O.J.'S RISKY DEFENSE MOVES

By ELAINE LAFFERTY/SANTA MONICA

To hear him tell it, even O.J. Simpson found his recent trial testimony a trifle thin on narrative detail. "I wish I could talk more," he wistfully told bystanders in the courthouse. When the defense begins its case in the wrongful-death lawsuit this week, Simpson and his lead attorney, Robert Baker, will have ample opportunity to expand on their version of the relationship between the defendant and his ex-wife Nicole and to explain in O.J.'s own words where he was and what he was doing the night she and Ronald Goldman were killed.

That tale was always going to require deft storytelling, but now the task has been made even more difficult. By the end of last week, the plaintiffs had presented 31 witnesses who refuted almost everything O.J. said when he was on the witness stand. And the emotional testimony by Nicole's mother, Juditha Brown, could make it even riskier for Baker to deliver on the promise he made in his opening statement to prove that Nicole recklessly consorted with drug dealers and prostitutes. On the defense witness list: Nicole's former friend Cora Fischman, who is expected to testify that at the time of her death Nicole was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and obsessed with reuniting with O.J. All this could turn the jury off. "It is not likely to work," says Michael Seidman, professor of criminal law at the Georgetown University Law Center. "It doesn't explain a million things that Simpson has to explain. But I don't know that I could come up with a better strategy."

The biggest challenge for Baker, a respected trial lawyer who usually defends doctors against medical-malpractice claims, may come from his celebrity client. When the spotlight-seeking Simpson returns to the stand to answer friendlier questions from his own lawyers, he could be less guarded and even more prone to missteps. Says Seidman: "When you rehabilitate a witness, you give him a little more leeway to explain things at greater length."

There is so much that needs to be explained. The plaintiffs have elicited damaging testimony from Simpson's former girlfriend Paula Barbieri, as well as his longtime buddy Al Cowlings, who reluctantly admitted that Nicole had confided that O.J. hit her. (Both were excluded from the murder trial because prosecutors considered them to be uncooperative, unpredictable witnesses.) Probably the most controversial testimony came from a worker for a battered woman's shelter who told how a frightened woman named Nicole called the facility a few days before the murders saying that her famous ex-husband was stalking and threatening her. A day later, Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki instructed the jury that they could consider the telephone call only as an indicator of Nicole's state of mind. (That testimony was excluded from the murder trial as hearsay.)

Meanwhile, the Simpson custody trial also took an unexpected turn when the Brown family, which is seeking to gain permanent guardianship of Simpson's two children, filed a motion to introduce the details of the murder case into the custody dispute. Judge Nancy Wieben Stock will decide whether to allow that evidence this week. If she does, the custody proceeding could become yet another mini-murder trial.

--By Elaine Lafferty/Santa Monica. With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York