THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Supervisors Seek Ways to Recoup Trials’ Cost

Faced with a severe budget crunch, along with the costly but fascinating O.J. Simpson trial, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors launched a mission Tuesday to ensure that future high-profile court cases pay for themselves.

The board began casting about for ways to shelter taxpayers from assuming some of the costs of such trials. Two suggestions were selling the rights to live video feeds or garnishing a share of the profits from the sale of tapes.

The supervisors gave County Counsel DeWitt Clinton, usually occupied with the more mundane intricacies of the county government, the task of investigating the legality of various marketing strategies.

“If we could sell the rights of a live video feed to a company who could sell it to others . . . we could recover some of the costs,” Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich had started the discussion by asking Clinton to look into whether the county could legally cash in on the profits from a private group’s planned sale of videotapes of the opening statements in the Simpson trial.

“They are using county employees, the (deputy) district attorneys, to make a profit,” he said.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky agreed that some moneymaking scheme is called for, but urged caution.

“People would think that we were indicting famous people just so we could make money,” he said.

Clinton said he would research the issues, but he told the supervisors: “There’s tension between the tradition of public court proceeding being open to the public . . . and the right to charge for it.”

Last week, citing the spiraling costs associated with the Simpson trial, the board voted to ask the state to help pay for that case and for other high-profile cases.

So far, the Simpson case has cost the county nearly $1.8 million. Sheriff Sherman Block has advised the board that his department will probably spend nearly $1.6 million more over the next five months for Simpson trial security.

The escalating costs of the case come as the cash-strapped county is poised to undergo possibly severe service cutbacks and layoffs to close a huge budget deficit.