Simpson Trial

LOS ANGELES -- Despite concerns by other officials that the O. J. Simpson trial could hurt the turnout in the Nov. 8 election, Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown found some common ground -- saying the trial should not be interrupted."

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the masterful attorney who gained prominence as an early advocate for victims of police abuse, then achieved worldwide fame for successfully defending football star O.J. Simpson on murder charges, died yesterday afternoon. He was 67. Mr. Cochran died at his home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles of an inoperable brain tumor, said his brother-in-law Bill Baker. Mr. Cochran's wife and his two sisters were with him at his death. Mr. Cochran, his family and colleagues were secretive about his illness to protect the attorney's privacy as well as the network of Cochran law offices that largely draw their cachet from his presence.

Why did O. J. Simpson's lawyers break the law to keep a slew of witnesses secret from the prosecution?Why did his lawyers risk such a tactic, knowing they might be sanctioned by Judge Lance Ito and reprimanded before the jury?Because they don't care, that's why.Here are four elements shaping defense thinking and defense tactics at the Simpson trial:1. Ito hates us anyway. Judge Ito has ruled against the defense on virtually all major and most minor issues.The defense is convinced that Ito is not going to give them any breaks and is going to rule with the prosecution on all close calls and some not so close calls.

SPOKANE, Wash. - Look out, cops. Somebody gave Mark Fuhrman a microphone and 5,000 watts of broadcasting power. Twice a week, the Los Angeles Police Department's most famous former detective goes on KXLY-AM with his two-hour news radio call-in program, All About Crime, and if criminals think they're in for it, wait till you hear what he has to say about the police. This week: the Chandra Levy case and Rep. Gary A. Condit. "Washington, D.C. - it's not the place you want to be investigated if you're dead," Fuhrman declared.

The sponsor of a bill that would have permitted criminal trials in Maryland to be televised said yesterday he has withdrawn the proposal because it was hurt by the televised murder trial of former football star O. J. Simpson."

It is nightmare time at the O. J. Simpson trial.The trial has been halted and is not scheduled to resume until Tuesday."Nobody knows what is going on anymore," a court official told me Friday. "It's chaos here."The chaos began when a dismissed juror (the sixth juror to be dismissed since January) gave a TV interview last week in which she said jurors have been discussing the case among themselves and have been discussing the case on the phone with outsiders.If the jurors really have been discussing the case among themselves, this would be a violation of Judge Lance Ito's orders, but probably not fatal to the trial.

When Morgan of Glamorgan instituted jury trials in Wales in 725 A.D., he thought 12 jurors would do nicely."For as Christ and 12 Apostles were finally to judge the world, so human tribunals should be composed of the king and 12 wise men," he said.Morgan never anticipated the O. J. Simpson trial, however.With only two of the original 12 jurors remaining and with only two alternates available, it is time to think about what will happen if we have to try this case again.Here are 10 things we could do differently:1.

WASHINGTON -- In the "jury" of public opinion, a split verdict is coming in on television coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial: It was the worst thing, but paradoxically it also may have been the best thing, that ever happened to the cause of putting cameras in the courtroom.As the Simpson murder trial moved toward a close, Americans who had seemed to be infatuated with the TV images beamed out of a Los Angeles courtroom were not convinced that their nation -- or their criminal justice system -- was the better for the experience.

Many whites are expressing outrage or, more calmly, disgust, at the use of the "race card" in the O. J. Simpson trial.They see this as akin to the Japanese adage that "to the small boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." They believe that race is a hammer for some African-Americans who will pound everything in sight with it.But the worry over this, even if justified to some degree, is lost in the larger historical scheme of things. It was whites, not blacks, who were the earliest players in the race card game, especially through racial stereotypes that supported slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination whether de jure or de facto.

Los Angeles -- As if the line between entertainment and news were not blurred enough, E! Entertainment Television yesterday announced that it will offer gavel-to-gavel live coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial with former CBS correspondent and weight-loss pitch-woman Kathleen Sullivan anchoring.The cable channel's coverage will pre-empt all programming except commercials from noon to 8 p.m. daily once the trial starts, according to Fran Shea, E!'s senior vice president for programming.Shea said E!

