Perspectives on the Simpson Verdicts : Is There Any Hope Left for Justice With Jury Trials? : This panel did not even uphold its basic oath to keep an open mind until the entire case had been presented.

I’ve covered nearly every high-profile trial in this nation, including the speedy acquittals and speedy convictions of many famous defendants, but never have I seen anything like what the O.J. Simpson jury did Tuesday.

It’s not what the Simpson jury said; it was how the jury said it.

“Not guilty, not guilty” were their verdicts and it was their right to bring them. But did they have the right to ignore the time-worn judicial admonition: In fairness to both sides, do not deliberate, do not make up your minds, do not discuss the evidence until you get the case. This is the foundation of the U.S. jury system.

Did they have the right to tell the world, by returning a verdict in less than three hours of deliberation, that despite that daily admonition and their oaths to obey it, their minds were made up so firmly that they did not have to discuss the months of testimony and mountains of evidence before them?

When the murder trials of Charles Manson and his three “family” members ended, a jury that had been sequestered for 10 months convicted the four defendants--to the surprise of no one.

This was case involving such senseless slaughtering of innocent victims--including the beautiful, pregnant actress Sharon Tate--by such repellent defendants, that no one, not even the defense attorneys, could hope for acquittal. The three young women defendants, in fact, confessed to the murders on the witness stand over their attorneys’ protests.

But for more than a week, the Manson jurors deliberated, as they had promised they would, and when the defendants were convicted, you felt that there had been perhaps some attempt by the jurors to consider both sides.

It took more than three hours for Jack Ruby’s jurors to convict him, even though millions saw him on television when he killed President Kennedy’s alleged assassin. His Dallas jurors were sequestered throughout his trial, in cells in the same jailhouse where Ruby was kept, and they were allowed no conjugal visits, so they were anxious to get out. Their verdict was returned the same day, but they deliberated more than three hours over evidence presented during a trial that lasted only a month, not nearly a year as in the Simpson case.

The conviction of Patty Hearst was speedy and so was the acquittal of Angela Davis--both of these highly controversial cases--but there was nothing to compare with the shocking three-hour deliberation of the Simpson jury.

A former trial reporter on the East Coast, who covered the Claus Von Bulow and Jean Harris trials with me, was one of the first to telephone when it was learned that the jurors had spent only three hours in deliberation.

What this reporter wanted to know was: Is this the end of the jury trial as we knew it, when we trusted the jury?

I couldn’t answer.