THE SIMPSON VERDICTS : King Jurors Predict Rough Ride for Panel

If anyone knows what life will now be like for jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial, it is the former jurors in the first Rodney G. King beating trial in Simi Valley.

And several of the Ventura County residents who served on the King jury said Tuesday that jurors in the media-saturated “trial of the century” are in for one rough ride.

They will be second-guessed, made fun of and cursed. Tabloid reporters will hound them for months, even years. Their lives will never be the same.

King juror Charles A. Sheehan of Camarillo said he watched the verdicts on TV as they were being read. He said he would not second-guess the Simpson jury’s decision.

In the three years since voting to acquit the four LAPD officers of most of the charges resulting from the King beating, he has never had second thoughts, Sheehan said.

“I think we were the last true jury,” Sheehan said. “We had no threats, no one was hanging anything over our head. That all happened after our verdict. We went based on the facts that were presented to us.”

Then Los Angeles exploded into flames.

“I guess we were stupid enough not to foresee it,” he said. “And we got the blame for that [the riots]. One guy from South-Central called us all night long and gave us a body count.”

A retired Navy fighter pilot, Sheehan said his advice to Simpson jurors is “watch out for your back.”

He also told them to be prepared for heavy criticism.

“I just wonder if they’re going to get all the nasty phone calls I did,” he said. “Especially from the black community. We were bombarded with calls from the black community.”

Sheehan said he still occasionally receives threats. He declined to speculate on whether the Simpson jurors’ verdicts were racially motivated.

“They made a decision and we have to stay with it,” he said. “Isn’t that the way the jury system should be? That wasn’t the way they treated us, though.”

Retta E. Kossow of Ojai, another King juror, returned Tuesday afternoon from a monthlong cruise to Alaska and said she was surprised to learn that Simpson jurors deliberated less than four hours before reaching a verdict.

“No. You’re kidding,” she said. “Well, they didn’t deliberate at all, did they? That would be impossible. They had to have their minds made up beforehand, didn’t they?”

She said it would take more than four hours just to read through the voluminous jury instructions involved in a complex case.

Kossow also said she has never doubted her decision in the King case.

“I have no regrets. I had no trouble sleeping because my conscience was clear,” she said. “And if this jury did the same thing, then God bless them. Because you are supposed to deal only with what you hear in the trial.”

Donna A. Seebirt of Ojai, an alternate juror in the King trial, said she was surprised to hear Simpson was found innocent.

“When the verdict was read today, my heart dropped,” Seebirt said. “The same feeling came over me as the day that [the King] verdict came, and I was an alternate.”

But she said she could not comment on what the jury’s decision must have been like, other than to say that being a juror is not easy.

Another alternate juror, who did not want his name used because he does not want more people to know he served on the King jury, said that performing one’s civic duty by serving on a jury has become too perilous.

“To this day, whenever I get called to a jury, I say no,” he said. “I would never do it again.”

The Simi Valley resident said the Simpson jurors will encounter a media frenzy fiercer than anything they could have imagined.

“I’m kind of happy for them because it’s over, but I’m worried, because I’ll tell you their life is not going to be their own,” he said.

“They are going to be bombarded, they are going to be belittled, beleaguered. It doesn’t matter what decision they would have made, they still would have been criticized. But they shouldn’t be. They were only doing their civic duty. People should accept what they did.”

He said he was shocked to hear that jurors had reached a verdict so quickly, considering all they had heard.

“I was surprised,” he said. “When they give you directions--and the words beyond a reasonable doubt come to mind--you usually take your time to think about it more. I couldn’t believe it when I heard they only took a few hours.”

But he too said he would not second-guess the jurors for their decision. After all, he said, half the world will be angry at them for doing what they thought was just.

“I still feel bad when I see these verdicts--Menendez, Simpson--where these jurors will have no private life,” he said. “They will be criticized. They will be photographed. My phone never stopped ringing for two weeks.

“I feel sorry for those people, I really do. I had reporters showing up at my door, asking me, ‘What do you think now that Los Angeles is burning?’ It’s very stressful.”

Catherine Saillant is a Times correspondent and Miguel Bustillo is a Times staff writer.