When Truth Becomes a Stranger in Courtroom

Mark Fuhrman got what he deserved Wednesday--no more, no less.

The ex-Los Angeles police detective escaped jail for lying during the O.J. Simpson trial, for denying he had ever used a vile racial epithet. He pleaded no contest to perjury, was placed on probation and fined $200.

Untold numbers of people will be furious over that. They’d like to see Fuhrman in prison. They view this admitted liar as the living, breathing embodiment of everything wrong with race relations in the Los Angeles Police Department, and the United States of America.

But people lie in court all the time, or at least shade the truth in the win-at-all-cost atmosphere of our justice system. If every courtroom liar were prosecuted and jailed, we couldn’t build enough prisons to hold them, not even with our obsessive prison builder, Gov. Pete Wilson, in office.

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Let’s not downgrade the magnitude of the Fuhrman lie.

By falsely swearing that he never used the racial epithet--and then being unmasked by the famous tapes--Fuhrman gave the Simpson defense team a priceless gift.

The lie provided some credibility to the defense’s otherwise unsubstantiated claim that Fuhrman planted a bloody glove on Simpson’s estate.

It’s possible, maybe even likely, that the Fuhrman lie convinced some jurors to believe the defense police frame-up theory and vote for acquittal.

What’s controversial is the punishment, the plea bargain, reached in secret, that permitted Fuhrman to return to his Idaho home, free, after paying a piddling fine.

Strict ethicists won’t agree with me on this, but not all lies are of the same magnitude. Fuhrman lied about using a racial epithet, but there was never any evidence he lied when he denied planting the glove.

Remember the context, the American courtroom, with its cutthroat brand of justice, where it is common for the government to use underworld characters and jailhouse informants as key witnesses.

It is an atmosphere that does not foster truth, and the attitude seeps through the entire system, even into jury selection, where average citizens lie or at least shade the truth.

For example, I was skeptical of some things I heard when I watched jury selection in the Simpson civil trial the other day. One prospective juror explained at length how she paid little attention to the case, even though it was a matter of consuming interest to relatives and co-workers, who cheered Simpson’s acquittal.

That brought back memories of jury selection for the Simpson criminal trial, when one person after another swore they knew little of a case that was the biggest event in town, and on television. What lengths some of them went to in order to gain a spot on the jury of the century.

And what about you and me, regular folks, who try to get out of jury duty by lying to the judge about prejudices, workload, health or family matters.

Shouldn’t the perjury cops check out those stories?

Of course not. It would be politically impossible to conduct such an investigation, and besides we don’t have enough cops to do it.

Then there’s another degree of lie, not perjury but certainly reprehensible.

It wasn’t perjury when Simpson’s chief defense attorney, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., promised conclusive witnesses and proof in an opening statement that transfixed the court--and, as we learned later, the jury. We never saw all those promised witnesses, or the proof.

It wasn’t perjury, but it wasn’t the truth, either.

Nor was it perjury when prosecutors put Fuhrman on the witness stand knowing he was a bad apple, knowing of his old disability case in which he admitted racist feelings.

Not only did these prosecutors present Fuhrman as a reputable witness, but they stuck with the detective until disclosure of the famous tapes forced the D.A.’s office to turn on him.

These, remember, were the prosecutors who repeatedly insisted in court that their only job was the pursuit of truth. They were, it turned out, concealing the truth.

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In the catalog of Simpson case liars, Fuhrman is right up there, but he operated in an atmosphere where excess and exaggeration were the standards.

Let him go back home to Idaho with his new criminal record. He’s not the embodiment of all that’s wrong with American race relations, as some would portray him. He wouldn’t win a place in a national gallery of villains.

But he is a reminder of what happens in a courtroom when truth becomes a stranger.