In-Court Casualness Disturbing

For more reasons than one, the People vs. O.J. Simpson is the damnedest trial I have ever seen. Excuse me, preliminary hearing. There is an informality to these proceedings that I find positively repugnant, a casual quality the likes of which might normally be reserved for traffic court.

This could be the laid-back murder investigation of the century. Witnesses called to give sworn testimony in a capital crime have taken the stand without suit coats, in sportswear with open collars, or, in one case, even a T-shirt. Principals are being referred to as O.J., rather than as Mr. Simpson, or as Kato, even though there is not merely a human being involved in this case who answers to this name, but also a dog.

California is a casual state. We should stamp this on our license plates--”The Casual State.” The few restaurants that require neckties usually require them of the employees, not the patrons. We order pizza by our first names, not our surnames. But these, these are hallowed halls of law; these are people detailing a gruesome crime.

What a laid-back courtroom it has become.

Brian (Kato) Kaelin, caretaker of the Simpson estate and companion of both defendant and one of the victims, having been rebuked under direct examination for mumbling “Mmm-hmmm,” was instructed soberly by the prosecuting attorney that the stenographer had no such button. Kaelin flippantly interjected, “Maybe she should get one.”

Then commenced a discussion of Jacuzzi jets that had not been properly turned off and of trips to a McDonald’s in a Rolls-Royce.

“Only in Southern California,” guffawed Tom Brokaw on NBC.

Oh, yes; funny stuff, athlete and broadcaster O.J. Simpson listening to testimony as to whether he murdered the mother of his children. Maybe we could all be a little more glib.

At one point, Kaelin mentioned a basketball game that had been on television and was promptly asked which game that was.

“Houston and the Knicks!” he said animatedly, whereupon ripples of laughter cascaded through the gallery.

A female acquaintance of Kaelin’s grinned in seeming embarrassment when asked if she ever had been a guest of his overnight. She, too, practically laughed aloud at each reproof from the prosecution for answering unintelligibly, “Mmm-hmmm.”

Sarcasm oozed. A detective, asked whether in his opinion a “live-in maid” represented someone who occupied the premises 24 hours a day, seven days a week, responded, “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never had a maid.”

An attorney and another witness got into an exchange over whether the bloodstain allegedly found on Simpson’s vehicle could have been “dried taco sauce.” There were more twitters.

Early on, even Simpson himself failed to suppress a smile over the matter of literal hair-splitting, when both sides argued over how many follicle samples could be taken to a lab. I am sure that he was struck with the absurdity of it all, guilty or innocent. What he must have been thinking during Kaelin’s testimony about the spa and the hamburgers, I cannot begin to guess.

I do know that the grim nature of these hearings should be making everyone cringe and quiver. At times, though, this lurid story seems to spin into “Anatomy of a Murder,” with Jimmy Stewart bringing into the courtroom a puppy that leaps into George C. Scott’s lap, causing whoops of laughter until the judge restores order. Perhaps others welcome these occasional comic respites in a real-life murder case. Myself, I find them appalling.

And, I’m afraid, uniquely Californian.

It is useless trying to modify the behavior of insensitive creatures outside the courthouse who peddle T-shirts inspired by someone’s death, or self-promoting New York radio screwballs permitted to wear such rags on national television appearances, for nothing we say would ever seep through such thick skulls.

Inside the courtroom, however, we should be demanding sobriety and dignity, yet this is the same town where the Brothers Menendez observed a trial for their very lives dressed as though having come straight from their sailboats.

My personal contemplation of this case is single-minded. If O.J. Simpson is innocent, what I would expect is to hear him stand up and say, “The person who killed Nicole is still out there!” and beseech police to get busy, because somebody sure as hell killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Alas, this is a legal struggle in which individuals must do what they must do. The man from whom we wish to hear most remains mute.

Others, meantime, jabber away, devoid of common decency, unable even to keep a straight face.

I can scarcely fault TV anchorman Brokaw for ad-libbing that Ira Reiner, the former district attorney for Los Angeles County, had been urging him to recognize the “only in Southern California” quirks of this case.

Two people are dead, and in court they’re talking taco sauce.