Questioning Ends for 1st Group of Simpson Jurors : Trial: Mostly black and female group of 42 candidates remains. Next step is peremptory dismissals by lawyers.

Five weeks after beginning jury selection in the O.J. Simpson murder case, the judge and lawyers Monday concluded individual questioning of the first panel of jury candidates, clearing a predominantly black and female group to proceed to the next phase of the trial.

At the close of court Monday, 85 potential jurors had been questioned and 42 remained in contention for a spot on the jury that will determine the fate of the football hall of famer. The others had been excused, except for one woman who was asked to return Wednesday, when Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito will decide whether she should be dismissed.

After that determination, lawyers on both sides will begin weeding out the panel by using peremptory challenges--a process in which attorneys, without explanation, can remove jurors for any reason other than their race or sex. If a jury cannot be selected from among the 42, about 200 more panelists wait in the wings and could be summoned for questioning.

The 42 panelists still eligible after weeks of sometimes grueling questioning range from 21 to 77 years old, although most are middle-aged.

Every one of them knows something about the June 12 slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, but all insist that they have abided by Ito’s strict admonition to avoid all media and bookstores, an order he imposed Oct. 18 after the publication of a salacious book purporting to detail Nicole Simpson’s final months.

Twenty-six of the panelists are African American, 10 are white, three are Native American, two are Latino and one is Filipino. The panel includes people of widely varying experiences. At least eight prospective jurors have had experiences with domestic abuse, and more than half have dated people of another race. The pool is evenly split between those who received a high school education or less and those who attended vocational school or community college or earned a university degree.

The greatest number of jurors--seven--gave a South-Central Los Angeles address, while five gave their address simply as Los Angeles. Three each said they were from Inglewood and West Los Angeles. One 66-year-old white female is from Brentwood, where Simpson lives, and others came from communities such as Whittier, Downey, Alhambra, North Hollywood, Pasadena, View Park, Ladera Heights, Silver Lake, Venice, Playa del Rey, West Los Angeles and Gardena.

Forty-three percent of the potential jurors are married, while 33% are single and 24% are divorced. One 53-year-old African American female from Compton listed her marital status as “unsure.”

Of the panelists who were dismissed during three weeks of questioning by Ito and the lawyers, most were excused because of their exposure to media. But some were allowed to leave for medical reasons--one woman was pregnant and expecting to deliver next month--and others for expressing opinions that the judge believed rendered them unfit to serve.

Two prospective jurors openly expressed racist views. One told a racist joke and said he believed that the world would be better off if one ethnic group were eliminated altogether.

Every one of the remaining prospective jurors knows of Simpson from his storied careers as an athlete, actor and a television spokesman. But the panelists who have made it this far have pledged not to let those impressions color their judgments when weighing the evidence against Simpson, who has pleaded not guilty to the killings.

Some candidates clearly hope not to serve--one woman threatened not to show up at all if Ito sequesters the panel, as he has indicated he may--while others have eagerly insisted that they would make good jurors and should be put on the jury.

Monday, in fact, one man offered to serve even after he emotionally described a wartime experience in which he seriously contemplated murdering a fellow soldier.

“I’ve had a very personal, dynamic experience with the will to commit murder,” the 61-year-old sheet-metal worker from Sun Valley told a hushed courtroom. “So I know the powers that can come into play.”

The prospective juror said that while serving in the military during the Korean War, another soldier harassed him for a year. It finally grew too much for him to bear, the man said, and one night while on guard duty, he contemplated firing at the building where his tormentor slept.

“I had my finger on the trigger,” he said, adding that he thought to himself: “If I fired on the building, it’ll bring this man out, and I could kill him.”

The man, who broke down and cried as he told that story, said it took all the effort he could muster not to open fire. “It took all my strength--physical, emotional and spiritual--just to take my finger off the trigger,” he said, crying openly.

Still, he said he could be fair in judging Simpson because the wartime experience would not affect his views about the murder case.

Ito, after conferring with attorneys for both sides, excused him anyway.

“You and I would feel more comfortable if you served on a different kind of case,” Ito said. “I don’t want to put you through this anymore, frankly.”

That man was one of 10 prospective jurors questioned Monday during a wrenching day of interviews. In addition to the Korean War veteran, another prospective juror burst into tears during questioning as she described the death of a sister who had been misdiagnosed by doctors and died of leukemia.

Her tearful description came just moments after she and Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman engaged in a spirited exchange about some of her answers in the 79-page juror questionnaire. On that form, she described Simpson as a “likable person” and a “nice guy,” among other favorable impressions.

Hodgman grilled her about those answers, aggressively seeking to see if she could set them aside.

“You make me feel like I’m on trial here,” the woman shot back at one point. “And I don’t like the feeling.”

