2 0f 12

Ron Goldman and his attorney Daniel Petrocelli at the Santa Monica courthouse. JAN SON NENMAIR FOR TIME

Frame after frame showed Simpson at a Sept. 26, 1993, football game at Rich Stadium in Buffalo, New York. John Kelly, the lawyer for the estate of Nicole Brown Simpson, had flown to Buffalo to pick up all the photographs that E.J. Flammer, a freelance photographer, had taken. Flammer had published one of the photos in the Buffalo Bills newsletter in November 1993. He had saved a dated invoice for the photo assignment and also had a copy of his sideline pass for the game. In fact, the plaintiffs would eventually come into possession of additional photos as amateur photographers began digging through their old contact sheets to find pictures of Simpson wearing Bruno Maglis. Some photos were even faxed to the plaintiffs. But for Petrocelli and Gelblum, the package of 30 was dramatic enough. They would be the only ones the lawyers would present in court.

"So, Pedro," Petrocelli said, using his nickname for Gelblum. "What's the game plan?" It was his characteristic way of signaling a debate on strategy. From the outset, Petrocelli had in mind a plan very different from the first Simpson trial. As a civil lawyer, he rooted much of his strategy in the concept of the pretrial deposition and the opportunity it gave to question witnesses under oath, to trip them up and to use their conflicting statements to impeach their credibility on the witness stand. O.J. Simpson's conflicting versions of so many things-his relationship with Nicole, where he was and what he was doing the night of June 12, 1994, how he cut his hands-were all important, but nothing loomed as large as his denial of owning the Bruno Maglis.

	2 0f 12