OJ Simpson's Attorney Tampered With The Glove: Ex-Prosecutor

In this June 1995 photo, prosecutors made OJ Simpson put on a pair of Aris extra-large gloves as a huge piece of evidence in the trial.

Nearly seventeen years after O.J. Simpson walked away from his murder trial a free man, a prosecutor at the center of the case has alleged that the lead defense lawyer tampered with a crucial piece of evidence.

Former Los Angeles deputy district attorney Christopher Darden on Thursday accused Simpson defense lawyer, the late Johnnie Cochran, of "manipulating" one of the infamous gloves that the prosecution said linked Simpson to the grisly double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

After Simpson struggled to fit the gloves on his hands -- in one of the defining moments of the racially charged trial that captivated the nation - Cochran famously admonished the jury, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

On Thursday, during a panel discussion about the trial at Pace Law School in New York City, Darden, a member of the prosecution team, declared: "I think Johnnie tore the lining. There were some additional tears in the lining so that O.J.'s fingers couldn't go all the way up into the glove."

Darden said in a follow-up interview on Friday that he noticed that when Simpson was trying on a glove for the jury its structure appeared to have changed. "A bailiff told me the defense had it during the lunch hour." He said he wasn't specifically accusing anyone, adding: "It's been my suspicion for a long time that the lining has been manipulated."

He said he had previously voiced similar concerns in TV interviews, but could not recall the details.

Darden's incendiary charge surprised key participants in the trial and related legal action. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was a member of Simpson's defense team, and Paul Callan, who represented Nicole Brown Simpson's estate in a successful civil trial against Simpson, said it was the first time they had ever heard the allegation.

On Friday, Dershowitz called the claim that the defense had an opportunity to tamper with the gloves "a total fabrication" and said "the defense doesn't get access to evidence except under controlled circumstances."

"Having made the greatest legal blunder of the 20th Century," Dershowitz said of Darden, "he's trying to blame it on the dead man."

Darden's remarks came after Dershowitz, a fellow panelist, called Darden's decision to have Simpson try on the glove for the first time before the jury "the most stupid thing" a prosecutor could have done.

Dershowitz said that if Darden had evidence that there had been tampering, he would have had an ethical obligation to report the alleged misconduct. He also questioned why Darden hadn't filed a grievance with the state bar association. Darden responded by saying that this would have been a "whiny-little-snitch approach to life" and that was not what he believed in because it didn't change anything.

The event was part of a "Trials and Errors" series, co-sponsored by Pace Law School and the Forum on Law, Culture & Society at Fordham Law, that examines America's most controversial cases. Also on the panel were Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, and his sister, Kim Goldman.

Derek Sells, the managing partner of Cochran's old law firm, The Cochran Firm, did not respond to requests for comment. A call to Cochran's daughter, Tiffany Cochran Edwards, who is a communications director for the firm, was not immediately returned. Cochran died in 2005 from a brain tumor at age 67.

Simpson was acquitted in the double murder case despite what prosecutors described as a "mountain of evidence" against him. The evidence included a blood-soaked glove found on Simpson's estate and a matching one found at the scene of the murder.

Questions about the lining of the gloves emerged during the 1995 trial, but they did not involve allegations of tampering by defense lawyers.

Three other members of Simpson's defense team, Robert Shapiro, Barry Scheck and F. Lee Bailey, did not immediately return requests for comment. Robert Kardashian, who also represented Simpson, is deceased.

A civil jury in 1997 found Simpson liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages to the murder victims' families. Simpson is currently serving up to 33 years in prison for a 2007 armed robbery in which he claimed he was trying to recover his own sports memorabilia.

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17-Year-Old Sexual Assault Victim Responds To Attacker's Attorney

Savannah Dietrich responds to alligations made by an attorney representing one of her attackers.

A guilty plea from the two teens who sexually assaulted her was unsatisfying for 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich, and the fact that she's now the one being questioned has made matters worse.

Things took an unexpectedly sour turn for Dietrich after she vented her frustration over the plea deal via social media. She called out her attackers by name, even though the court admonished her not to, unintentionally launching a war of words between Dietrich and attorneys from both sides.

"If the boys hadn't sexually assaulted me, this wouldn't have happened," Dietrich said. "None of this is my fault -- it is all their own doing. It is just wrong for them to try to turn me into the bad guy."

One of Dietrich's attacker's lawyers, David Mejia, commented on the case in an article that appeared in The Huffington Post Tuesday.

"The victim, in a fit of anger, tweets my clients name, calls him a rapist -- something he was never accused of ... She also said he videotaped her and put it on the Internet. There never was a rape, there was no video, and there was nothing on the Internet," Mejia told HuffPost.

Dietrich's attorney, Thomas Clay, said he may pursue legal action against the attorney for his comments.

