Committee Hearing a Trial by Fire for the Jury System : Justice: State Senate panel listens to arguments over altering rules on unanimous verdicts and on the impact of TV cameras in the courtroom.

With the justice system’s image gravely wounded by several high-profile court spectacles, a state panel held a daylong hearing Thursday in Los Angeles to recommend ways of restoring faith--and credibility--in California’s beleaguered jury system.

Addressing everything from the selection of jurors to their badgering by the media, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from judges, attorneys, law professors and the public on the strengths and weaknesses of the jury system. And the weaknesses, at least in terms of debate, dominated the five-hour hearing.

“The right to a jury trial is fundamental to American democracy. When free people serve on juries it reassures us that government will never overstep its bounds,” state Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) said in opening the meeting at Los Angeles City Hall.

“But while we cherish the jury system as an institution, there is growing despair about its ability to deliver rational and just decisions,” the committee chairman said. “Verdicts in several recent high-profile trials have puzzled and in some cases outraged Californians. As a result, the question for many is not whether the jury system needs to be fixed, but how.”

Meeting across the street from the courthouse where the O.J. Simpson double murder trial has turned the criminal justice debate on its head, panelists argued--sometimes sharply--over the impact of television in the courtroom, the requirement of unanimous verdicts in criminal trials and other topics, including better treatment of jurors, who are paid $5 a day in California.

The most spirited exchanges occurred late in the day when several attorneys representing news organizations emphasized the importance of broadcasting trials, while defense attorneys Leslie Abramson and Barry Levin, who are defending Lyle and Erik Menendez in the trial over the slaying of their parents, argued that such news coverage perverts the criminal justice system.

Kelli Sager, representing the Radio and Television News Assn. of Southern California, argued not only that jury reforms should not be based on extraordinary cases such as the Simpson trial but that studies suggest the spotlight of public attention improves the work of juries.

“Juries should know the public is interested in what they do,” Sager said.

But Abramson in particular attacked the media. She not only said they are cynical in their coverage of trials but accused them of hypocrisy in arguing that the public has a right to live coverage of high-profile criminal cases.

“God knows it’s a good thing there is a press to pay attention to what government does,” said Abramson, who is a paid consultant to ABC News on the Simpson trial. “But when you talk about cameras in the courtroom, we are not talking about the public’s right to know. We are talking about the right to titillate, we are talking about the right to exaggerate, we are talking about the right to make money.”

Moments earlier, Abramson got so impassioned in her criticism of the media that she said she often felt under attack as a defense attorney in the Menendez trial. “I feel like I’m representing Dreyfus,” she said, referring to the young Jewish Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was framed by the French army a century ago for allegedly passing secrets to the Germans.

But Abramson’s reference to Dreyfus, whose life sentence was commuted because of public outcry, drew an outraged response from at least one member of the public watching the hearing on cable television. Her comparison, said Nikola Mikulicich Jr. of Torrance, was “disgusting.”

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During other discussions, trial attorneys and academics clashed over possible reforms to the jury system, including legislative proposals to no longer require unanimous verdicts in state trials. One proposal, authored by Calderon, would allow 11-1 verdicts in all but capital cases, while another would allow 10-2 decisions in all trials.

So long as courts required juries to air and weigh all the issues before reaching verdicts, less than unanimous decisions would not necessarily constitute a rush to judgment, said Franklin D. Strier, a law professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Indeed, he and others argued, some strict guidelines for jurors could allow reasoned decisions without majorities of juries being held “hostage” to holdouts.

But other panelists voiced alarm at tampering with the requirement for unanimous verdicts, especially in California, which has the nation’s biggest population and the greatest ethnic diversity.

“If we can marginalize people by allowing a 10-2 verdict, it’s very likely the people at the short end are not going to just be a minority in the plurality sense, but are going to be those cultural and racial minorities. And then there will be no more faith in the system,” said Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael Judge.

His alarm at tampering with a key element of the jury system was echoed by other speakers. So, while a majority of those who addressed the hearing acknowledged concerns about various aspects of the system, most were hesitant to recommend any sweeping overhaul that could upset the delicate balance between efficiency and fairness, especially in criminal trials.

“The jury system . . . in most cases works and works well,” said Stanford University law professor Barbara Babcock, who raised concern about “willy-nilly” tampering in the name of judicial reforms.

That hesitancy to make sweeping changes was endorsed by Calderon, who said he envisions the state fine-tuning, rather than overhauling, the way juries are selected, monitored and treated.

“If we do nothing else today,” he said, “I hope to be able to . . . raise the importance and the status of jury duty in the minds of Californians so they don’t do what most do. And that is take the jury summons and throw it in the wastepaper basket.”