Should that matter? Whether it should or not, it does. Ever since O. J. Simpson was charged with the double murders last June, race has been a constant backdrop. A handsome, powerful African-American charged with murdering a blond, beautiful woman guaranteed that. Now three weeks into testimony, everything about this case – the defendant, the lawyers, the evidence and the witnesses – is provoking profoundly differing reactions from many whites and blacks.
As one source in the L.A. district attorney’s office put it: “Anyone who ever said race is not an issue in this case is crazy.” This is not a phenomenon confined to Los Angeles. Polls across the nation have repeatedly detected a vast divide on the Simpson case. A Harris poll last week found that 61 percent of whites think Simpson is guilty, while 68 percent of African-Americans say he is innocent. How much that disparity is reflected on the jury isn’t known; virtually no studies have examined whether race plays a role in jury decisions. But minorities in Los Angeles have long been suspicious of the police and the justice system, exploding in the riots after the acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King case.
Blacks on the jury are also inevitably bringing perceptions to the case based on their “life experiences,” says Los Angeles lawyer Edi Faal. It is not true, he and other black attorneys argue, that blacks favor Simpson solely because of his race. The issue is through whose eyes the evidence is seen. “People are literally seeing the same movie from different standpoints,” says attorney Melanie Lomax, former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission.
Both the prosecution and the defense insist that race isn’tfactored into their strategies, though their actions suggest otherwise. The state added Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden, an African-American, to its all-white team after the jury wasseated. For his part, lead defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran told Newsweek last week that, in style anyway, the defense made some adjustments to appeal to the downtown jury. “If [we] were trying this case in Santa Monica, [our] approach would probably be a lot different,” he said. How so? Referring to associate Carl Douglas, who conducted a hostile cross-examination, Cochran said jokingly: “Douglas is like what [white] people see when they walk down the street and they want togo to the other side.” A look at some ofthe evidence and how it’s viewed by blacks and whites:
Completing her often emotional testimony last week, Nicole’s older sister detailed several incidents of O.J. physically and verbally abusing Nicole. He called Nicole a “fat pig” while she was pregnant, Denise testified; earlier she told of O.J. picking up Nicole and slammingher against a wall. In crossexamination, defense lawyer Robert Shapiro approached Denise gingerly, though he did elicit that she had been drinking heavily during two of the most volatile episodes.
Legal commentators – most of them white – concluded that Denise had made a compelling presentation, succeeding in dirtying O.J.’s image and supplying a motive. Some black observers, however, say the jury could have been put off by a beautiful white woman from affluent Orange County. The Los Angeles Sentinel, one of the largest and most respected black newspapers in the West, referred to her in a news story as a “drunk.” And some blacks see something more nefarious. “Some African-Americans would look at Denise as a white woman who has received a lot of benefits from an African-American man and yet has now turned on him,” says Leo Terrell, a black attorney.
Last week lead prosecutor Marcia Clark began laying out her “trail of blood” theory, which tries to lead from the crime scene to O.J.’s house. Robert Riske, the first police officer to arrive at the scene, described finding Nicole crumpled in a pool of blood, with bloody footprints and drops leading away from her condo.
But neither Riske nor any of the prosecution witnesses can do more than build a circumstantial case. By its nature, such evidence isn’t airtight. It doesn’t have to be: the legal standard is only proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Will doubt come easier to black jurors? “African-Americans in Los Angeles are much more suspicious of police as witnesses,” says Terri Waller, managing partner of National Jury Project West. If that’s true in Simpson’s case, O.J. has a built-in, though still rebuttable, advantage.
Race will enter the courtroom under oath next week when the defense gets to cross-examine LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman. The defense has long suggested that Fuhrman planted the bloody glove that was found at Simpson’s estate, matching one at the crime scene. The defense will question him about alleged past racist remarks, hoping to destroy his – and the whole department’s – credibility in the process.
An African-American, Shipp testified two weeks ago that Simpson had confided a day after the murders that he had had dreams about killing Nicole. It was powerful testimony, white commentators said, made more so by a strident, inept cross-examination by defense lawyer Douglas. The New York Times cited the cross in leveling a stinging assessment of the high-priced defense team.
Switch now to the Sentinel, which also dismissed Shipp as a “drunk.” On black talk radio and in conversations, Shipp’s claim that he was a close friend of O.J.’s was also viewed skeptically. Particularly irksome to some was Shipp’s description of his relationship with Simpson as servant-to-celebrity. “African-Americans would never describe a close friendship as a “master-servant’ relationship,” said lawyer Terrell.
When it comes to race, the law is not a naif. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors may not exclude blacks from juries purely on the basis of race. And one of the few ways that jurors can threaten a verdict is by charging that their colleagues were animated by racial prejudice. But those legalistic safeguards can’t reach into a juror’s conscience. In the end, the best that can be hoped for is that the Simpson panel willbe better than wing-chair commentators: they’ll judge this case on the quality of the evidence – and not with eyes blinded by the color of O.J.’s skin.