To satisfy a taste for theatrics, New Jersey girl Linda Deutsch headed for the West Coast many years ago intent on becoming a Hollywood reporter. It worked out even better than that. She ended up with the court beat."I started out to cover show biz and theater, and I found out that the courtroom dramas were more exciting than any movie because it was real life and the stakes were higher. This is drama at its highest."As a reporter with the Associated Press, Deutsch's "credits" include some of the most notorious trials of the last 30 years.

A Texas judge ruled yesterday that he will let Court TV air live the capital murder trial of former Naval Academy Midshipman Diane Zamora.Prosecutors had asked that television cameras be kept out of the courtroom, arguing that they would influence jurors and witnesses, some of whom might think less about justice in the high-profile case than being invited onto television talk shows and signing book contracts.But Tarrant County District Judge Joe Drago said Court TV, a cable network that shows many high-profile trials, could broadcast the trial from beginning to end, as long as it does not film jurors, spectators or family members.

Judge Matsch shows judiciary how to run a trialWasn't it refreshing to see the trial of Timothy McVeigh handled in a professional manner? The difference between this trial and the O. J. Simpson fiasco boils down to one thing -- the judge.From the very beginning of the Denver trial, Judge Richard Matsch let it be known no nonsense would be tolerated, and he would be 100 percent in command of the court -- not the lawyers or the media.By mandating a gag order and not allowing live television, most of the circus atmosphere that occurred in the Simpson trial was avoided.

WASHINGTON -- It's Thursday, day four of the Marcia Clark book tour, and the author can barely stay awake for a national radio broadcast. At the WAMU studios, she dozes before going on the air and has to stifle a yawn to say good morning to talk show host Diane Rehm.A cross-country trek to tout "Without a Doubt (Viking, $25.95)," the last book out of the chute by a major player in the O. J. Simpson circus, is the price you pay for a $4.2 million book contract. But that doesn't mean you have to enjoy it.For that matter, Clark has appeared to enjoy little of her uninvited celebrity.

DENVER -- In U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch's courtroom, proceedings start exactly on time. Windy lawyers are ordered to stop speechifying. Coats are not slung over chairs. There are no commercial television cameras.In Matsch's courtroom, where Timothy J. McVeigh is on trial charged with bombing the Oklahoma City federal building, attorneys are expected to be as well-prepared as the judge, to make their points and to sit down."He's the anti-Ito," says Andrew Cohen, a Denver lawyer and legal analyst.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- O. J. Simpson's civil trial on wrongful-death charges, now in its fourth month and scheduled to go to the jury late tomorrow, has lacked the high drama and excitement of his criminal trial on murder charges.But it has not been without its moments, including Simpson's taking the stand for the first time, the judge's ruling that race could not be made a major issue in the case and the plaintiffs' suddenly producing 30 photographs that raised fresh doubts about Simpson's contention that he did not kill his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.

Reality is for people who can't handle the O. J. Simpson trial.Keep your nose to the grindstone at your dreary 9-to-5 job or let your eyes stray to the televised trial and all its glorious tribulations? Cook, clean and otherwise keep your household running or surrender to the intoxicating, time-eating spectacle of the former football player being tried for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman?No contest for the O. J.-obsessed. There are millions out there who have sent ratings skyward for the cable channels Court TV, CNN and E!

Look for drama. Look for Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark and chief defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to gaze sincerely into the eyes of the jurors. Look for the prosecution to tell a gruesome tale of murder. Look for the defense to mock the evidence.Don't look at your watch.The ideal closing argument, law professors and lawyers say, is punchy and short."A good argument should be like a good joke," said Paul Bergman, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Brace yourself for more of the same: Posturing attorneys, headline-making testimony, nightly news footage of witnesses leaving a courthouse trailed by minicams and microphones.Those will be powerful, perhaps unwelcome reminders of the O. J. Simpson murder trial, which ended in October in his acquittal. As nearly everyone who reads a newspaper or watches TV surely knows, he is on trial again. But there are key differences between the criminal trial of 1995 and the civil trial that began this week.

Four months after hinting at plans for major expansion, Forensic Technologies International Corp. grew significantly yesterday, announcing on a very busy day that it has formed a strategic alliance, entered into a merger and acquired a rival company. Forensic Technologies, an Annapolis-based company specializing in high-tech support for legal cases such as the O. J. Simpson trial, said it had signed a letter of intent to acquire Anamet Laboratories, which provides consulting and testing services to law firms, mostly in Western states.