COURT WATCH : A Day for Acceptance

Who can believe the stunning speed with which the jury in the O. J. Simpson double-murder trial has reached a verdict? After more than eight months of testimony, 133 witnesses and 1,105 pieces of evidence, the jury of 10 women and two men--nine blacks, two whites and one Latino--deliberated less than a day. Even the lawyers were left speechless.

Now the world is watching Los Angeles, waiting for the judgment to be made public. So much for the many legal pundits, and a lot of coffee-shop pundits, who were sure that this jury could never agree.

That the jury would deadlock seemed a logical assumption. But from the beginning this wildly dramatic case, with its unexpected turns, should have taught us the danger of assumptions.

Certainly the jury was faced with starkly contrasting arguments in deciding whether Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The prosecution, led by Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark, based the bulk of its case on blood evidence; the defense, led by Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., relied on the assertion that the case against Simpson was biased and had been corrupted by rogue police officers.

Because of the long history of bad blood between the Los Angeles Police Department and the black community--and the tape-recorded racist rantings of one of the investigating detectives, Mark Fuhrman--the case has been infused with racial tension. Clearly, the verdict, no matter what it is, will displease some. But the verdict must be accepted, if not embraced, by all. The jury will have spoken, and that’s how our system works.