Goldman Urges Judge to Lift Gag Order

Forcefully asserting his right to free speech, Fred Goldman has urged a judge to lift a gag order muzzling participants in the civil wrongful-death case against O.J. Simpson.

Goldman, the father of murder victim Ronald Lyle Goldman, appealed to Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki to let him speak his heart on issues relating to the Simpson case, such as victims’ rights and criminal justice reform. He also pleaded, through a brief filed Wednesday by his lawyers, for the freedom to respond in public to unfair or misleading attacks when Simpson goes on trial in the murders of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.

Fujisaki has scheduled a hearing on the gag order for 9 a.m. today. Along with Goldman, news organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union have challenged the broad ban, which forbids lawyers, witnesses and litigants to talk about the case to the media.

Also this morning, Fujisaki will hear arguments about whether the civil trial should be televised.

Goldman has asked Fujisaki to allow television cameras to record every part of the trial that jurors see. He is not requesting the no-holds-barred coverage that characterized Simpson’s criminal trial, in which television captured not only the sworn testimony but also the evidentiary hearings.

Without cameras in the courtroom, Goldman’s lawyers predicted, news programs will be forced to rely on archives from the criminal trial and interviews with legal pundits to flesh out their Simpson stories. The secondhand analysis and file footage will be inherently less accurate than live coverage, they said. Plus, they warned that jurors could be tainted if they caught glimpses of canned footage from the criminal trial on the news.

“Televising those parts of the trial that the jury sees,” attorney Peter Gelblum said, “is the best way to ensure a fair trial.”

Taking the opposite tack, Simpson’s defense team has argued that the only way to keep the trial fair is to ban not only TV cameras, but also news photographers and audio recordings. “The place where this case should be tried is in the courtroom, not on the 5 p.m. news,” Simpson lawyer Robert C. Baker wrote in a brief filed last week.

That argument drew a scathing response from Goldman’s attorney, who called it a “tactical ploy.” He pointed out that Simpson was acquitted in the widely televised criminal trial. And he noted that Simpson, his friends and his lawyers have granted interviews, written books and given lectures to tell their stories to a national audience.

“Apparently, Mr. Simpson wants the public to see and hear everything but the actual testimony,” Gelblum wrote. “That is obviously not the way to assure either a fair trial or an informed public.”

He used a similar argument in explaining Goldman’s objection to the gag order. Because Simpson’s book and video--in which he comments on the evidence and asserts his innocence--are still on the market, “the defendant will effectively be continuing to speak with each new sale,” Gelblum said. Goldman, on the other hand, has no products in circulation to tell his side. “This is obviously an unfair imbalance,” Gelblum said.

The ACLU entered the fray as well Thursday with a vigorous opposition to the gag order. Paul Hoffman, a volunteer attorney for the organization, acknowledged in his brief that “some in our community no doubt breathed a sigh of relief at the court’s action.” Yet he argued that the gag order was unconstitutional and unjustified.

Given the heavy publicity during and after the criminal trial, Hoffman asked: “What information could trial participants impart to the public at this point that could have any significant effect on potential jurors?”