THE SIMPSON MURDER CASE : Their Lips Are Sealed : But Grand Jury Members Talk About How Gruesome Accounts Affect Them

There are 23 people in Los Angeles who share a terrible secret. They have heard much of the evidence gathered in the murder case against O.J. Simpson but have promised not to tell a soul.

They are the members of the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, ordinary citizens who volunteered for a year of public service and took an oath of secrecy. After hearing five days of testimony, they were unceremoniously removed from the Simpson case Friday before they could decide whether the former football star should be indicted on charges of killing his ex-wife and her friend.

Now, the jurors face the burden of not revealing anything that they learned about the grisly case when it is the subject of constant news reports and the primary topic of conversation in Los Angeles.

“Human nature being what it is, what good is a secret if you can’t tell anybody?” said former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. “You have to validate it by telling somebody.”

Indeed, a handful of grand jurors have talked with The Times about the Simpson case, including one who was so disturbed by seeing pictures of the bloody crime scene that he was unable to eat dinner afterward. “It was a traumatic experience,” he said.

The plight of the grand jurors in the Simpson case is similar to the experience of grand jurors who have served in the past. They heard gruesome accounts of high-profile murders--such as the Menendez case or the 1991 San Gabriel Valley mall murders--but are forbidden from discussing them with anyone.

“It’s very disturbing to hear the gory details,” said Emma Fischbeck, who served on the grand jury in 1988-89 and again in 1991-92. “It’s something you have to adjust your life to be able to cope with. It’s like hearing a really scary story when you’re a kid. Your gut aches.”

Grand jurors who served during the 1992-93 session and heard testimony in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez said the image of the boys’ murdered parents--presented by the district attorney in blown-up photographs--will stay with them for a long time.

“That was such an unusual case,” said Richard Mankiewicz, one of the grand jurors. “It was such a high-profile case and it was a terrible murder, blowing people’s heads apart, one is unlikely to forget it.”

Usually, former grand jurors say, they got a chance to work through their feelings in each case as they deliberated whether to return an indictment. But with Friday’s ruling, jurors in the Simpson case were deprived of the opportunity to discuss the case among themselves.

“I would think they would be very frustrated after being put through the wringer on something like this and then not be able to make a decision,” said another former grand juror on the Menendez case who asked not to be identified.

People who have served on the Los Angeles County Grand Jury say that being on the panel is a stressful experience--and not just because of the horrible crimes that they are exposed to. Grand jury members are expected to serve as watchdogs over local government operations while juggling indictments in criminal cases.

Grand jurors volunteer or are nominated by judges and then are selected for the one-year post at random from a pool of candidates. Jurors are paid $25 a day for what is essentially a full-time job. As a result, most members of the grand jury are retired and elderly.

Prosecutors say the kind of people who end up on the panel understand their social responsibility and willingly take on the burden of keeping confidential matters secret.

“Once you have gone through that screening process, you end up with people who are able to handle the situation,” said former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian. “They are not weaklings. They are strong people.”

Nevertheless, some former jurors say the workload is taxing and the strain of serving on the panel can contribute to health problems; during the 1992-93 session, two members had heart attacks and one died of cancer.

Prosecutors have the choice of taking a criminal case to the grand jury for an indictment or holding a preliminary hearing before a judge. Prosecutors often prefer going before the grand jury because defense lawyers are not allowed in the room and witnesses are not cross-examined.

The grand jury does not decide whether a defendant is guilty, but whether there is enough evidence for a trial. In most cases, grand juries take whatever action the prosecution recommends.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the statement that grand juries would indict a ham sandwich,” Mankiewicz said. “They are flunkies of the district attorney. I believe that grand juries in general are predisposed to go along with the district attorney in handing down indictments.”

Mankiewicz is among those who believe the grand jury is so overloaded with crime cases that it is unable to fulfill its function as a watchdog over local government. He recommends convening two grand juries, one to handle civil functions and the other to hear criminal matters.

In criminal cases, grand jury members are told never to discuss the case except when they are in the jury room and all members of the panel are present.

Like trial jurors, they also are not supposed to hear evidence outside the courtroom and can be recused from a case if they become tainted. During the Menendez case, one grand juror reported that she had driven by the house where the murders occurred. She was excused from further participation in the case.

Some former panel members speculated that publicity in the Simpson case has been so widespread that some jurors may have accidentally heard news reports and had to disqualify themselves. If that had happened to enough members, they noted, the grand jury would not have been able to muster the 14 votes needed to return an indictment.

Fischbeck, president of the Los Angeles County Grand Jurors Assn., an organization of former panel members, said one reason grand juries hold private sessions is to shield prominent suspects from public attention.

“It is important to protect the reputations of people like Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson if you can have hearings without publicity,” she said. “But apparently there is a way of getting this information out to the press and that ruins the whole thing.”

She said the worst crimes that came before the grand jury during her tenure were the mall murders, a series of brutal killings in the San Gabriel Valley by gang members who kidnaped their victims at random from a shopping mall and other places.

“These were defenseless people and without provocation and without reason they were killed,” Fischbeck said. “It’s hard to cope with this kind of thing.”