Press, as Public’s Eye, Tours Grisly Images of Murder : Trial: Solemn and hushed, 48 journalists view death photos of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Like mourners at a wake, we glide silently into two empty rows of the courtroom’s spectator section, our eyes drawn immediately to the eight large charts set up on easels several feet in front of us.

There, on bright azure backgrounds below titles such as “Sharp Force Injuries to Left Flank, Left Thigh and Right Chest of Mr. Goldman,” is the forensic record of the slayings of Ronald Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.

The display seeks to document, in full color and clinical detail, the ferocity and extent of the attack. Many are close-ups of ghastly wounds, some gaping open. Others are full body shots of the victims in the contortions of death. Even from a distance, they are ugly, powerfully violent images.

On Monday, reporters chosen to be the public’s eye in this private viewing look at the disturbing photos that have so dominated recent court proceedings and legal arguments in the double-murder trial of O.J. Simpson.

These are the pictures Simpson’s lawyers unsuccessfully fought to keep from the jury, contending that their visceral impact would outweigh reason. They are the pictures that last week forced an early adjournment of court when one juror became too distressed to continue.

Originally, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito--seeking to maintain “some final shred of dignity” for the victims--said no one but the attorneys and jurors would be allowed to see the pictures, taken by coroner’s officials at the murder scene and later at the morgue.

The judge relented when news organizations challenged the constitutionality of his ruling. No one was seeking to publish or broadcast the photos (the media lawyers said their clients just needed to see what the jury had seen in order to understand the prosecution’s case) but many of us still have mixed feelings as we enter Courtroom 105 on Monday morning.

There are 48 of us in all. To maintain order, we are divided into two groups. I am in the first party. We enter the courtroom and are given brief instructions: Don’t touch the photos, don’t move the furniture to get a better view.

When a court official gives the word, we stand up and get on with the task at hand. With notebooks flipped open and pens flying, we move in groups and singly from one chart to another, recording our impressions. Off to the side, Judge Ito (in shirt-sleeves, no robe) sits in the jury box with two prosecutors and a law clerk. They watch us work, silently, impassively.

There are 58 photographs, displayed like a museum exhibit across the courtroom, just down the hall from Ito’s, where O.J. Simpson is being tried for murder.

A few of the photographs are bloody images from the crime scene--Nicole Simpson sprawled in a pool of her own blood, her blonde hair draped across her face like a veil; Ronald Goldman crumpled against a fence, limbs in positions impossible in life.

One chart is devoted to the cramped space from which Goldman’s body was removed--a crucial point for prosecutors who want to show that Goldman was trapped and defenseless, and that one person, moving swiftly and brutally, could have quickly dispatched both victims.

Most of the pictures, however, are full-color, clinically graphic close-ups of the victims’ injuries: a full-face shot of the horrible gaping slash to Nicole Simpson’s throat; Ron Goldman’s scalp, shaved and punctured with stab wounds.

I am struck not so much by the appearance of the bodies--which in most of the photographs have been washed, the wounds cleaned--but by the sheer number of severe injuries inflicted.

As we take in the scene, the normally irreverent press corps is solemn. No one talks above a whisper--even though the judge, a strict monitor when court is in session--has not forbidden it.

Despite the funereal atmosphere, we are reporters and our time here is limited. Several of us, noticing that the face of Nicole Simpson’s wristwatch can be seen clearly in one shot, crowd quickly around that chart, craning to note the time.

Except for a grimace here and there, there is no emotion displayed.

After a few moments, some reporters go back to the spectator section to sit thoughtfully. Dominick Dunne, who writes for Vanity Fair and whose daughter was a murder victim, sits alone in a row, staring at the scene.

Others linger over the photographs, particularly those that show the still handsome, youthful faces of the victims.

Twenty-eight minutes after we entered the courtroom, a bailiff breaks the silence by calling out, “Time.”

As we file into the hallway, our eyes search the faces of colleagues for reaction. There is little, except from a CNN reporter, who moves from one journalist to another asking, “Are you all right? Are you all right?”