"I have considered a defamation suit against him because of what he has said to The Huffington Post," Clay said.

Mejia filed a contempt motion against Dietrich in July, saying that his clients were angry about the comments she posted on her Twitter and Facebook pages, which they claim aren't entirely accurate.

Mejia represents one of two teenage boys who assaulted Dietrich in August 2011, after she passed out while drinking at a gathering.

The boys confessed to felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism in the case. Dietrich, angry over the terms of the plea bargain, tweeted the names of the two teens -- a move that was forbidden since the judge ruled to keep all details of the case confidential since the parties involved are juveniles.

"I'm not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell," the then-16-year-old tweeted.

Dietrich admits to naming the boys on her private Twitter account, but is adamant that she never made any posts in which she called the boys rapists. She also said she has never said anything about the existence of a video.

"I tweeted their names and that they sexually assaulted me," she said. "I did not ever make a tweet saying they were rapists ... not once. He also said I said that they made a videotape of me and put it on the Internet. I can guarantee you he cannot find one witness or one trace of evidence of me saying that."

The contempt motion was later dropped, but not before attorney Emily Farrar-Crockett was appointed to represent Deitrich. Farrar-Crockett is no longer involved in the case but she still stands behind her former client.

"In terms of her directly calling them rapists, she clearly said in her tweets that they sexually assaulted her," Farrar-Crockett told HuffPost.

"I think any woman who had done to her what they did to her would feel like [she] were raped, whether it met a legal definition or not," she added.

Exactly what happened to Dietrich is not yet known because the court records have been witheld.

Dietrich has said she was drinking with friends at a gathering when she passed out that night. When she later awoke, she discovered her clothes were disheveled and her underwear had been removed. She was later told the two boys had taken photos of her.

On Tuesday, Mejia said that his client "did admit to the conduct as charged, which was criminal sexual abuse or touching."

Dietrich said Mejia's description was "insulting."

"It was much more severe than touching," she said.

Prior to his interview with HuffPost, Mejia appeared on ABC's "Nightline" Monday. He said the intent behind the contempt motion was not to have Dietrich jailed.

"I was hoping she would even have some remorse or an apology to give. That didn't happen," Mejia said on "Nightline."

The attorney echoed those remarks during his interview with HuffPost.

"When we filed the motion, we wanted our client's name off the Internet and wanted [Dietrich] to know that what she was doing was wrong," he said.

Clay said he found the statement absurd. "You've got to be kidding," he said. "Apologize to whom?"

The Courier-Journal recently filed for the court to release the case files. The purpose is to allow Dietrich and anyone else involved in the case to discuss specific details that are currently kept confidential by juvenile court rules.

Clay is working on a similar motion.

"We are going to ask the court to open this file based on statements by Mejia to The Huffington Post, which we think are demonstrably false. The best way to demonstrate the falsity of these statements is to let the public look at the records. Let the public judge for itself," he said.

Dietrich said the purpose of the motion is not to expose the boys, but to "expose how I was treated by the court system -- how the court system handled this case and all the wrongdoings I felt were bestowed upon me."

Mejia did not respond to email or answer calls for comment from The Huffington Post Thursday.

A judge will make a ruling by Aug. 28 on whether to release the private juvenile court records.

Regardless of the outcome of the hearing, Dietrich said she would like to help others and is embracing her new role as a victim's advocate.

"If anything comes out of this, I hope to inspire other victims to come forward, stand up against their attackers, and don't stop fighting till [they] get the justice [they] deserve," she said. "It is really inspiring to me. If I get one victim to stand up against her attackers, I have accomplished something. That is what I want -- [for] them to hopefully look at my case and be inspired and to report a crime."

Dietrich's father, Michael Dietrich, said that while it has been a long road for his daughter, he has never doubted her ability to get through it.

"She's been very strong. I'm proud of Savannah," he said, adding, "I hope this all turns out to be very educational for young men and women."

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Dietrich has a public Facebook page where she posts updates. View them here.

Those lawyers filed a contempt motion against Dietrich in July, 2012, after she tweeted the names of the boys.

The lawyers for Dietrich's attackers say that they're "devastated," had to move and got kicked out of school after she named them.

Savannah Dietrich, the Kentucky teenager who faced a contempt charge for naming her sexual abusers, has a public Facebook page where she posts updates. View them here.

"If reporting a rape only got me to the point that I'm not allowed to talk about it, then I regret it," Dietrich wrote on Facebook. "I regret reporting it."

Dietrich's attorney, Emily Farrar-Crockett, said she was unsympathetic to the boys' lawyer's complaints that she had no regard for their privacy.

"They took the pictures, they disseminated it, they told people about what they had done. To come back and blame her now for ruining their reputation I think is despicable. They did this to themselves," Farrar-Crockett said.

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