Worldwide Reaction Is Mixed : Verdict: Trial watchers cite race, celebrity or wealth as factors; others are gleeful. Some say legal system was on trial too.

It was hardball in a Los Angeles courtroom, and for months, people all over the global village savored every play. On Tuesday, the world absorbed the dramatic final inning with a gasp, a shrug and “I told you so’s” in uncounted millions.

“He did not do it. I think he went home and found it and ran away. I am pleased and delighted,” said Martha Simpson, 63, a community care worker here.

“He’s guilty as sin. I’m appalled. That’s all I have to say. I’m screaming at the telly, and I’m sick that we live in a world where money is all that matters,” said Rowena Goldman, a London television producer.

“I suspect he was found not guilty because he is such a well-loved celebrity,” said Pamela Brown, 40, a senior civil servant.

“Will we ever know who did it?” wondered Mary Brown, 26. “The jury obviously just didn’t trust the police--but didn’t he look surprised!”

“It went on so long I got bored. It wasn’t a trial. It was a soap opera,” said J.R. Simpson, 67.

In England, Sky television broadcast almost 600 hours of trial coverage since January. In a pre-verdict call-in poll, its viewers declared Simpson “guilty” by a 2-1 margin. The British chorus found instant echo across airwaves and living rooms worldwide Tuesday, and in many corners dismay and consternation prevailed among those interviewed.

“Oh my God, that really says something about the legal system in the States. I had hoped to see that guy put behind bars for a long time,” said Caroline Pichot, 30, a Paris language school director.

“It’s not true. It’s not possible,” Salah Ferhat, 31, a Moroccan-born security guard in Paris, said on hearing the jury’s decision.

“Obscene,” declared Italian senator and film director Franco Zeffirelli. “My American friends can no longer criticize Italian justice, which in their view is characterized by long trials, a magistracy which becomes a spectacle and unpunished culprits.”

In El Salvador, Rosa Lopez, who had provided key testimony on Simpson’s behalf, ignored the verdict, spending the morning at her farm outside the town of Sensuntepeque. “God knows why He saved him,” she told reporters later, talking through a window beside her front door. “It was for the jury to decide, not me.”

State-run television in Kenya interrupted its broadcasts to carry a rare flash about Simpson. Argentina’s Rio de la Plata television also interrupted a talk show for live coverage. Julian Weich, the talk show host, followed up with a question: “If O.J. Simpson wasn’t the murderer, who was?”

Radio Programas, Peru’s main news radio network, also carried the verdict live. “They found him not guilty, contrary to all speculation,” said an evidently surprised Liliana Escalante, the network’s reporter in Los Angeles. Asked about Simpson’s future, she replied: “Probably after this, he is going to make more money . . . and he’s going to end up being a victim, in a way, of a system that accused him unjustly.”

For many around the world, it seemed that the American judicial system was on trial as much as Simpson.

“The thing about this that compels attention here is the moral decay that seems exemplified by this case,” said Ralph Benmergui, who hosts a daily televised call-in show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s all-news channel, Newsworld.

Bo van Spilbeeck, foreign editor of Belgium’s state-owned, Dutch language television, VTM, observed: “With this case, you watched an important bunch of lawyers who used every trick they know to spring their client. The message seems clear: When you have good lawyers and money, you go free in America.”

Mexicans and Colombians agreed with this view, also seeing the verdict as a chance to turn the tables on Americans who routinely belittle their courts.

“They are always criticizing the Mexican justice system, but it is the same in the United States--a man with money and fame hires the best lawyers and wins, even though he is guilty,” said Miguel Pizano, 27, a student standing outside a Mexico City cantina.

Frank Ramirez, an actor in Bogota who lived in Los Angeles for 15 years, noted: “If the defendant had been a poor black man in Watts or Central L.A. with $10 instead of $10 million, he would have been sentenced to 350 years, just for good measure. But look at the talent money bought. Even [drug lord] Pablo Escobar would have gotten off [by paying lawyers] $10 million.”

Among the mostly male crowd packing the Sports Bar, a watering hole and pool hall on Moscow’s New Arbat Street, cheers and applause erupted when Simpson’s acquittal was announced live on Cable News Network. But Russians present at the bar found the case curious.

Vitaly Yemelyanov, 29, an accountant, didn’t know much about the trial until he saw an “O.J. Simpson Burger” on the bar menu a few months ago and started asking questions. He concluded that Simpson was guilty but agreed with the verdict, saying: “Blacks would simply have left no stone unturned in L.A. That’s why the white community decided to sacrifice the lives of two of their people in order to ensure quiet. It was a farsighted decision.”

Many overseas argued that the Simpson jury had been swayed by racial concerns.

“The decision was influenced by the fact that O.J. is Afro-American,” Marina Avakova, 27, a secretary for Sumitomo, said in Moscow. “The white people were afraid of stirring up black riots. Is this real democracy? I do not think so.”

At Hong Kong’s L.A. Cafe, when the verdict came in past 1 a.m. Wednesday, Vastine Pettis, a saxophonist from South Carolina, jumped up to award the television a “high five.”

American jazz musician Allen Youngblood, 41, found an ominous message in the verdict. “Maybe this will wake America up,” he said in Hong Kong. “I don’t think most Americans realized what the legal system is all about. They do now. After this, if it happened to be you or me on trial, would you have any confidence in the jury system?”

Not so fast, urged British commentator Peter McKay. “We should not write off America. The legal system that made this case last for over a year was not created by evil people who rejoice in the guilty going free. . . . It will survive an O.J. acquittal,” McKay wrote in the Evening Standard. “America is like one of those ultramodern buildings in which the plumbing and other utilities hang shamelessly on the outside. As a result, it is open to our mockery, but it is facile to think it any weaker as a result.”

Francoise Simpson, a Brussels homemaker, says she is interested in current events but had no inkling of the glaring media focus on her American namesake. “I’ve never heard of him,” she said Tuesday. “Should I care?”

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Scott Kraft in Paris, Craig Turner in Toronto, Juanita Darling in Mexico City, Richard Boudreaux in Moscow, William R. Long in Santiago, John Balzar in Nairobi and Maggie Farley in Hong Kong, as well as Times special correspondents Janet Stobart in Rome, Steven Ambrus in Bogota, Christena Colclaugh in Guatemala, Diego Aleman in San Salvador, Patricia Grogg in Havanna and Shasta Darlington in Mexico City.