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ATLANTA - It's been nearly five years since the not-guilty verdict was returned for O.J. Simpson, but that celebrated case has assumed a prominent role in the trial of Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Attorneys, who today begin the third day of jury selection, have quizzed virtually every prospective juror for his or her attitudes on the Simpson case. Legal experts say many judges, and even defense attorneys, would not allow that line of questioning in most cases. But the similarities between the trials of the two high-profile athletes charged with double murder makes it fair game here.

After all the live coverage of the trial and endless media post-mortems after the verdict, it seems reasonable to ask whether there are any lessons left to be learned from the trial of O.J. Simpson 10 years later. The answer compellingly delivered by PBS tonight in a Frontline documentary titled The O.J. Verdict is a resounding yes. The lessons are not so much about the trial itself as they are about us - we, the people of the United States - and how our legal system works (or doesn't)

Jay Leno wasted no time getting to his favorite subject.No sooner had he bounded onstage at the Lyric Saturday night than he told the ready-to-be-receptive audience, "I want to thank you all for taking time off from watching the O.J. trial."Never mind that the trial was in recess anyway. Mr. Leno has made the Simpson trial a mainstay of his "Tonight Show." He's used it as ceaseless fodder for his monologues, turned the show's "Dancing Itos" into an evening ritual and even invited professional houseguest and media darling Kato Kaelin on for a chat.

Judith Regan finally found an envelope that even she couldn't push. O.J. Simpson might well have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but the tasteless exploitation of that slaughter reeks of Regan, the editor known as the "culture vulture" for the tabloid publishing style she helped to define. I know. I once got caught in her claws. After I spent months researching a book for Simon & Schuster about a psychiatric malpractice case, Regan returned the manuscript to be rewritten with less emphasis on psychiatry and more on sex. When I protested, she invited me to lunch in New York to explain publishing to the rube from Boston.

It seems like forever. In fact, it's been only two years, five months, one week and one day since the discovery of the bodies of a Hall of Fame football player's ex-wife and a waiter from a trendy L.A. cafe sparked a national obsession that, well, just will not die.Tomorrow, that obsession could reach new heights -- or depths. Tomorrow, the man at its center, O.J. Simpson, is expected to take the witness stand in a court of law and be asked for the first time to publicly testify to certain facts about the double murder.

I DON'T normally do gossip, but this is different. This little piece of nasty business is so bizarre, so delicious, so O.J., that I had to tell somebody.Come a little closer. I can't even type this out loud: Marcia Clark and Chris Darden might be getting hitched.That's right, married. Or as they put it in the tabs: "Legal Eagles Are Planning Their Own Dream Team."You don't have to believe it. I mean, it can't possibly be true, except that it's O.J.-related, meaning anything is possible -- so long as you stop at any reported romantic tryst involving F. Lee Bailey.

O. J. Simpson's first television interview since his acquittal is scheduled to air tonight and, like the double murder trial itself, controversy is part of the package.Simpson will be interviewed live at 10 p.m. by Ed Gordon, veteran news anchorman for the Black Entertainment Television cable channel. The interview, which will be held in Los Angeles at an undisclosed site, will air as part of a program titled "O. J. Simpson: Beyond the Verdict," which starts at 9:30.At issue is whether BET made any concessions to get the interview in its negotiations with Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Simpson's defense attorney.

For $29.95, you expected, what? O.J. Simpson confessing that he did indeed kill his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman? Or that his pledge to search for their real killers had led to suspects?As the producer of the just-released video "O.J. Simpson: The Interview" has said, he'd be selling the tape for a lot more than $29.95, plus shipping and handling, for bombshells of that magnitude.Instead, the video offers more of the same that we've become accustomed to when it comes to the Simpson saga: more nitpicking of the trial's finer points, which you'll find either enlightening or tiresome, depending on the degree of your personal O.J. obsession; more -- and sometimes interesting -- discussion of the racial sores opened by the case.

What happened to Ron and Nicole on June 12, l994? Who lived at Bundy, who lives at Rockingham? Who owns a white Bronco? What is the N word? And who was on the Dream Team? Who wears Bruno Magli shoes? Did the glove fit?Try as you may, you can't help but do better on that quiz than you care to admit outside of a game of Trivial Pursuit. You are OD'd on O.J., querulous about the conflicting verdicts, and happy to see the furor fading into history. You are overwhelmed by O.J. books.You should not feel that way. The saga of Orenthal James Simpson is important to pursue, not for its soap-opera spectacle, but because it enlightens some vital issues of our times, including race relations, equal justice, the jury system, domestic violence, police brutality.

When we last heard from Mike Gabriel, the Pikesville resident had just broken off a much publicized engagement to Rosa Lopez, O.J. Simpson's housekeeper. Sad to say, Lopez was allergic to cats, precluding a life with Gabriel, an instructor of the ancient art of Cat-Yoga.The fleeting romance was dutifully reported by everyone from Vanity Fair to Jay Leno. Just another strange footnote in the strange spectacle of the Simpson trial. Except for this: None of it was true.Gabriel, a part-time candy store clerk and movie extra with a genius for self-promotion, had manufactured the whole thing.