Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. O.J. Simpson

Introduction: The Reality of Perception

Introduction The Reality of Perception    When former pro football player and TV pitchman O. J. Simpson was acquitted in the slashing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, few foresaw the effect that trial would have on the judiciary and,consequently,on the public.Now,more than a decade after the verdicts, the Simpson trial remains a topic of debate and is cited as a major factor for an increase in such restrictive measures as gag orders,sealed documents, closed proceedings, and courtroom-camera bans. Those measures inhibit the public’s access to the courts and its understanding of court proceedings and the judicial system. No other case in recent times, not even the 2005 Michael Jackson childmolestation trial, has come close to affecting the U.S. judiciary and media access to the courts or shaping public perception as much as the Simpson trial did. Even today, judges, journalists, and lawyers across the country say Simpson changed everything.1 While hardly the first case to be called the“trial of the century,”the Simpson case came to epitomize media excess and perceived judicial mismanagement . It was, and continues to be, the subject of countless news stories. It launched an industry of legal punditry and even, some say, the reality-TV phenomenon.Yet,despite an explosion of news outlets in the past decade,the media and the public now have less access to and a diminished understanding of the third branch of government, thanks in part to the Simpson trial and media coverage of it.2 1 Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky noted,“I think that the effect of the Simpson case was to cause judges to be much more suspicious and even hostile of media coverage of high-profile cases. This has been manifest in a reluctance to have televised proceedings and gag orders commonly being placed on attorneys in high-profile cases.”3 Courtroom cameras were demonized by that trial,and the effects reached far beyond Los Angeles. First California and then other states revisited their procedures; at least one court system ended its camera-access pilot project, another may have decided against allowing cameras, and other countries debated the use of cameras in their courts.4 In addition to increased restrictions,the trial spawned a series of national conferences, became the subject of law school courses, and launched a national center for courts and the media.5 The manifestations of the Simpson fallout are clear, but why did the trial have such an far-reaching and lasting impact? The answer lies in the intersection of four elements: the character and approach of the trial judge,LanceA.Ito; what was happening off camera; the synergistic effect that the behind-the-scenes activities, the trial participants, the media, a number of peripheral characters, and, most significantly, the judge had on one another; and other judges’perceptions of and reactions to the trial and Ito. Getting at the root causes of the trial’s impact requires pulling back the media’s Oz-like curtain and examining the behavior of everyone associated with the trial. Ito was but one of the players who emerged from relative obscurity to gain quick and lasting notoriety around the world, propelled not only by the case itself but by the attention of pundits and comedians,particularly those on the notoriously irreverent Saturday Night Live. Much of their commentary formed the basis for what eventually became perceived as fact. The caricature of a weak, starstruck, incompetent judge who succumbed to the sirens of fame and even viewed himself as a celebrity persists as part of the trial’s lore, which the media revisit and magnify with each new notorious case. That looms large in the minds of many judges who bristle at the mention of O.J.Simpson or Lance Ito.A review of press clippings and sound bites of the trial coverage might prompt one to wonder how such an inept person could have become a judge,much less have been entrusted with a trial guaranteed to play out on a national and, ultimately, an international stage. 2 Anatomy of a Trial But exploring now what wasn’t reported then helps to shed light on how that image emerged,why the trial created such angst in other judges,and how that affected public access to subsequent court cases. When Ito got the Simpson trial, he was considered one of...