THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Hour in Court Shows a Reality Not Seen on TV

Well, I finally got a time share of the hottest ticket in town, a pass to the O.J. Simpson trial.

One hour, from 11 a.m. to noon, then I had to return it to the owner, Andrea Ford, the Times reporter regularly in the courtroom. Not much time for a historian, but a lifetime for a journalist. I’ve known reporters who could write a biography after an hour with a subject, supplemented by a box of old newspaper clippings.

I didn’t waste a minute. I started taking notes even before the deputies permitted the reporters to enter the courtroom from the ninth floor hallway, where we were forced to remain while Judge Lance A. Ito had a private conference with the lawyers.

*

The courtroom I saw is much more complex and layered than on television. It’s a sharp reminder that the world as portrayed on TV is not life, not even when it is covered gavel to gavel.

While we were waiting to get in, we stood behind a red line in a hallway crowded with Simpson and Brown family members, a few spectators, and jurors from trials in adjacent courtrooms.

Denise Brown, Nicole’s sister, was talking to Simpson’s son Jason.

Brown had testified Friday and Monday that Jason’s father was an abusive brute. Previously, she had told several interviewers that she believed Simpson killed her sister. So it came as a real shock to see Denise and Jason chatting and laughing together.

As we walked into the courtroom, defense attorneys Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and Robert L. Shapiro stood by the doorway, greeting the press as if they were in the receiving line at a wedding reception.

The courtroom itself is a poor site for a historic event, a spare, wood-paneled, government-issue place with a cheap linoleum floor. Harsh fluorescent lights in the ceiling illuminate the place.

Two photographers work in the back of the room, constantly shooting the action with long lenses. In a corner, the Court TV crew operates the remote camera on the wall, taking care not to show the jury. It’s quiet. Nobody speaks except the judge, the lawyers and the witnesses. Every sniffle, every small cough is audible.

Much of the time, Judge Ito leaned his chin on an upraised hand while he listened. Sometimes he didn’t move his hand when he spoke, making it hard to hear him.

Ito has already revealed himself as an expert on popular culture, a devoted watcher of television and reader of newspapers, books and magazines. Tuesday, he showed he also knows a lot about gadgets.

When the late Ron Goldman’s beeper was introduced as evidence, Ito glanced at it from several feet away and identified it as a Motorola Bravo model. When Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark needed help in opening a sealed cardboard box containing evidence, Ito reached under his robe and pulled out a large key ring with a Swiss Army knife.

As I looked around, I was also watching the lawyers. The media portray them in a state of constant combat, with winners and losers every week. But watching their body language in my brief stay, I saw a brotherhood and sisterhood of attorneys at work. Defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey put his arm on Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Darden’s arm after an exchange. Clark flashed defense attorney Cochran a big smile as she showed him a document.

Of course, Cochran and Clark got into a scrap just before court adjourned in the afternoon. Cochran objected to Clark wearing a small angel pin as a sign of solidarity with the Brown family. By then I was watching the trial on television and wrote the exchange off to end-of-the-day nerves and to Judge Ito’s tendency to let the lawyers ramble on and on when the jury is out of the room.

Maybe if I had been in the courtroom, I would have taken it more seriously.

*

What I saw in the courtroom in the morning reflected a new phase of this high-pressure trial.

For the past few days, the emotion in the courtroom has been as powerful as the facts. It’s the images that have stuck: Denise Brown crying on the witness stand, the photographs of the battered Nicole. The science has been social science, the concept of the battered wife syndrome.

Now the case moves into detective work and the crime lab, physical science, requiring more reason than emotion.

Tuesday, the subject was the timing of the deaths. Clark quizzed employees of Mezzaluna about when Goldman left work at the restaurant where Nicole Simpson and her family ate dinner the night she and Goldman were murdered. We heard details about when employees punched in and out and heard about the time clock and other timing devices at the restaurant. Among the evidence were time cards and restaurant bills.

Prosecutor Clark’s goal was to show that Goldman left Mezzaluna early enough to provide Simpson time to kill him and Nicole. Defense attorney Shapiro will try to show he left later, to prove his contention that Simpson was on his way to Los Angeles International Airport when Nicole Simpson and Goldman were killed.

As the trial moves on, the spotlight will move to other physical evidence, including the complicated and fascinating DNA. Most of these steps will be small. There will be many slow days as lawyers, judges and jurors try to unravel the clues.

This will not always be good television. But over the long haul, it will be great drama.