Shielding Simpson Jury Selection in Name of Efficiency

Many people wonder how much more of a circus the Simpson case could become.

If the Los Angeles Superior Court’s 22-page “media plan” for the O.J. Simpson murder trial is any indication, the folks who prepared it are expecting the overblown coverage to explode in size and intensity.

Generally, the guide is an attempt to impose discipline on traditionally anarchic reporters. For example, it says, “If a press representative who has been assigned a seat (in the courtroom) does not claim it within 15 minutes after court convenes for each morning and each afternoon session, the seat will be given to another press representative.”

I was more interested in a section that provides a list of places to eat and drink Downtown.

Among places near the Criminal Courts Building was the Epicentre, where a lot of Times reporters and editors eat and drink. I like the Epicentre. But the authors should have also listed the Redwood on 2nd Street, a hangout for generations of trial and crime reporters, criminal lawyers and bail bondsmen who continue to exchange gossip and facts over its well-worn bar.

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The plan also contains a section that is stirring more serious controversy--a section that The Times is now urging Judge Lance A. Ito to reconsider.

Ito, who is presiding over the Simpson case, has sharply restricted the presence of the press in the courtroom during jury selection, which begins Sept. 26. Only one reporter, respected trial reporter Linda Deutsch of Associated Press, will be allowed to actually observe the lengthy jury selection process. She will pass along her observations to other members of the press, who will be able to listen to the proceeding in a courthouse press room.

For the public at large, jury selection will not be broadcast in any form.

Jerrianne Hayslett, a court public affairs official, said the judge imposed the restriction because there is limited space in the small courtroom. “There is a large jury pool. The judge wants to get in as many prospective jurors in the courtroom as possible,” Hayslett said. “He is even adding chairs in the courtroom. There will be no member of the public present. The one reporter will represent the public via the media.”

In some respects, I can see the judge’s side. The first 250 people in the Simpson jury pool will report to the Criminal Courts Building jury assembly room at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 26. They’ll be hustled up to the courtroom in groups for questioning that will eliminate most of them. Ito, who has summoned a pool of 1,000 potential jurors, wants to work his way through the questioning as quickly as he can.

But there is another side to the issue.

Although efficiency is the judge’s stated motive, his limit on coverage could also be interpreted as another in a continuing judicial effort to shield jurors from the outside world and to protect them from the intrusive and upsetting media circus.

The juror protection movement started several years ago, about the same time TV gained access to covering trials. The movement gained impetus when violent crime became a major public issue and some jurors expressed fear of reprisal from outraged friends and relatives of defendants.

Those fears are expressed in a new movie, “Trial by Jury,” which tells the story of a juror in a trial of a murderous gangster. The gangster’s crew threatens to harm her 7-year-old son unless she votes not guilty and persuades some of her fellow jurors to go along.

The juror protection movement has really taken hold in the southeastern Los Angeles County communities of Downey and Bellflower. There, two Municipal Court judges have issued orders forbidding the release of names of jurors in all criminal trials. The court clerks know the names, but to everyone else the jurors are known by the numbers on their badges.

Jurors have been given the protection of anonymity in cases in which the judge thinks they are in danger. It happened in the Rodney G. King beating trial and the trials of the men accused of beating Reginald O. Denny.

But the fact that judges are imposing anonymity in every criminal case in Downey and Bellflower shows how far the juror protection movement has gone. As one lawyer told Times writer Catherine Gewertz, “I tried a death penalty (case) in Downtown recently and they didn’t have an anonymous jury there. And here I am in Bellflower, representing a prominent surgeon for driving under the influence, and they want to use an anonymous jury. My client wasn’t a dangerous guy who was some threat to the jury. It was ridiculous.”

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It’s easy to sympathize with nervous jurors. With the inconvenience, low pay and bad working conditions the county heaps on jurors and prospective jurors, the added fear of getting beat up by a defendant’s relatives is too much.

It’s also easy to understand a juror’s fear of the media frenzy overwhelming the Simpson trial. You’ve seen those scenes in movies where hysterical reporters and TV crews chase people down corridors and streets? They’re not an exaggeration.

Judge Ito said he is limiting media access to jury selection in the name of efficiency. But even if he doesn’t intend it that way, his order will limit what the public knows about the Simpson jury selection process.

Worse yet, limiting reporters’ access will drive them to heights of rudeness--and ingenuity in getting their stories--never envisioned by the authors of the Superior Court’s media guide.