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

Chapter 1. To Here from There

Chapter 1 To Here from There    Lance Ito leaned back in the black leather chair in his chambers, propped his feet up on his cluttered desk, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Well, Jerrianne,” he asked,“what do you think I should do with the rest of my life?” That was the first time a judge had ever asked me such a question, and it might have left me speechless had it come from any other. It was January 1996. The abrupt and, to many people, shocking verdicts in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial had been rendered more than three months earlier. During those months, Ito had taken time off from his judicial duties to restore his health,both physical and mental,and to contemplate direction. Lance Ito was the first judge I knew to be so profoundly affected by a trial. Sure, Stanley Weisberg of McMartin Preschool molestation, Rodney King beating, and Menendez brothers fame, and Reginald Denny–beating trial judge John Ouderkirk had endured the media glare,gotten death threats and hate mail,required heightened security,and had their personal lives invaded. Those kinds of things have become almost commonplace with trials of great media interest in contemporary culture, as Florida judge George Greer, who presided over the Terri Shiavo case, and federal judge Reggie Walton, who heard the case of I.Lewis“Scooter”Libby,can attest.But other trials in recent history pale compared to Simpson. 8 While judges on other such cases eventually fade back into obscurity,Ito’s inability to do so played a part in his judicial future.He never returned to the supervising judge track, nor did he pursue appointment to a higher court, which had seemed a distinct possibility before Simpson. Perhaps most vexing has been the loss of public regard for his professional reputation. And other judges, regardless of their opinions of Ito’s competence, quail at the thought of a similar fate befalling them. The first loss for Ito was the possibility of a leadership role in the Los Angeles Superior Court. When he got the Simpson case in July 1994, he was the criminal division assistant supervising judge, in line to become supervising judge six months later. But after the court’s judicial leaders assigned him the case, it became obvious that it would consume all of his time.When the trial’s opening statements began in January 1995, new supervising and assistant supervising judges had been named. Ito never got back into the cycle. “He never asked,”says Victor Chavez, who served as the court’s presiding judge and made judicial assignments in 1999 and 2000.“I would have given him any number of positions. I recognized his talent even back then. I think he himself pulled himself out of the arena.”1 James Bascue,who served as criminal courts supervising judge during the trial and in 2001 followed Chavez as presiding judge of the entire court system , actively sought Ito out. “I tried to see if he wanted to transfer to another assignment,”Bascue says. “He would have made a great civil judge.” Security, however, had become a major concern. “He was very concerned about the security in other court locations,”Bascue says. “Because of the publicity and him being so recognizable, he was concerned about getting into the courthouse. He felt more comfortable in [the Criminal Courts Building] and [with] the judges’ security for getting into and out of the courthouse.”2 Ito’s other two losses,a respected public image and judicial advancement, resulted from the synergism of the public and the media. The public’s perception of Ito grew increasingly skewed in direct proportion to the burgeoning media coverage.Many reporters and producers who were providing that coverage had little knowledge of the legal system, court proceedings, judicial constraints, or of Ito himself and his judicial demeanor. Likewise, much of the criticism and ridicule in the ensuing years have come from To Here from There 9 pundits who neither attended the trial nor know their target. One column published in a Kansas newspaper ten years after Simpson’s acquittal was penned by a critic who admitted to being only nine years old in 1994.3 In none of the many high-profile trials for which I handled press issues and logistics has the judge become news the way Ito did, not even during a Kim Basinger breach-of-contract dispute...