THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Reading Images With Different Eyes

As Denise Brown continued her emotional outpouring on the witness stand Monday, I thought about the difficulty of determining the impact of such testimony.

The current phase of the O.J. Simpson trial, focusing on violence in the Simpson marriage, is full of powerful words and images that evoke highly personal reactions. People identify with one side or another and base their judgments on such allegiances.

I got a taste of that before coming over to the trial Monday morning to watch Brown, Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister, complete her testimony.

When I checked my phone mail, I found I had received a number of reactions to a column I wrote for Saturday’s paper on Denise Brown’s first day as a witness.

Brown had testified how she had seen Simpson act abusively toward Nicole on two occasions, including once throwing her on the floor. But she also said that she and the others present had been drinking a lot of tequila on both occasions.

I wondered how the jurors would react to her story. Or as I put it, whether “this middle-class, working-class group of men and women will bring other images back to their hotel rooms--of boozing rich people with enough money and time on their hands to waste their lives in bars.” I also commented that “no humiliation seemed great enough to prompt Denise Brown to intervene on behalf of her sister.”

What was striking was the strongly emotional response of the readers. These weren’t people choosing sides over an election, a ballgame or even a neighborhood zoning dispute. For better or for worse, the Simpson trial reaches into a deep reservoir of feelings.

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A woman said she thought that the jurors, people like herself, would be put off by the drinking. A man praised me for taking what he thought would be an unpopular view. But a slight majority was outraged.

“Are you a recovering alcoholic or something?” a woman asked. “Why do you put down people who drink? . . . How dare you put down that poor girl. I am reading your article and crying.”

An Orange County man said, “I think your spin is a little bit ridiculous . . . to criticize this woman for not intervening. . . . I assume she was physically supposed to prevent O.J. (from abusing Nicole)? . . . Blaming her for his misconduct is like blaming the victim.” My column, the reader said, was “puritanical, hypocritical and misses the point.”

I imagine the readers will be just as divided over Denise Brown’s testimony Monday.

Anyone who saw Monday’s session could not forget the photos Denise took of Nicole after Simpson beat her in 1989. Police photographs of her had been displayed last week, but those mild Polaroids did not capture the fury of Simpson’s assault on his wife.

Her right eye was swollen and blackened. The right side of her forehead was red and bruised. In another picture, Nicole was lifting her right arm, and it, too, was bruised and red. Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden asked if that was how Nicole usually looked. “No, no,” replied Denise.

Under Darden’s questioning, Denise Brown also revisited the scene at Simpson’s mansion where she said he threw Denise, Nicole and Denise’s date out of the house. “(His) eyes got real angry. . . . His whole face just changed completely when he got upset. . . . He looked like a different person. That’s what Nicole had always said, when he gets angry.”

But she also discussed her drinking. Perhaps to take the edge off a character assault by the defense, Darden asked her about drinking on the occasions of alleged abuse. “You . . . testified that you consumed alcohol on each of those specific occasions,” Darden said. “Yes, I did,” she replied. “And on those occasions, did you have a drinking problem?” Darden asked. “Yes, I did,” she replied. “You’re a recovering alcoholic?” said Darden. “Yes, I am,” she said. “Sober for over a year now.”

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There were other conflicting images.

Candace Garvey, baseball great Steve Garvey’s wife, testified that Simpson looked blank when she tried to talk to him at the children’s dance recital the day of the murder. Denise Brown said Simpson had a “very bizarre look in his eyes. It was a very far away look . . . it was . . . like a glazed-over kind of frightening dark eyes. It just didn’t look like the O.J. we knew.”

Then the defense played a videotape showing the crowd leaving the Paul Revere Middle School auditorium after the recital. It had been shot by Scott Kennedy, an investment broker.

Denise Brown and her mother kissed Simpson. Denise’s father shook his hand. Simpson smiled and laughed with a friend, and picked up his small son, lifting him into the air.

To defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the videotape showed that Simpson was in a jovial, family mood--not in the mood for murder--and that Simpson looked like he was straining when he picked up his 75-pound son.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Darden had a different interpretation. To him, Simpson’s hearty handshake and his lifting of his son showed on that particular day that the Heisman Trophy winner was in great shape. Strong enough, the prosecution maintains, to pull off a brutal double killing.

It just depends on how you look at it.