NEWS ANALYSIS : Garcetti’s Political Future May Ride on Simpson Case : Courts: D.A. is deeply involved in prosecution. Some say he is micro-managing, but he stands by his actions.

A criminal case is like an iceberg, most of its substance hidden and inaccessible.

Above the surface in Department 103 of the Criminal Courts Building, an unavoidably visible trial is being conducted--the People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson. But another is playing itself out below the line of sight. It might be called Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti vs. Lurking Political Disaster.

Simpson’s fate will be decided by a jury of his peers. Garcetti’s future will be determined in the much more fickle court of public opinion. And while the D.A. said in an interview this week that he hopes voters will not judge him “on the basis of what happens in one big case,” he is behaving as if he believes they will.

In the interview, the D.A. acknowledged that he is spending an extraordinary amount of his time--”10% to 15%” of the working day--on the Simpson case.

He says he is doing so because he wants to “make sure that at the conclusion of this trial the vast majority of people in this community are proud of the effort we made.”

“When people zero in on . . . what my role in the case was, I’m confident they’ll find it was an appropriate role. This is what they would expect of the district attorney, to select the right people, ensure that they have the resources and to make any fundamental decisions that the district attorney would have to answer for.”

Garcetti is not the first D.A. to involve himself deeply in a controversial case. For example, his predecessor, Ira Reiner, was criticized by some of his own deputies for becoming too enmeshed in the high-profile prosecutions of Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker; the defendants in the McMartin Pre-School case, and the police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King.

But Garcetti’s unusual level of day-to-day involvement in the Simpson case has led some veteran prosecutors to charge he is micro-managing the trial and hobbling his prosecutorial team of Marcia Clark, William Hodgman and Christopher A. Darden. In court, says one senior deputy D.A., who asked not to be identified, “they’re acting like a kid whose father is yelling at him during a Little League game.”

This situation, say many of the current and former Los Angeles County prosecutors interviewed by The Times over the past week, is the product of a series of steps Garcetti has taken since Simpson’s arrest. Among the most frequently cited are:

* The decision to hold daily meetings--often more than one--with the prosecution team and the D.A.’s senior staff.

* The decision to assert his right to overrule his trial lawyers on questions of courtroom tactics.

* The decision to involve his communications director, Suzanne Childs, frequently in meetings about the case.

* The decision to shift the trial from Santa Monica to the Downtown courthouse, thereby virtually assuring that the jurors would be mainly black and Latino with moderate incomes. In fact, after Tuesday’s removal of another white juror, the panel’s ethnic composition stands at nine African Americans, one Latino, one white and one person of mixed Native American and white heritage.

* The decision not to seek the death penalty.

In the interview, Garcetti made no apologies and denied that his actions constituted micro-management. Still, he said the meetings he has conducted with the Simpson prosecutors have been unusual in both length and detail. “I’ve been involved from the beginning,” he said, “along with members of my executive staff--Frank Sunstedt, Sandy Buttita and Dan Murphy.

“At times (before testimony began) there were several contacts a day. Sometimes it would go on for a few hours. (Now) there are still times when we have extended or three-hour meetings.”

Over the past week, Garcetti said, “I probably talked to one or more of the lead lawyers every day. And sometimes it’s more than once. But these could be five-minute conversations.”

Garcetti also said he selected the trial prosecutors because they “understand, appreciate and accept that I will give them tremendous leeway in handling the case. But there may be a few occasions when I must have the final word.”

He said further that Childs’ role had nothing to do with trial strategy, but to serve as a “buffer” between the media “and the trial team. . . . Also, to remind us if we’re not getting our effort out.”

The decision to move the case Downtown was made, he said, principally because “Santa Monica doesn’t have the physical facilities to handle this type of case.” At the time, however, Garcetti said privately that he believed a conviction handed down by a mostly white Westside jury would “lack credibility.”

Garcetti said he had exercised “the final say” on whether to seek the death penalty against Simpson, as he says he does in “any highly controversial or important case. . . . The vast majority of death penalty decisions never come to me.” They are made by a standing committee of deputy district attorneys, whose decision in this instance, Garcetti said, he “ratified.”

Garcetti maintains that each of these steps was “appropriate,” since they represent the sort of “fundamental decisions that the district attorney would have to answer for.”

Some of those answers have to be given at election time. One former prosecutor says Reiner’s political fate is a case in point. “A couple of weeks before the McMartin verdict, Ira was leading Arlo Smith in the state attorney general’s race more than 2 to 1. Then, that verdict came out, and Ira was down by 1 point. He never recovered. . . . Gil ran against Ira on the verdicts in the McMartin and King cases. He can’t be unaware of what happens if you lose big cases.”

