THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : A Shield Battered but Not Broken

“I was as scared as I’ve ever been in my life,” author Joe Bosco told the E! television network’s Kathleen Sullivan. Then in his Southern way Bosco added a heartfelt, “Yes, ma’am!”

Bosco’s relief was understandable. He had narrowly avoided the threat of being locked up in the inhospitable confines of the Los Angeles County Jail. Judge Lance A. Ito spared both Bosco and KNBC-TV’s Tracie Savage that miserable fate when he ruled that they didn’t have to reveal their sources for a story on the O.J. Simpson murder case.

Ito said the reporters don’t have to take the witness stand because the story in question was wrong. The source of bum information, he said, is immaterial.

Savage had reported that DNA tests indicated that Nicole Brown Simpson’s blood was on the socks found in Simpson’s bedroom. But Savage’s information was wrong; the DNA test had not been conducted. A less sophisticated test had been done. Bosco got involved in the mess when he wrote in Penthouse magazine that Savage’s source had been a police officer.

Their escape from martyrdom also meant the end of a potentially dangerous challenge to the California shield law, which protects reporters from having to name their confidential sources.

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As soon as Judge Ito announced his decision, I left the pressroom and headed down to the ninth floor corridor outside the Simpson courtroom to interview Bosco.

I learned a long time ago that the best way to tell these boring legal stories is through people--preferably characters. And in my 13 months on the Simpson case, Bosco has turned out to be one of the most unusual characters in our press corps, a slow-talking stranger from the richly Gothic Old South, temporarily transplanted to the obsessive trendiness of an ever-changing Southland.

As I mentioned last week, Bosco is a Mississippi-born New Orleans resident with all the courtly airs of his region. He calls women “ma’am,” and engages in the now-scorned custom of opening doors for them.

He got his press seat in the courtroom because he’s writing a book on the Simpson trial. What drew him here was his interest in blood evidence, which is also the subject of his book on a New Orleans murder, “Blood Will Tell.”

When court adjourned Wednesday, the reporters filed out of the courtroom. I waited, notebook and ballpoint pen in hand, until I saw Bosco, who is easy to spot because he walks slowly and wears a neck brace, the result of a recently broken neck suffered when he dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool.

“Let me see what the ruling means first,” Bosco said, fending off questioners. “Let me call my lawyer.”

We walked across the hall to the pay phone. I stood back, wondering whether to eavesdrop or to permit Bosco to talk to his attorney, Michael Sullivan, in private. But the requirements of my job took precedence over common courtesy and I moved close to Bosco so I could hear every word.

Lucky for him that I did. He was short of change for the call. I gave him a handful of quarters and dimes.

He got the lawyer on the phone. “Does this mean what I think it does?” Bosco asked. “Have I won?” The attorney assured him that he had. “Great,” said Bosco. “I’ll just give a very brief statement that I’m happy.”

Anyone who has been around Bosco knows that it’s impossible for him to be brief. That was obvious when he began his phone interview with E! anchor Sullivan.

“Well, Kathleen, I’m just about as happy as I can be,” said Bosco. He talked a bit about the legal issues involved in the case, then the conversation turned to his broken neck. “It’s improving,” he told Sullivan. “I’ve got some pain in the soft tissues, but the doctor says the bones are healing. My stupidity hasn’t cost me much.”

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But don’t count Tuesday’s proceedings as a great victory for the press.

True, Judge Ito spared Bosco and Savage from going to jail.

But he did not give a ringing endorsement to the shield law, or to the concept that reporters have the right to remain silent in order to protect confidential sources of information.

Rather, Ito took a narrow view. Since the story was wrong, he said, the sources were ignorant, and immaterial to the investigation. There was no need for the reporters to disclose them.

Thus under the Ito doctrine, reporters who get it wrong don’t have to reveal sources. But get it right, go to jail.