Simpson Jury, ‘Media Pollution’

With regard to the questionnaire that the Simpson case jurors have to fill out before they are selected (Oct. 1), I would think the prosecution and defense would be so grateful to have jurors that they would go out of their way to be kind and gracious to them and thank them for giving up their time and families for the length of time it will be to have this trial.

If I were presented such a questionnaire to fill out, I would tell them what they could do with their questionnaire and go back home to my family. For $5 a day I can think of a better way to spend my time than to try and give this pompous, conceited and overrated celebrity and his attorneys a fair trial.

If this were anyone else, this wouldn’t be happening. This is where our justice system is wrong. It is not fairness and justice for all, just those that can afford it. It all comes down to one word--G-R-E-E-D!

TONI JACOBSON

Monterey Park

Judging from the Simpson case, jury selection has become an obscene process, violating the rights and dignity of the jurors and manipulating judicial outcome.

Juries should be selected at random from a pool of multiethnic jurors that can serve for the needed length of time. Neither the attorneys nor the defendants should know their identities. Neither attorneys nor defendants should be allowed eye contact with the jurors (a one-way mirror would suffice). Questionnaires or psychological tests that are intended to predict the outcome of a trial should not be allowed. Juries should also have access to their own consultants to help them sort out courtroom theatrics from pertinent facts.

ITARA O’CONNELL

Sacramento

The Simpson saga will probably drag on for months or longer and the taxpayer expenses will continue to accrue without limit.

I have a plan to complete the trial in a few days or less. As soon as the jury selection is complete, take the salaries and fees of the lawyers and their staffs for one week and divide them evenly among the jurors. Take the daily stipends and mileage allowances of the jury and divide them evenly among the lawyers and their staffs. The trial will be finished in a week.

ROBERT BAKER

Lake Arrowhead

Re “Coroner’s Office a Prime Target of Simpson Defense,” Oct. 2:

You note that the Simpson defense strategy is to attack everyone who collected and handled evidence, as well as the prosecution attorneys and the judge.

Why can’t the media just say no? Simpson attorneys have no right to probe the private lives of cops, coroners and prosecutors. Why does The Times continue to “play along” on the ruse of reporting the news? I don’t want to read about it, and I’ll bet there are others who feel the same. Leave the dirt for the National Enquirer.

MARGOT LOWE

Santa Monica

After enduring months of this inane media circus called “the O.J. Simpson trial,” it was refreshing to read about how ridiculous we appear to the rest of the world (“All L.A.’s a Stage as World Watches the Simpson Trial,” Sept. 30).

To the millions of infantile viewers buying into this trip under the Big Top, I say your mother needs to come in and exert a little parental control over the television. Go outside and play, people.

TERI MARKSON

Culver City

I share Brian Stonehill’s concern (“ ‘Information Pollution’ Is Real,” Commentary, Oct. 2) that the proliferation of mass media is just as likely to muddle public discourse as it is to illuminate it. And it’s tempting to link this concern with powerful environmental metaphors. To call the hysterical speculation surrounding the Simpson trial “media pollution” satisfies some deep urge in many of us to clean up our collective act, to get the Oprahs and Limbaughs to just shut up so that a little sanity might reign in the courtroom and in the public sphere.

I’m equally troubled, though, by the “media ecology movement” Stonehill espouses. It’s based, as he admits, on a scientific metaphor: Information can be just as toxic as chemicals or nuclear waste. But while the toxicity of a chemical on the environment is a measurable matter of fact, the toxicity of a piece of information abides wholly in the realm of values. An example Stonehill brings up makes the point. For him, the postage stamp of (blues legend) Robert Johnson with his cigarette airbrushed out is a good thing: It supposedly demonstrates our willingness to get rid of “toxic imagery” that might influence young people. But to me, the act of airbrushing itself is even more toxic. It’s tantamount to a willful distortion of history that in the end only contributes to the debasement of discourse.

And who decides what gets airbrushed, and what doesn’t, anyway?

CORNEL BONCA

Assistant Professor of English

Cal State Fullerton