PERSPECTIVES ON JUDGE ITO : Just Another Nice Guy? Phooey! : A chatty TV interview undermines the necessary perception of a courtroom arbiter who’s literally above it all.

Johnny Carson once used a news clipping about a notorious criminal case in his monologue: These two women tried to kill this Marine drill sergeant; one was his wife. They first tried to detach his brakes; all he did was fix them. Then they fed him massive quantities of LSD; he did not change his behavior one iota. Then they fed him blackberry pie laced with scorpion sacs; he took one bite and spit it out. Then they threw a rattlesnake in his bed; not only did it not bite him, but, to the wife’s consternation, they couldn’t find it in the morning.

Johnny thought this case was hilarious and everybody laughed. Everybody but my good friend Lou Boyle. Lou was the prosecutor on the case, and he knew that eventually the two women drugged the sergeant and beat his head in with a lead sash-weight. With the first blow, he regained enough consciousness to shout the name of his wife to warn her before her friend struck the second, fatal blow.

When the media asked Lou to comment, he refused. The bungled murder attempts may sound amusing with the distance of recollection, but not at the time. At the time, there was a trial going on.

A criminal trial must represent an unadorned attempt to get at the truth. All else must be subordinate to that end. The court’s role in that effort is special. The court decides what evidence has sufficient reliability for the jury to hear, tells the jury what rules of law to apply to their factual finding and may dismiss a case unilaterally if warranted. That neutral role requires a kind of distance between the persons performing it and those vying before them.

It is no accident that a judge wears robes and presides from a raised platform, and that we all rise when he enters the courtroom. There is a psychological reason for these trappings of majesty. We need to entrust disputes to someone in whom we all have confidence; where we agree that this judgment supersedes our own; where we need a modicum of authority and finality. The image of a friendly, human, vulnerable, folksy Will Rogers type of OK guy is fine for the next-door neighbor; not for this job. This is not someone we are supposed to like, this is someone we are supposed to respect. We do not respect him because of the sufferings of his childhood or the difficulties in his climb through law school but because of the position he holds. We may consider his personal attributes when selecting him for the bench, but not in weighing how seriously we are going to take his rulings once there.

The O.J. Simpson trial is testing our society’s commitment to keep criminal justice separate from entertainment. And they are very different matters. Thus far, most participants in this trial, especially counsel, have shamelessly succumbed to the bright lights. I’m worried about the jury being influenced by the pomp and circumnonsense. What will yield the bigger royalties in a post-trial book: guilty or not guilty?

But most especially I am worried about the judge.

The problem with Judge Lance A. Ito’s weeklong series of interviews with Tritia Toyota is not that it is hypocritical vis-a-vis his stance on media coverage. It really is not. Ito is not so much angry about coverage as about inaccuracy. He must have felt sure that the interviews would be presented with accuracy. The problem is that the neutrality of a judge, in reality or public perception, may be influenced by more than financial reward; for many, the notoriety outweighs all other inducements.

All along, the judge has confined his public appearances to the courtroom. Now he enters the spotlight to talk about his past, his values, his dreams. Hey, I don’t want to hear that stuff. I want a neutral and detached arbiter who refuses to buy into the media extravaganza. I want someone who does not allow even the perception that media attention may be an influence.

Nor do I see this as an opportunity to educate the public about judges or the system--questions from Tritia Toyota? Come on. Let’s not pretend we watch Barbara Walters clumsily feign sincerity and attempt to elicit a tear because we are being educated.

I want a judge who, like my friend Lou Boyle, will say “no comment” and do his job, disgusted that anyone would use a human tragedy for entertainment. I don’t want to know a damned thing about Judge Ito except that he is going to be angry as hell if his jury is messed with, if the attorneys lie to him or if the media interfere with a fair trial on the merits. That’s all I want to know. Even with Tritia Toyota, he can get that message across in 10 seconds; he doesn’t need a week. And we certainly do not need to expand this circus into the chambers of the court.