A Long, Slow Trip in the Process of Justice

O.J. Simpson is liable in the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

So said the jury.

O.J. Simpson is not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

So said another jury.

Nicole Brown is still dead.

So is Ron Goldman.

No jury can change that sad fact.

And Simpson is still a free man. He now drives a Chevy Suburban, not the Ford Bronco of his infamous slow-speed chase. This was learned Wednesday night, as television helicopters hovered overhead to record live Simpson’s slow progress from Rockingham Drive to the Santa Monica courthouse. History, and all that.

The footage conveyed a sense of familiarity and symmetry, a closing of the circle. So, in a way, did the outcome.

Justice! someone shouted as the Goldmans left the courthouse with their attorney.

Justice! kids had screamed in the San Francisco projects as the acquittal was announced more than a year ago.

Among those dilapidated buildings, Simpson had grown up, a youth with an instinct for the open field. He became famous for his football, and his celebrity did not diminish after his playing days were done. People still lined up to take his picture on the sidelines, where he worked as a commentator. In certain of those pictures, snapped on a rainy day in Buffalo, he happened to be wearing a pair of Bruno Magli shoes. . . .

At that moment of Simpson’s acquittal, many people across America felt that, for once, at last, something in a United States courtroom had gone their way. Yes, it had taken an exceptional superstar and high-priced legal counsel to do it. Still, the deed had been done. And they called it justice.

At this moment, different Americans share the same feeling. It had required a tough lawyer, a different venue and the luck of finding those old photographs. Still, it had been done. “We finally have justice for Ron and Nicole,” Fred Goldman said last night.

Respectfully, he is wrong.

As wrong as the kids were in the projects after the criminal trial.

Justice is a process, the legal scholars say. Not a single result.

Each side has now felt both edges of that aphorism.

Sides.

This was a case that quickly divided the country into two sides, two camps, two teams. It’s typical of how America conducts its business. Democrats vs. Republicans. Capitalists vs. Commies. Dodgers vs. Yankees. Whites vs. Blacks. Ford vs. Chevy. O.J. Innocent vs. O.J. Guilty.

Last night, one side watched the shadowy figures inside the “audio room” and rooted for “Y” placards to be flashed to the cameras. This was to signify a verdict against Simpson. The other rooted for Ns. It was the Ys’ night.

Will the verdict change any minds?

Did it change yours?

Didn’t think so.

At least it can be hoped that the Ys, having tasted their “justice,” will cease their campaigns to overhaul--or undermine--a court system that has served the nation fairly well now for 220 years. Unfortunately, now will come the Ns, grumbling sullenly about business as usual: Wasn’t the last juror kicked off the case a black woman? What else could be expected from an almost all-white jury convened on the west side of Los Angeles County?

Justice is a process.

Not a result.

O.J. Simpson was fined $8.5 million, with more damages to be considered in proceedings later this week.

Marcia Clark, the prosecutor, was paid $4 million for a book about the criminal trial.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the defense lawyer, made $4 million for his book.

Again, there is a certain symmetry in those numbers.

Whether there is justice is another question.

Maybe all this means is that Simpson now must gird himself to write two books.

For all the talk of justice, it never was the paramount concern in this case. Entertainment--fed by mystery and celebrity--was what it was about, at least for those without blood on their hands or bodies to bury.

Wasn’t it fun?

The verdicts came last night just as President Clinton was winding down his State of the Union address, a speech that took considerable winding down. Afterward, the White House spokesman said the president had been “very gratified” that the networks had not cut from the speech to the verdicts.

“It could have been otherwise,” the spokesman said.

Oh yes.

The anthropologists who dig through the ancient earthquake rubble and unearth the archives of this American chapter will not linger long on the legal prattle about guilt or innocence, or justice. The circus is what will hold their interest. How could a great people be held spellbound for so long by such a tawdry ensemble of jocks, rogue cops, talking heads, gadflies, paparazzi, showboat lawyers, trivia merchants and grandstanders?

Maybe we were just bored.

In any case, the show has reached the point where the encores seem strained, tired. It is time for the players to exit the stage. Hours before the verdict, there came an announcement that Faye Resnick, the oft-quoted friend of Nicole Brown, would appear nude in the March issue of Playboy. A 10-photo layout. There was symmetry in this, too, as one of the original jurors in the criminal case had popped up equally nude in the same publication a year ago.

“This is my first taste of freedom,” Resnick said through a publicist, adding that her next book would teach women “to understand that their past has nothing to do with their future. . . .”

All in all, as fitting an end as any to this whole sordid . . . process.