The Real Trial Story Got Away

This inactivity is unbearable.

You see, we in the media are between engagements. Bummer. The You-Know-What case crested Tuesday night. The Ennis Cosby slaying has gone a little flat. JonBenet Ramsey was last month and feels like last century. Richard Jewell was last century. Dennis Rodman is on a back burner. And what’s happening overseas? Bor-r-r-r-r-ring.

So pardon these thumb-twiddling down-time ruminations, which will, of course, be immediately aborted should another toot of a story fall this way and liberate us from this yawning.

Until then, put on those thinking caps.

What do we know now that we didn’t know before the O.J. Simpson/Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman case? Hmmmm.

Short answer: Nothing.

Long answer: Absolutely nothing.

Anchor Paul Moyer launched a crack on KNBC-TV Channel 4 Tuesday night that was so snappily on target that it bears requoting: “There are more pundits now than cars in Southern California.” But with less emission control.

Of course, this population explosion is not limited to a region, for rarely has a mobilization of chatterers been as massive as that attached to the Simpson case. Or a discourse as banal when associated with a high-profile story. What an extraordinary hoot television is--the only place where a newer, milder Geraldo Rivera can be toasted as a senior statesman of journalism, where Faye Resnick can be seen in both sage robes and Playboy lingerie.

And where having a continuous snit can earn you a standing invitation to throw your loopiest tantrum in front of the lens. The snitter of record these days is Los Angeles lawyer Leo Terrell. What is this guy’s problem, anyway? There are others who believe just as strongly as Terrell in Simpson’s innocence yet aren’t inclined to flail wildly and go into orbit each time they’re challenged. You suspect that he growls just to get the gigs--and, TV being TV, it’s working.

The result of all this is a lost opportunity to educate the public about the essence of law and reasoning behind it. Instead, a paraphrase of the late Frank Zappa’s put-down of rock music writers applies here: People who know nothing interviewing people about nothing for the benefit of other people who know nothing.

Take TV’s voluminous dialogue about this double-jeopardy business, for example. One that mistakenly has focused on the process, not on its philosophical bedrock.

Now that a civil jury has kiboshed Simpson after a criminal jury acquitted him, the question being puzzled over by many Americans (even some who believe him a murderer) is not how this is possible--we’ve heard tons about that--but why it is possible. Can’t have two criminal trials in the same murder case but can have a civil trial follow a criminal trial that resulted in an acquittal? In this “split decision” case (as MSNBC’s John Gibson titled it Wednesday), legality and logic appear to be at odds, and none of TV’s vast punditry has clarified this.

No wonder that a portion of the U.S. populace believes that Simpson was railroaded in the civil trial. Not just because there were no African Americans on the jury that reached the verdicts (just as the criminal jury that acquitted him was predominantly black), but because there was a second trial at all.

Yes, yes, the law provides for it, different standards of evidence, guilt vs. liability, prison vs. money and all that. Heard it lots of times from lots of lips.

But why does the law allow it? Are the roots in English law? Roman law? Jewish law? What is the core concept here--the Solomonic wisdom--that would persuade lay skeptics that this is more than a legal affectation that, in this case, has victimized Simpson? By addressing this in depth--and by giving more historical context and showing that the process was not invoked to target Simpson--TV pundits could have helped narrow the nation’s racial divide on this issue.

If someone has conveyed this as part of TV’s hours and hours of verbiage on Simpson, then apologies are in order. It must have come at 2 a.m. on Channel 92.

This week brought another opportunity, however. At the lectern on this post-verdict Wednesday was ABC’s “Good Morning America.” And get out the chisel and granite, for the topic was “Did the Legal System Work?”

“Good Morning America” is one of those homogenous mixes in which a leather-bound edition like its legal analyst Arthur Miller (Harvard professor, yadda yadda) can rub elbows with a bunch of dime paperbacks in yet another chin stroker about the Simpson case, this one warmed by a cozy fire in the background.

Gray-haired and elegant in a three-piece suit, Miller began promisingly, lamenting that the Simpson case did not become “the greatest civics lesson of all” but instead had rendered the multitudes “totally cynical about the legal system.”

But then he lost it, saying he was “astounded” that so many regarded the civil trial as merely a “second whack at this case,” without using his shot before the camera to set them straight about the thinking that shapes the laws in question. Perhaps Miller’s own earlier whacks on the topic were more educational. But this one was routine Simpson 101, touching all bases without looking beneath them.

Ever-present Simpson biographer Lawrence Schiller checked in, too, and saw things more rosily than Miller. “I think we learned a lot in this case,” he said. “We learned not to deal with speculation and rumor. Each day brings new wisdom.” You kept waiting for someone to throw a net over the newer, wiser Schiller and bundle him off, but instead his views were received warmly.

Meanwhile, Thursday brought more about nuts and bolts in the civil case, including renewed speculation throughout the media about Simpson’s financial worth regarding punitive damages. “How does someone like you go about figuring net worth?” co-host Matt Lauer asked a forensic accountant on NBC’s “Today” program. Yes, new wisdom was breaking out all over.

But enough of that. Gotta move. The phone is ringing, and it could be another big story.