisionQuest and the defense is using Trial Logistics. But, their high-tech names aside, picking a jury still remains more voodoo than science.
Howard Varinsky, an expert jury consultant, says one of his favorite methods of choosing a jury is to go out and see what the jurors have on their house windows.
"You can learn a lot by doing it, just by looking at window coverings," he said. "If people have old-fashioned Venetian blinds or old lace curtains, you know that that person's going to think much more traditionally than if somebody has new Levolors or something to that effect."
And for this consultants often get $100,000 for their pre-trial work and $2,500 per day during the trial.
But since both sides are using jury consultants in the Simpson case, the two sides might just balance each other out, making the value of jury consultants about zero.
Fortunately for Simpson, however, he has people surrounding him considerably more adept at what they do than jury consultants. Attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., who came to the case late, is handling the jury questioning for the defense.
He is charming, friendly, and disarming. He is also extremely bright. While some lawyers view jury questioning as an opportunity to learn things about the jurors, Cochran sees it as an opportunity to indoctrinate the jurors, to plant subtle messages, to sway them even before the trial starts.
This week, for instance, Cochran asked the first prospective juror -- as 83 others listened -- "Do you resent that O. J. Simpson has two lawyers here today? You understand that a man on trial for his life can hire anyone he wants to, don't you?"
As a point of fact, O. J. Simpson is not on trial for his life. The prosecution wisely decided not to seek the death penalty, which would have made convicting Simpson even more difficult. DTC Cochran, however, wantsjurors to think that they have Simpson's life in their hands.
But it was on the issue of a hung jury where Cochran was at his very best. Cochran would love to get an outright acquittal for Simpson, but he will take a hung jury instead. From his point of view, the lawyer's point of view, anything that is not a conviction is a victory.
And so Cochran began planting his seeds with the first prospective juror. "A jury verdict has to be unanimous, you understand that don't you?" Cochran asked. "But suppose the vote is 11-1 and you are the 1. You wouldn't change solely for the sake of a unanimous verdict so you could go home, would you? You'd have the strength to stand by what you believe?"
The juror said she would.
On the opposite side of the courtroom, Assistant District Attorney Bill Hodgman quickly saw what Cochran was trying.
And when it came his turn, Hodgman asked the prospective juror to remember back some decades ago where there was a scare about "subliminal" advertising and how movie makers would slip a few frames into a movie showing "a big tub of buttery, salty popcorn."
"Remember that?" Hodgman said. "It went by too fast to register, but it made you want to go and get some [refreshments] subliminally. Today, Mr. Cochran talked to you about a hung jury. think all the parties want 12 people who can work together, listen to each other, discuss the evidence and reach a common verdict. If other jurors came to you with good arguments, you would have the courage to change your mind, would you not?"
And Hodgman has reason to worry about the possibility of a hung jury: Los Angeles County has a hung jury rate of 13.4 percent in felony trials, which is more than twice the national average of 5.6 percent.
Nobody reported whether Simpson's smile faded during any of this hung jury discussion, but it might have. Not only would he have to return to his 7-by-9-foot cell in Men's Central Jail if there were a hung jury, but he might not have the money to pay for a second trial.
One source estimates that Simpson has already spent nearly $3 million on his trial, and it has yet to begin. Simpson is also said to be worth considerably less than the $10 million that was first estimated. So one trial might easily break him.
That is what happened to the Menendez brothers. Their lawyer got $650,000 for the first trial. But this broke them. And when the judge asked their lawyer how much she wanted for a second trial (if you are broke, the court must provide you with a lawyer), she said she wanted the same amount.
The judge refused and offered her about $125,000 a year. She took it.
But would Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran and Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey and all the other high-priced talent with their hands in O. J. Simpson's pockets take a reduced fee for a second trial?
Or would they take a hike instead?
O. J. Simpson does not want to find out. He does not want a hung jury. He wants 12 people to find him not guilty. And he'll smile at each and every one of them each and every day of the trial if that will help.