Ito intervened and asked the woman whether she could set those feelings aside. When she replied that she could, Ito said brusquely to Hodgman: “Next question.”

The woman was allowed to stay on the jury panel, but several others were excused Monday. As on previous days, most of those dismissed had violated Ito’s order that they avoid all media and bookstores. Ito has insisted on strict compliance with that directive, dismissing one prospective juror Monday whose only contact with media was watching videotapes of a game show.

One woman who underwent questioning said she had nearly violated the admonition but caught herself just before entering a bookstore: “I got to the door,” she said, “and it was like a flash of lightning hit me in the face.”

She was kept on the jury panel and will be among those who are to return Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Hodgman said prosecutors had received an anonymous phone call over the weekend from someone alleging to have information about one of the prospective jurors. According to Hodgman, the caller said the panelist had been expressing views about the case at work.

Hodgman said he wanted to conduct a discreet inquiry into the caller’s allegations, but Robert L. Shapiro, one of Simpson’s lead attorneys, objected to prosecutors performing that task. Ito said he would take the idea under consideration.

The laborious process of selecting an impartial panel to hear the Simpson case resumes Wednesday, when lawyers for Simpson and the prosecution will begin exercising their peremptory challenges, excusing those prospective jurors with whom they feel uncomfortable.

They will not be asked to state any reason for removing potential jurors, but both sides will scrutinize the actions of their adversaries to determine whether either set of lawyers is excusing potential jurors because of race or gender.

Already, Simpson’s lawyers have accused prosecutors of questioning prospective jurors who are black differently than other panelists. And legal experts have speculated that the defense may be especially wary of prospective jurors who are women, given the spousal battery and stalking allegations against Simpson that prosecutors may seek to introduce at his trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court has barred attorneys from removing prospective jurors because of race or gender. If either side accuses the other of making challenges based on those criteria, the lawyers will need to persuade Ito that their motives are pure. To do that, the lawyers would need to provide a race- or gender-neutral explanation for why they are seeking to have a particular panelist excused--or risk running afoul of the Supreme Court.

“Discrimination in jury selection, whether based on race or on gender, causes harm to the litigants, the community and the individual jurors who are wrongfully excluded from participation in the judicial process,” the Supreme Court ruled in April, the latest of two landmark cases barring racial or gender-based discrimination in exercising peremptory challenges. “Discriminatory use of peremptory challenges may create the impression that the judicial system has acquiesced in suppressing full participation by one gender or that the ‘deck has been stacked’ in favor of one side.”

Legal experts said they expect that attorneys will use their peremptory challenges to remove panelists who have had searing experiences with domestic abuse, are longtime sports fans or who have expressed considerable warmth toward Simpson--even if they pledged to treat him fairly. Prosecutors, who appeared to anger at least four prospective jurors by subjecting them to pointed questioning, may also use some of their 20 peremptory challenges to remove those panelists, experts said.

“If you have jurors who really went under personal questioning, they may be excused,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law school professor. “Prosecutors have to worry that those people may have taken it personally.”

Prosecutors’ worries about their image may be minimized, however, because of the jury selection procedures adopted by Ito. Unlike the process followed in routine cases, potential jurors in the Simpson case are being questioned individually, outside the presence of their fellow panelists.

Each side has been granted 20 peremptory challenges, and Ito has said he will consider granting more if they exhaust those he has allowed. Given the number of volatile issues that lurk beneath the Simpson case, legal experts say the panel may well be too small to find 12 jurors and eight alternates.

If the two sides excuse too many of the panelists to fill out the jury and alternate slots, the process of questioning will continue with a second group of prospective jurors. That group, like the current one, filled out questionnaires in late September probing their knowledge of the case and feelings about it and related topics.

But the second group has not received Ito’s admonition directing them to avoid all media and stay out of bookstores. As a result, that group may know more than the current batch of panelists about the book whose release in mid-October prompted Ito to clamp down on the jury selection process.

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this report.

A Look at the Potential Jurors

The pool of 42 potential jurors who passed the first screening in the Simpson case is overwhelmingly black and predominantly female, and most of them feel comfortable with the idea of dating or marrying someone of another race, according to a computer analysis of the jury questionnaires.

When asked if they believed Simpson was guilty, all but four said they had no opinion. Two said they thought he was probably guilty, while two said not guilty.

Among the findings:

RACE Black: 60% White: 26% Native American: 7% Latino: 5% Filipino: 2% CRIME

46% have been victims of crime, including burglary.

19% have experienced domestic violance as children or adults

MEDIA EXPOSURE

95% followed freeway chase

73% heard about Nicole Simpson’s 911 call

56% saw Simpson play football

Sources: Computer analysis by Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino and data analyst Sandy Poindexter

The Simpson Case

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