Bill Pavelic | William Bill Pavelic | Zvonko Bill Pavelic

July 22, 1994, Friday, AM cycle

BYLINE: By The Associated Press

SECTION: Domestic News

Profiles of players in the O.J. Simpson courtroom drama:
Defense attorneys:
-Robert Shapiro has made a career of defending celebrities in court. The 51-year-old attorney represented Marlon Brando’s son, Christian, on a murder charge and Johnny Carson and fellow lawyer F. Lee Bailey on drunk driving charges. With a reputation as a master negotiator, Shapiro also has gone to bat for Darryl Strawberry, Rod Stewart, Jose Canseco and Vince Coleman.
-Johnnie Cochran Jr. has been taking high-profile cases ever since the late 1960s. The 56-year-old attorney has such clients as Michael Jackson, a defendant in the Snoop Doggy Dogg murder case and a Municipal Court judge charged with manslaughter in a car crash.
-Gerald Uelmen, 53, recently retired from his post as dean of Santa Clara University’s law school. He once taught Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell, who ruled against his constitutional rights argument to throw out evi-dence in Simpson’s preliminary hearing. Nicknamed “the Cobra” when he prosecuted organized crime and gambling cases for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Ange-les.
-Alan Dershowitz, 55, doubles as a Harvard law professor and defense attor-ney. His list of notable clients includes Claus Von Bulow, Leona Helmsley, Mike Tyson and Jim Bakker.
-F. Lee Bailey’s list of famous clients includes Albert DeSalvo in the Boston Strangler case and newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, who was jointly represented in her bank robbery case by the 61-year-old attorney and Dershowitz.
-Leroy “Skip” Taft, a corporate and business lawyer, has been Simpson’s ad-viser for 25 years. He announced Simpson’s $ 500,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
-Robert Kardashian, Simpson’s friend, often accompanies the defense team for court hearings. The 50-year-old read the so-called suicide letter at a news con-ference held the afternoon Simpson turned himself in to police.
-Sara Caplan is an attorney with Shapiro’s office. She is involved in filing defense motions.
 
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Defense investigators:
-John E. McNally, 60, a retired New York City detective, sifts through infor-mation on the toll-free hotline established by the defense team. McNally has an office in West Palm Beach, Fla., and often works for F. Lee Bailey.
-Patrick McKenna, 45, also of West Palm Beach, Fla., worked with McNally on the William Kennedy Smith rape case. McKenna spent 2 weeks in Chicago last month retracing Simpson’s steps from the Los Angeles airport to the Chicago hotel where the Simpson stayed, and back to the West Coast.
-Zvonko “Bill” Pavelic is a veteran Los Angeles police detective who retired 18 months ago. He looks for mistakes in the police investigation and uncover weaknesses in their case.
 
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Prosecutors:
-Marcia Clark headed the government’s case against Robert John Bardo in the 1991 stalking murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer. The 40-year-old graduate of Southwestern University’s law school has worked for the district attorney’s of-fice since 1981.
-William Hodgman has tried more than 40 murder cases and successfully prose-cuted Charles H. Keating Jr. Hodgman is the director of the Central Operations Division in the district attorney’s office. In 1990, Hodgman faced Johnnie Coch-ran Jr., who represented “Diff’rent Strokes” star Todd Bridges on assault charges.
 
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Judge:
-Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, 43, has presided over arraignments for reputed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and for Lyle and Erik Menendez. He also presided over the securities fraud trial of Charles H. Keating, Jr. Ito’s wife, Capt. Margaret “Peggy” Ann York, is the highest ranking woman in the LAPD.