Gabler on Simpson Trial

Re “How We Know What We Know: Logic Meets Illogic at Simpson Trial,” Opinion, Aug. 6: Neal Gabler complains about the way we come to know things, which he attributes to television, yet admits to forming his belief that O.J. Simpson is guilty through watching TV.

A police conspiracy is easy to believe, in light of the Rodney King beating. The good old boys got together there and created false reports which, to this day, would be accepted as the truth had it not been for the videotape showing what really happened. In the present case, the police immediately went into action to build a case against Simpson. As a result of their zeal and incompetence we may never know the truth.

How can the average black man expect to get a fair trial if a man with wealth and stature, such as Simpson, cannot? Simpson should be allowed to present every viable defense available to him under the law, irrespective of how unrealistic it may seem to Gabler.

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KEITH HERRIED

Los Angeles

* Gabler assumes that the Simpson trial, as a showcase for falsification and bombast, represents a cultural decline in the value of epistemology, brought on by TV’s use of images rather than coherent discourse. As a teacher of evidence law and legal history, I believe that our legal system was never designed to ferret out the truth.

The Anglo-American criminal justice system developed out of medieval trial by combat, whereby the winner of a joust or sword fight was considered vindicated, regardless of any empirical “truth.” God was assumed to be on the side of the victor. The advantage of this system was that it freed the determination of guilt or innocence from the controlling power of the state, in those days the king.

Similarly, our current system of attorney advocacy, in contrast to the inquisitorial judicial system in French and other continental courts, gives the advantage to the party who can marshal the best legal talent. Our system has the distinct advantage of protecting individuals against state power, but carries the disadvantage of making it very difficult to convict defendants who are “guilty” in an objective sense.

Far from Gabler’s assumption that American culture is deteriorating, we have simply made a decision to resolve disputes according to argumentative skill rather than to delegate all truth-finding power to the government.

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PETER L. REICH, Professor

Whittier Law School

* The most important point Gabler makes is that we as intelligent beings have lost the ability to rely on our senses. What authority did the Greeks and Einstein rely on when they were discovering the secrets of the universe for the first time? Was anyone conditioning their minds through the use of legalistic arguments and media spin?

Krishnamurti, a well-known religious philosopher, summed up the deplorable state of education and learning by stating: “It may be a totally wrong approach to take a child for a walk and point out nature to him. It is only words. Rather, quicken the brain by teaching the art of listening and looking. Sensory awareness is lost as knowledge is gathered. Knowledge should come (in the first instance) from sensory awareness.”

SAMUEL J. HASSON

Glendale