In his presentation, Blasier revived many of the catch-phrases from the criminal trial: "rush to judgment"; "garbage in, garbage out"; "something's wrong." Yet though the words were the same, the delivery was markedly different.
Simpson's criminal trial lawyers projected outrage during closing arguments; in indignant tones, they demanded that jurors send a message to a corrupt Police Department by freeing a man wrongly accused. In contrast, Simpson's civil attorneys have been decidedly low-key.
Both Blasier and Robert C. Baker, who spoke Wednesday afternoon, sounded during their summations as though they were chatting with jurors over coffee instead of spurring them to action. Both have also sounded somewhat uncertain about the details of their case, frequently telling jurors that they didn't remember the testimony exactly but that they thought a certain witness raised a particular point.
The most aggressive defense argument came from Leonard, who opened his presentation by describing himself as a "hardheaded Irishman" who used "common sense" to analyze the 31 photographs of Simpson in Bruno Maglis. "Common sense will tell you," he said, "that these are photographs that have come too late and cost too much."
Reminding jurors that the pictures surfaced only after the criminal trial--one photo in March and the other 30 in December--Leonard said he could not believe the photographers' testimony that they had forgotten all about the snapshots until recently. Further, he argued that it was highly suspicious that the same agent was peddling all 31 snapshots, for prices of up to $18,000. Deriding the photos as "store-bought evidence, evidence with a price tag," Leonard urged jurors to disregard them.
Even the plaintiffs' photo analyst, who testified that all 31 pictures were genuine, conceded that a motivated forger with the right equipment could doctor a negative so skillfully that no expert would ever be able to detect signs of fakery. Leonard read that testimony aloud, then added: "Money makes people do a lot of things."
