THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040535
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Analysis
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
No verdict could have done that. Like the voters in a presidential election, the jury might decide the case, but their decision could not change opinions that have been burned into a national awareness through the heat of passion and prejudice.
Race, the most emotional of those issues, became the transcendent debate in the Simpson case. Public opinion polls showed upwards of 75 percent of white Americans saw overwhelming evidence of Simpson's guilt; an equal percentage of African Americans believed he'd been framed by a rogue police department.
The trial is over, but we are left to deal with that division and what it represents to us.
If there were a common point of agreement, it would be that the spectacle had lasted too long, that everybody simply wanted it to end. But Americans may find in the days ahead that they miss the O.J. Simpson trial - not the daylong dronings of the gavel-to-gavel coverage, or the daily wrap-ups in the newspapers, but the convenient forum the trial provided for debating some very difficult questions. Questions of race, gender, justice and greed.
The Simpson case became a convenient stew pot in which we could dump a lot of rage and anger, stir it, allow it to simmer. But the lid is off now, and we're all in for a taste.
Beyond race, the Simpson trial laid bare a criminal-justice system in which, cynics argue, due process is available in direct proportion to the size of one's bank balance.
That view transcends racial barriers: Poorer men and women, black and white, face trial every day, in every city in the country, on far lessevidence than Simpson faced, and are convicted. Instead of Johnnie Cochran Jr., F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck and Robert Shapiro, they might get a public defender two years out of law school. If capital punishment is involved, the state might give them two public defenders.
Beyond race, the Simpson trial unmasked the reality that we do not take seriously the issue of violence against women. Murder charges aside, O.J. Simpson was a serial wife-abuser who never faced strict societal sanctions. He remained, to us, an affable TV sports commentator and a spokesman for Hertz Rent A Car. It raised the question, Do we really listen when a woman screams? When we see Kodachrome hues of the bruises on her face, do we simply blink and turn away?
Beyond race, the Simpson trial revealed the lack of shame that many - the news media, in particular - can exhibit in probing a family's misery for veins of gold. In the final days, CNN was hawking a video collection of the trial's greatest hits, three tapes for $29.95. There were reports afoot that Larry King and some syndicators were putting together a pay-per-view cable deal to air Simpson's first post-trial interview, as if it were a heavyweight prize fight. Scores of millions of dollars were at stake, the story said.
But race will remain at the core of any analysis of the Simpson trial. In law schools, they will study the rulings of Judge Lance Ito, and debate forever what appeals courts might have done had a guilty verdict emerged. In the court of public opinion, though, intricate legal nuances carry little weight. There, raw emotion is accepted as evidence.
As Tuesday's verdict was read, black audiences who watched the outcome in Hampton Roads and across the nation erupted in joy at Simpson's vindication. Many whites were prone to look at one another and shrug their shoulders, as if to say, ``He did it, we all know he did it, but he got off.''
Either group is likely to recognize that only a razor's edge of doubt is needed for acquittal, and the length of the trial, the long imprisonment of the jurors, and a lot of strange events that unfolded during the defense arguments made a simple doubt pretty easy to come by.
Did the past 37 weeks show us a mountain of circumstantial evidence, or a flawed and, perhaps, perverted investigation? How you answer that question might say a lot about your life's experience.
It is not known yet if the jurors - nine blacks, two whites and one Hispanic - fully accepted the defense argument that Los Angeles police officers set up a quick and intricate web to trap Simpson. Perhaps they found all the doubt they needed elsewhere.
While whites might be largely skeptical of the conspiracy theory, blacks will tell you that stranger things have happened in their dealings with police. The jurors live in the region where Rodney King's beating was videotaped, and the officers who did it were acquitted, initially. Some will admit that freeing O.J. Simpson, regardless of the evidence, is a step within the black community of evening up the score.
Whites, even those who are progressive on racial issues, begin to ask, ``How long will we be evening up this score? When is the field finally level?'' And blacks answer, ``Not yet. Not by a long shot. Not as long as the Mark Fuhrmans of the world are wearing badges.''
Did that viewpoint weigh in the jurors' decision? If so, is that justice?
In the specific case of O.J. Simpson, we may never know for certain. Twelve jurors found him not guilty, and the rule of law says that settles it.
Tuesday's verdict freed Simpson, but it did not free the rest of us. We are left to wonder why so many of us can look at the same man, and each of us see such a different man. How can so many of us look at the same evidence, hear the same arguments, and come to such radically different conclusions?
In the daily commerce of our nation, millions of black and white people mix easily and respectfully. But the radical difference in the way they have viewed this murder trial shows that there is still some distance to go before they understand one another.
Perhaps everybody is happy that the trial is over. But little is resolved if the multiple debates it raised simply end. There are issues here that need resolution. But, unlike the participants in the Simpson trial, we have no jury ready to resolve these questions. The jury will have to be us.
KEYWORDS: O.J. SIMPSON TRIAL ANALYSIS by CNB