But whatever the political consequences, says former Dist. Atty. John Van De Kamp flatly, “The role of D.A. is to recede once the case is filed. You avoid talking, repose your confidence in the trial lawyers and let them try the case.”

According to one deputy district attorney close to the Simpson team, members have complained that “everything they do is second-guessed.”

Another prosecutor said Hodgman’s associates in the office have speculated that his highly publicized collapse stemmed, at least in part, from the strain of dealing with the heavy oversight. Hodgman took ill during an after-court strategy session with Garcetti and others. The D.A. described the meeting as “very low-key,” and added: “There has not in fact been one really heated discussion throughout, ever since June 12 to today.” After a brief hospitalization and an absence from the trial, Hodgman is expected to return to work Thursday.

One of the office’s most senior prosecutors, a friend of Hodgman’s, said his younger associate is in a difficult position: “Guys like that know they’re better equipped to make courtroom decisions than the guy watching on TV. That guy, for example, will never understand that human fatigue is the worst enemy a courtroom lawyer has. It makes you scared, ineffective and sick. They can’t put themselves in our shoes.

“I warned Bill Hodgman, who’s a lot younger than I am, about this before he got on Simpson. ‘You’re having fun now,’ I warned him, ‘but this case will chew you up and spit you out. Never jeopardize your relationship with your wife and kids or your health. No one else will take care of you once you’re in this. You’re just cannon fodder.’ I didn’t want him to make some of the mistakes I did by always putting trial work first. I could die one day and no one would care.”

Prosecutor Sterling Norris, who ran against Garcetti for district attorney, said: “Everybody in the office is aware of the constant meetings, like the one in which Hodgman collapsed. Garcetti is famous for his meetings. There’s no question this is micro-management. The irony is that Hodgman, Marcia and Darden all have more trial experience than Garcetti does. Garcetti is interfering, trying to make decisions he doesn’t have the real experience to make. He doesn’t understand that you can’t control the courtroom from a boardroom.”

Added veteran prosecutor Harvey Giss: “I can understand why the man elected D.A. would want his people to report to him and discuss their tactics. “But . . . a trial is almost a living thing; the chemistry changes between principals and the jury. Sometimes only the people in the courtroom can feel that chemistry and understand what needs to be done.”

Former prosecutor Curt Livesay, who once decided which murders the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office would prosecute as capital cases, adds that “when you start second-guessing trial lawyers, it causes them to second-guess themselves. You must avoid at all costs having the trial lawyers second-guess their instinctive, informed decisions.

“The one thing you never do is tell trial lawyers to signal before they turn left.”

Former Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson, gives Garcetti high marks so far. “What Garcetti is doing is fine, so long as he leaves the ultimate decision on tactical matters to the trial deputies,” Bugliosi said. According to the ex-prosecutor, his then-boss Evelle J. Younger left the Manson case in the hands of his courtroom deputies, even though “there was just as much riding” on that trial as there is in the Simpson case. “Younger was running for attorney general, and I’m personally convinced if there had been a not guilty verdict in Manson, he would have lost.”

Stephen Kay, who now directs the district attorney’s Compton office and was on the Manson prosecution team with Bugliosi, agrees. He also recalls the hands-off approach that Van De Kamp took in the successful prosecution of serial killer Lawrence Bittaker.

“Van De Kamp took a very different role than what you may see the D.A. doing in the Simpson case,” Kay said. “I may have had one meeting with John during the whole case. That was just before the trial started. There were no day-to-day meetings or any of that.”

But Kay also pointed out that the political context in which a district attorney functions has changed in the intervening 15 years. “There is much more pressure on a D.A., especially here in Los Angeles. The D.A. is held responsible when things go wrong. So the D.A. feels, ‘If I’m going to be held responsible, I better get involved in the strategy and other things.’ I certainly don’t blame Reiner for getting involved in McMartin or Garcetti for getting involved in Simpson. If things go wrong, they’re going to pay. Ira did pay for McMartin.”

Kay, whose prosecution of Bittaker was the first criminal trial ever televised in California, also believes that the presence of cameras in the courtroom has dramatically escalated the stakes in high-profile cases. “In the major cases I did,” he recalled, “there wasn’t so much second-guessing. You didn’t have television and radio commentators. You didn’t have the tabloids trying to dig up your past life. Now, when someone sneezes in the courtroom, you have a couple law professors analyzing it.”