Finding Some Answers Among All the Questions for Prospective Jurors

I can’t see the faces of the prospective O.J. Simpson jurors. Rather, I’m with most of the press in a small room listening to their voices piped in from the courtroom three floors below.

Analyzing by voice only is much different--and probably often less accurate--than seeing the panelists’ expression and body language and watching how they interact with Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito and the lawyers. Bad working conditions add to the difficulties. The room is so crowded that some of us sit on the floor or stand while taking notes of the dialogue.

One day, I thought a candidate was certain to make it to the jury. So did some others in the press room. The prospective juror seemed calm, mature and balanced. But one of the pool reporters allowed inside the courtroom saw it much differently.

No chance, the reporter said. The woman’s words may have sounded strong to us upstairs, but when they were combined with body language and expression, they told another story to the reporter in the courtroom. The woman seemed susceptible to stress, potentially unstable.

Even so, it’s possible to learn something from the voices.

An example of that is publicity. Ito and the lawyers seem to think that people have nothing else to do in life but absorb news about O.J. Some of the jury people have been real Simpson trial aficionados, one admitting she discussed the case up to five times a day at work before Ito admonished the group to stay away from news of the case. But others are so busy they say they pay little attention to the news.

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What’s interesting is how so many of the jurors’ experiences reflect the difficulties of modern life.

“We’ve now had quite a few people who seem to have a history of domestic violence,” said Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press. “It’s a commentary on how much domestic violence is out there.”

Wednesday, there was even a woman who had been beaten by her mother, and later in life by her boyfriend. She’d also been robbed and mugged.

Another juror told a story Tuesday afternoon that seemed to embody the economic and social troubles of Los Angeles itself. He was a reader, a serious-minded person who said he got his news from the Daily News and C-SPAN.

His love of print was in his genes. For three generations, his family had owned a Los Angeles bookstore that is now closed. “It was Metro Rail digging the subway station,” he explained of the closure. “It was the riots. It was the competition. And, L.A., as far as retail, was in a desperate situation.”

Another man, now retired, had had a varied work career. He’d been a schoolteacher. Later on, he was a teacher aboard an aircraft carrier. And he’d been safety compliance officer at a large university campus. All those jobs taught him a lesson he shared when he was asked about the Los Angeles Police Department: “I have yet to see an organization that runs smoothly.”

The aircraft carrier job prepared him for being sequestered if he makes the Simpson jury. He was on the carrier, he said, 120 days without seeing land. “It was like living in a large weapon.”

Boyhood experiences with racial abuse in Arkansas remained with an African American man. “A group of white boys,” he remembered, “tried to run us from downtown.”

Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who is also black, asked the man what the experience meant to him. The man replied he was “somewhat sensitive” to what “certain people” say in his presence.

“Part of being in black America, right?” said Cochran.

“Right,” said the man.

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These words constitute a small part of my notes on jury questioning. Mostly, I’ve written down answers to the issue that occupies much of Judge Ito’s attention--the media. As the AP’s Deutsch said: “He doesn’t want anything electronic in their lives and that is very difficult.”

As a result, he booted out a man who watched cartoons with his grandson; a woman who viewed soap operas on a Spanish-language station and a woman who watched an old Barbara Stanwyck movie on television.

This seems to reflect a feeling--shared by the judge and the lawyers--that the media are the sum total of a person’s life, tainting every thought and attitude.

Eventually, a jury will be chosen and the media question will recede to the far background.

Then what will matter will be the entire lives of the jurors, their relationships, their jobs and everything else that goes into shaping someone’s outlook on life. These experiences will be much more important to the outcome of the Simpson trial than whether a grandfather happened to watch cartoons with his grandson.

Talk To Boyarsky

* Times columnist Bill Boyarsky is now answering questions about the Simpson case on the TimesLink on-line service.

Details on Times electronic services, B4.