THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040689
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ERIC SUNDQUIST, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
From the beginning, most African Americans doubted the case against O.J. Simpson. Most whites believed Simpson was guilty.
A month after the killings, an ABC News poll found that 63 percent of whites thought Simpson was guilty, while 65 percent of African Americans thought he was innocent.
Later, as the trial unfolded, the divergence of opinion grew. Last week, a similar ABC poll found that 77 percent of whites thought Simpson was guilty, and 72 percent of blacks thought he was innocent.
The division wasn't necessarily explosive; this was not the Rodney King case, which centered on a police beating and then released violent emotion. But, polite as disagreements might have been, they were brought into sharp focus by Tuesday's not-guilty verdict. In Hampton Roads, as elsewhere in the nation, blacks generally rejoiced in Simpson's release while whites were stunned.
Consider this scene yesterday afternoon at a Luskin's electronics store on Virginia Beach Boulevard:
Linda Ray, a white Luskin's appliance salesperson was clearly disturbed with the verdict. But Joe McIntyre, a black customer, was elated.
``We have the best system of justice in the world,'' McIntyre said, holding a box with a new stereo component. ``In America you truly are innocent until proven guilty. There is due process.''
Ray disagreed.
``There is no due process. None,'' she said. ``I don't think our system of justice works the way it was intended to.
``He killed those people and got away with it.''
Callers to the ``Perry Stone Show,'' an afternoon talk show on WNIS, followed the same pattern. ``The majority of the African Americans felt Simpson was vindicated,'' said producer Pasquale. ``The majority of whites felt `How could this happen?' ''
And at Cox High School in Virginia Beach, some white students hugged and cried, while many African-American students cheered.
The sharpest fracture line seemed to come in the way blacks and whites view law enforcement and the courts. In general, blacks found it easier than whites to accept the defense view that Los Angeles Police Department ineptness and racism, as symbolized by Detective Mark Fuhrman, had fatally tainted the case against Simpson.
``The trial shows we have a deep divide in the country,'' said Paul C. Gillis, president of the Suffolk Branch of the NAACP. ``I can identify with O.J. Simpson being caught up in this situation.
``Manipulation of evidence to get a conviction. . . . I believe that to be the case in some Hampton Roads cities.''
Gillis cited the case of Virginia Trooper Vernon R. Richards, who was convicted this year of planting seven bombs in Hampton Roads after trying to frame a 19-year-old black man.
The trooper, Gillis said, ``found a person he could plant the evidence against. That person was a young black male.''
``Black and white Americans have very different experiences with the criminal justice system,'' said Clint Bolick, vice president of the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm in Washington.
``For a country that prides itself on being a melting pot,'' he said, ``this could be very troubling.''
``Mark Fuhrman confirmed what most African Americans have felt right-along and known right-along,'' said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. ``In South Central Los Angeles, too many Mark Fuhrmans have harassed and brutalized people.''
Many whites have a far different perception of police, Mack said.
``Most white Angelenos found the idea that Mark Fuhrman may have moved evidence, or planted the glove, they found that bizarre,'' Mack said. In predominantly white sections of Southern California, he said, ``people have a user-friendly view of the Police Department.''
In Hampton Roads Tuesday, many whites expressed continued support for law enforcement, even as they were dismayed at this particular verdict. The sentiment they expressed on WNIS was, according to producer Pasquale, ``I may have faith in our system, but I don't know if I have faith in our jurors.''
Howard University political scientist Ron Walters predicted a white backlash over the verdict.
``We're going to see some tinkering with the criminal justice system in ways that may make it more difficult for the accused to defend themselves,'' Walters said.
At a post-verdict news conference, Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran denied that he had played the race card on Simpson's behalf.
But Cochran made race the central issue in his impassioned closing arguments last week, calling Fuhrman a ``lying, perjuring, genocidal racist.''
And it was Cochran who urged the Simpson jurors, most of whom were black, to ``stop this cover-up'' of abuses against blacks by a police department with a well-documented history of bigotry.
In fact, Cochran succeeded in placing the Los Angeles Police Department on trial in the form of Fuhrman, the detective who discovered some of the most damning evidence against Simpson but who was exposed as a liar and a racist.
Fuhrman, whom the jury heard using racial slurs in tape-recorded interviews with an aspiring screenwriter, was compared to Hitler in Cochran's closing statement.
``Cochran had the duty to make any argument which the judge would permit which might help to free his client,'' said John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington.
While Cochran's appeals to the jury may have been improper, Banzhaf added, the jury had every right to ``express the conscience of the community.''
The jurors in Simpson's case have declined to explain their verdict, leaving the nation to argue over whether they had reasonable doubt about Simpson's guilt or whether they were sending Los Angeles County - and perhaps the nation - a message about racist cops.
Such a message may not carry far, even if it was intended. Many who cheered the verdict said they did so because they thought Simpson's defense had proven reasonable doubt, not because it evened the score for blacks.
``I don't think it means anything, I really don't,'' said Benjamin Berry, a history professor at Virginia Wesleyan College and an African American.
Racial implications of the verdict have been ``overstated,'' agreed Elsie M. Barnes, acting dean of political science and economics at historically black Norfolk State University. Many of the conversations Barnes heard about the case revolved not around race but the strength of the prosecution's case.
``A lot of people refused to believe an athletic idol would have committed this crime,'' Barnes said. ``That part would have been in place regardless of the ethnicity.''
Some actually found room for hope in the aftermath of the trial. Perhaps, said the NAACP's Gillis, the verdict would spark constructive conversation.
``The trial has a message in terms of race relations,'' agreed Helen P. Shropshire, chairwoman of the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission. ``Things came out. . . .
``I hope the good that will come out of this is people will start talking to people. I'm hoping people across the country will assess and have some open communications.''
MEMO: Staff writers Kerry Dougherty, Denise Watson and Lorraine Eaton, Cox
News Service and the Los Angeles Daily News contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
Millicent Welch reacts happily to the non-guilty verdict as it is
anounced on a television in a hallway at the Radisson Hotel in
Hampton. Watching to her right are Michele Musselwhite and Shannon
Mera. The three women are employees of the hotel. ``I was very
happy,'' Welch said, ``because I feel like they wasted too much of
his life trying to figure out if he did it or not. I think that
noboby knows except Nicole, Ron and whoever did it.''
KEYWORDS: O.J. SIMPSON VERDICT REACTION by CNB