THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : It’s No More Mr. Nice Guy on the Bench as Ito Acts to Rein In Trial

The New Ito took over the bench Tuesday, his face grim, his words curt, a far cry from the warm and sensitive New Age guy who’d been panned by the pundits for allowing the attorneys in the O.J. Simpson murder trial to get out of hand.

It was an impressive remake. Judge Lance A. Ito even threw two spectators out of his courtroom for talking, one of them Judith Katz, the wife of retired Superior Court Judge Burton Katz. She was covering for her husband, who writes commentaries on the trial for the Malibu Times.

Judith Katz said that she’d briefly--and softly--told the man next to her they could get a better view from a nearby courtroom TV monitor than from their back row seats. Reporters sitting a couple of rows away couldn’t hear her, but she apparently attracted Ito’s attention when she pointed to the monitor.

“Sounds like an overreaction to me,” commented Malibu Times editor Chris Ford. Of course, with my conspiratorial mind, I thought it might well have been Ito’s revenge for Judge Katz’s mildly critical commentaries.

Ito was tough on the lawyers, too, quickly silencing attorneys who have lengthened trial days with interminable arguments and droning on over nothing.

“No, sit down, Mr. Goldberg,” he snapped at Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg.

“This is interesting but not tremendously relevant to this witness,” said Ito as he shut up defense attorney Peter Neufeld.

In another speedup move, Ito shortened the 1 1/2-hour lunches, declaring in a written order: “Commencing 1 May 1995, the lunch recess will begin at noon and conclude at 1 p.m.”

*

The New Ito shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

He worries about what others think of him. Like former New York Mayor Ed Koch, he habitually asks visitors how he’s doing. And unlike Koch, he worries about the answer.

Ito also watches news reports on the trial with the attention of an actor reading opening night reviews. And his reviews, to put it kindly, have been mixed.

His softhearted handling of lawyers and jurors has been widely criticized, especially by the lawyers moonlighting as television commentators. Their demands for swift, no-frills justice have been heard during the last few months from early in the morning on the “Today Show” and “CNN & Company” through “Nightline” late at night.

As a child of the television generation and a man who flips on a TV upon getting up in the morning, Judge Ito must have been furious at the sight and sound of the hostile talking heads.

Ito took a beating in print, too, most recently in The Times that arrives at his house every morning. Imagine his feelings when he read in the Sunday paper April 16 that someone had been keeping score on the pace of the trial. Times reporters Tim Rutten and Henry Weinstein calculated that he had allowed 436 whispered conferences between him and the lawyers at the side of the bench--the infamous Simpson trial sidebars. They also calculated that about 41% of all available court time had been taken by proceedings at which the jury was not present.

Ito is “not moving it along as quickly as most judges would,” San Francisco’s chief deputy public defender, Peter Keane, told Rutten and Weinstein.

Finally, last Friday, the jurors walked over Ito, 13 of them refusing to come to work when he dumped three sheriff’s deputies from the jury guard detail. Although the jurors aren’t supposed to watch or read the Simpson news, they somehow picked up the message from their courtroom: The judge is a pushover.

*

Tuesday, under the judge’s strict command, the atmosphere in the courtroom changed. It was quieter, especially after the two spectators were thrown out. The lawyers obeyed the judge. The trial worked.

But as I watched the improved proceedings, I thought of other remakes.

The New Nixon was the most famous. Unlike Ito, the Old Nixon was one mean customer. The New Nixon was a kinder, gentler person, a redo that helped elect him President. But, as Watergate showed, it didn’t last.

A current example is President Clinton. He is somewhat like Ito, one of those ‘70s men who like to be liked. He’s trying to appear tougher, more F.D.R., more Truman. But, like Nixon, he habitually relapses into his former self.

Great work Tuesday, judge. Just don’t relapse.