Common Law : Ito Lands a Low-Key Trial, Though the Simpson Case Mystique Lingers--Especially for One Group of Jurors

No cameras. No autograph hounds. No bellowing lawyers.

Judge Lance A. Ito surveyed his courtroom, post-O.J., and found: a deputy district attorney who stumbled over his witness’s name. A public defender who confined his strategy to a single, slim binder. And empty courtroom pews signaling the lack of interest in a “three strikes” robbery case called The People vs. Cordelius Humphries.

It had to be a bit of a letdown.

For nine months, Ito had presided over a trial bristling with tension, wit, celebrity, wealth and drama. Now, he was listening to a mild-mannered prosecutor talk about a man who allegedly had stolen a handful of rings.

He seemed to be trying hard to enjoy it.

Casting the routine duties of a Superior Court judge as enjoyable, Ito told two dozen people gathered in his courtroom for jury selection that he was glad to once again be interviewing prospective panelists.

“I’ve been involved with a long trial,” he said, in an understatement that drew appreciative chuckles, “so I haven’t met any new people for a while. It’s nice to meet new and interesting people.”

Whizzing through jury selection in just a few hours, Ito bantered with a bank executive about merger mania, consulted an unemployed woman about her job prospects, and talked with a retirement planner about the younger generation’s profligate ways.

He did not have to worry about whether these jurors were jotting down every word for a trial expose. A tell-all book about a stick-’em-up at a funeral parlor scarcely seemed likely to draw a juicy advance.

Ito usually handles so-called “long cause” cases--trials that threaten to stretch for weeks or months. He presided over the trial of bank swindler Charles H. Keating Jr. in 1992. And he took charge of preliminary hearings for Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg.

But every once in a while, a straightforward, celebrity-free case lands in Ito’s courtroom. He drew the Humphries robbery trial because he was one of the only criminal judges available. The case had to be heard immediately or it would have been dismissed under laws guaranteeing speedy trials.

Before throwing open his courtroom doors to the Humphries proceeding, Ito had spent 11 days organizing the 50,000-page transcript and countless files accumulated during the Simpson case.

Ito did manage to squeeze in a few personal matters, attending a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Police Historical Society and pledging support for National Public Radio on Pasadena station KPCC. He also sifted through nearly 200 requests for speeches and interviews--turning down each one. Other members of his family weren’t so circumspect: His stepson, David York, will appear today on the tabloid TV show “Inside Edition.”

A former colleague described Ito’s last few weeks as an effort to “get used to living in the real world again.”

Ito is still famous: His face graced one of this year’s most popular Halloween masks, and he continues to draw stares when he jogs around Pasadena. Yet when will he ever get another chance to hobnob with awe-struck celebrities in his chambers and address a national television audience of 95 million?

“He’s lost his privacy, but he’s no longer that important,” commented Harland Braun, a frequent legal analyst during the Simpson trial. “He’s like an actor in a play--everyone was applauding, but when it’s over, he basically has to go out the back door to the alley.”

Nonetheless, Ito and his courtroom retain a certain mystique--and still flutter with the last gasps of Simpson mania.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. swung by one morning this week, with his traditional loud tie and easy smile, to pick up a carton of fan mail. Strips of paper warning “no gum chewing” remained plastered to every wooden bench, a reminder of the unruly reporters who had crowded the courtroom just one month before.

And when Ito asked an East Los Angeles woman her first impression of the criminal charges against Humphries during jury selection, she admitted that the legal gobbledygook meant less to her than the familiar face dispensing it: “I was more impressed with you, sir, to be honest,” she said. “I didn’t realize this was your courtroom.”

Sighing with the air of a pro accustomed to adulation, Ito responded: “This is just a regular courtroom, this is just a regular case and we have to take it seriously.”

Even Ito, however, slumped head in hand during dull testimony about the crime scene. There was not a single sidebar to perk him up. There were only two objections, both from the defense lawyer--who did not even bother to stand up to protest a leading question.

Humphries, a thin man with a groomed goatee and an earnest gaze, watched the proceedings tensely from a table that looked pitifully bare without O.J. Simpson’s huddle of a dozen attorneys in double-breasted suits.

The defendant is accused of ramming a screwdriver up against a woman’s throat and robbing her of nearly $4,000 worth of jewelry and cash at Rachal’s Mortuary on South Broadway. A nasty crime, to be sure. But not quite as gripping as the vicious throat-slashing murders on Bundy Drive.

Instead of gory autopsy photos, the prosecution presented a flimsy poster board with five snapshots of the mortuary’s entrance. Instead of computerized images, jurors saw a yellow program from the funeral of Humphries’ grandfather.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Victor Minjares tried to strike a note of drama: “This is a case of robbery, but also a case of . . . betrayal,” he told the jurors. But his rhetoric seemed flat compared to Cochran’s ringing slogan, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

On the other hand, the ultra-low-profile case did have its advantages.

Opening statements by the prosecution and defense took just seven minutes. Jurors, who barely took notes, did not stop the proceedings to request new pens or fresh notebooks.

And with a restraint that seemed almost quaint after the spitfire hyperbole of the Simpson trial, lawyers refrained from comparing anyone in the case to Hitler, Job or Tarzan.

As it turned out, the Humphries case ended in a mistrial Wednesday morning after a witness blurted out prejudicial information that jurors were not supposed to hear.

After Ito dismissed the jurors, they abandoned their sober-faced demeanor and swarmed his bench--asking for autographs.