THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : For Some, 15 Minutes of Fame Is Agony

Andrea Mazzola probably would not have been called to the witness stand in the usual murder trial.

She’s a rookie criminologist, a Los Angeles Police Department crime lab employee for just over a year. In a normal case, even the most relentless defense attorneys don’t dig that deep for errors. It’s the boss, not the assistant, who gets grilled.

But because this is the O.J. Simpson trial, defense attorney Peter Neufeld has subjected Mazzola to a painfully brutal cross-examination, trying to turn up a mistake that would help prove Simpson not guilty of the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Watching the grilling, I was reminded of all the obscure people who have faced high-pressure media scrutiny in the Simpson trial. I’m not referring to the Kato Kaelins or Faye Resnicks, already counting the book sales or TV deals their brief fame might bring. Much more interesting are the people who, except for the unique circumstances of this case, would never have made it to the evening news or a prominent place in the newspaper.

Mazzola, of course, let herself in for this punishment when she went to work for the Police Department. Still, I know this could happen to anyone, anytime. I can’t count the times I’ve interviewed men and women unwillingly thrust into the spotlight through no fault, or wish, of their own.

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The thought of such an experience terrifies most people. It certainly was a nervous time for the reserved 34-year-old who studied forensic science in the comparative calm of the Cal State Sacramento campus and ended up in the merciless limelight of the Simpson trial.

Mazzola looked vulnerable, a serious woman who furrowed her brow as she awaited Neufeld’s nonstop questions. He is a brisk, unfriendly looking man who speaks quickly in a New York street accent that sounds exotic in a land where the speech patterns of its Midwestern settlers still are common.

“Just try to slow down a little with your pace for the court reporters,” Judge Lance A. Ito told Neufeld. “Because it’s both your pace and the Brooklyn accent that they are having difficulty with.”

Neufeld’s pace slowed but not his tone. He referred to Mazzola as “ma’am,” spitting out the word as if it were an insult, not a term of politeness. He tried to portray her as part of a frame-up, a cover-up artist, an evidence planter. This portrait of Mazzola as a master conspirator, of course, runs counter to Neufeld’s other theory, that she is so incompetent she can’t perform the simplest forensic task.

Mazzola remained calm, her head held high, her jaw thrust forward in quiet defiance. She even had the professional satisfaction of seeing Neufeld touch with his bare fingers the pair of glasses Nicole Simpson’s mother had left at Mezzaluna. He would have excoriated Mazzola for this offense. She, in contrast, wore rubber gloves when she handled the glasses.

For journalists and analysts, examining the performance of someone unused to public scrutiny is a difficult challenge, especially if the judgments are based on television. For the TV camera may give an inaccurate or incomplete picture of someone who hasn’t learned to perform.

I discussed this with a veteran television anchor and reporter, Warren Olney, who now conducts the “Which Way L.A” program on KCRW-FM.

“When you cover some event where people find themselves suddenly and by surprise required to perform on television, you get this very odd mixture of artificial effort to do what they think is right, and at the same time behave in the way they normally would,” he said. “There is sort of a dissonance. They are pulled in two directions at the same time.”

You can’t say the camera never lies, Olney said. “Everyone in television knows that the picture that goes out on the tube is really a distorted image of what the situation was. You use different angles. In the courtroom, you don’t see the rest of the room, you don’t see the jury. You don’t see the lawyers sometimes. You are looking through this little slot. It is like peeping through a peephole and you don’t really have an idea of the whole context.”

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Mazzola survived, at least through Wednesday. In fact, she deserves an award for endurance.

But other novice celebrities may not do as well. They may look nervous. Their eyes may shift and their voices quaver. Just remember, nerves may mean nothing more than nerves. As Olney said, “It’s presumptuous to think that when people are under this kind of stress that you can determine much about them except that they are under stress.”