Going with the flow
When Johnnie Cochran spoke, everyone wanted to listen, even if they weren’t allowed to
By Kevin Uhrich 03/30/2006
Maybe it’s all the photos that we’ve seen of him on TV on such a regular basis over the years, and still see from time to time on the tube and in the newspaper.
Or maybe it’s because he didn’t really seem sick at the time. But on Wednesday, a year passed since lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. died.
There was no shortage of tributes this week honoring Cochran, an unusual legal character who argued civil and criminal cases and mastered the complexities of both arenas. Just ask anyone in the Pasadena City Attorney’s Office who butted heads with Cochran in the number of discrimination cases in the late 1980s and early ’90s that earned him the nickname “Million Dollar Johnnie” for the giant awards he won for his clients.
For that reason alone, there probably won’t be very many laurels laid in Cochran’s honor by Pasadena city officials.
But the truth was Cochran was just as comfortable in a boardroom as he was in a police station, where he years ago worked with police as a member of the District Attorney’s Office, or in and outside the courtroom, where sometimes it was actually Cochran who controlled the proceedings, along with — quite literally in one case — the flow of information.
Most people probably remember Cochran for his work in the OJ Simpson trial. And love him or despise him for the outcome of that case, he lived up to every comparison ever made between him and the great Clarence Darrow. But more than that, Cochran possessed a charisma that literally mesmerized some reporters into doing things they might otherwise not do.
Back in 1994, when Simpson was on trial for his life in Judge Lance Ito’s ninth-floor courtroom in the Criminal Courts Building downtown, I was a reporter for the LA Times. Only I wasn’t among the army of scribes covering “The Trial of the Century,” as Simpson’s criminal trial came to be known. I was working on a different story in a courtroom a few doors away, one that to Pasadena was just as important as Simpson was to the rest of the world. And that was last stages of the trials of Jerry Sconce and his wife, Laurieanne Sconce, owners of the long-defunct Lamb Funeral Home.
The Sconces, along with their son, David, were later convicted of committing horrific acts against the dead in their care, things like taking their property, mixing their ashes, selling their organs and stealing gold teeth and other valuables.
But at that time, nearly six years after charges were first filed against the couple — making the Sconces’ the longest running trial on the court’s criminal docket — people only seemed interested in one case: Simpson. At least that’s what I surmised after realizing I was the only reporter in the Sconce courtroom. The rest of the press corps was down the hall scrambling for every little salacious bit of news they could find at Simspon’s murder trial.
As I stood in the hallway one morning and talked with people connected with the Sconce case, sheriff’s deputies suddenly flung open Judge Ito’s doors with great fanfare for a mid-morning break in the Simpson proceedings.
Out heaved the cast of characters that America came to know so well back then: criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence, Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne, the Goldman family members, other high-profile lawyers and finally Cochran.
Actually, thinking of his flare for the dramatic, it seems now as though Cochran was always the last person out the door, followed by a train of reporters that always seemed to be trailing him and hanging on his every word.
Cochran was famous for his running commentaries to reporters, walking and talking as they listened and scribbled in their notebooks. This scene was no different than any of hundreds of others just like it. And, like all those other times, the reporters following Cochran paid no real heed to where it was he was leading them. That was OK, though. This was pretty standard fare, and normally people didn’t get hurt if they behaved this way around the loquacious lawyer.
But this time, with just about everyone in the courtroom gone for a break, was a little bit different: This time, Cochran was headed directly for the men’s lavatory and seemed quite content to have everyone with him as he reached for his zipper — all the while still talking — and prepared to relieve himself as he waxed and waned on the merits of the case.
The problem was that some of the reporters following Cochran were women, some of whom were unaware of the path that they were being led on by Cochran. It wasn’t until another man in the lavatory shouted “Whoa!” that the heads of the red-faced reporters rose up from their notebooks as they quickly backpedaled into the hallway, where they then waited patiently for Cochran to finish his business.
But apparently someone was still listening because it appeared Cochran never stopped talking while standing at the urinal, and then emerged from the bathroom — still talking — as he picked up exactly where he left off before being interrupted by nature’s call.
Yes, love him or hate him, there was a certain magic about Johnnie Cochran, one that allowed him to not only mesmerize people but also firmly control the flow of information — even from the bathroom — to the front pages of America’s newspapers.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT