Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407260032
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As O.J. Simpson's preliminary hearing in the double homicide of his ex-wife and her friend wrapped up last Friday, several lawyers were watching the court proceedings from their lunch stools in Christiansburg's Old Town Deli.
Joey Showalter, Chip Curry and Debbie Sifford say they've grown tired of the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the preliminary hearing and the constant analysis spoon-fed to viewers by so-called experts every evening on the nightly news.
An only slightly mock cheer went up when Friday's trial coverage was briefly interrupted for coverage of a space-shuttle launch.
"I'm disgusted. I'd rather watch [the shuttle] go into space than the trial," Curry said.
Doug Brinckman, a Christiansburg lawyer and Radford University faculty member, recently returned from a trip to California, where the coverage was even more intense than what we see here - if you can imagine.
"Out in California, you couldn't get away from it," Brinckman said.
"This has really been the most constant coverage of any criminal trial that I've seen in recent memory," he said.
Brinckman said he was glad that Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell ruled that a police entry into Simpson's home shortly was legal - clearing the way for physical evidence to be introduced that prosecutors say links Simpson to the murders.
Showalter, a Radford lawyer, believes a police investigator and the prosecution exaggerated their concern about finding a small blood splatter on Simpson's Bronco.
"I personally think that once they found the whereabouts of O.J. Simpson that all investigation should have stopped. It's my understanding they stayed there an extra 45 minutes," after locating Simpson in Chicago.
Curry, a Christiansburg lawyer, said he hasn't watched a lot of the television coverage of the hearing.
"Just enough to get totally disgusted with the amount of media coverage," he said.
Curry is especially upset by comments on the evidence and its importance by news anchors and commentators.
"This is a trial by media coverage and public opinion," Curry said. "This has greatly exceeded public interest and the public right to know."
Sifford, head of the New River Valley Legal Aid office in Christiansburg, agreed.
"This doesn't educate the public. This is not what our courts are like," she said.
"The only advantage that I see out of this is the attention to the issues of domestic violence."
|n n| Virginia's tough new drinking and driving laws that took effect July 1 have been the subject of almost as much talk as the Simpson case.
The laws set the legal presumption of drunken driving at .08 percent blood-alcohol content and provide for a zero-tolerance level for drivers under age 21.
To mark the new law and the July 4 holiday weekend, state police and other area law enforcement agencies had extra patrols on the roads and held sobriety checkpoints.
Montgomery County arrested three drivers for DUI and state police made two arrests during the July 1 checkpoints.
Blacksburg netted its first arrest under the zero-tolerance law when a 20-year-old woman was charged early July 5 after she was stopped for speeding and later blew a .07 percent on a breathalyzer.
Some officers were disappointed at first with the low number of arrests until they realized that perhaps their efforts in educating drivers about the new law had paid off by keeping drunken drivers off the roads.
State police at the Fourth Division, headquartered in Wytheville, had a busier weekend with drunken-driving arrests.
Lt. C.L. Bailey said troopers charged 39 people with drunken driving over the holiday weekend. All of the advance publicity on the new laws was good, Bailey said, "but 39 people didn't take the warning."
Kathy Loan covers police and courts for the New River Valley Bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB