Lessons From OJ Trial

Fifteen years ago this month, OJ Simpson stood in a Los Angeles courtroom and told a judge he was “absolutely, 100 percent, not guilty” of murder. The plea was aired on live TV – and so was the criminal trial that began six months later.

KPCC’s Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde covered the OJ Simpson murder trial. She says there’s a new book about the way the case changed the relationship between judges and reporters. It’s by a woman who knew both better than anyone.

Kitty Felde: As Public Information Director for LA Superior Court, Jerrianne Hayslett enforced the rules that governed media coverage of the OJ Simpson murder trial. Those rules came from Judge Lance Ito himself. Some reporters didn’t like them and Hayslett says that was fine.

Jerrianne Hayslett: The Constitution guarantees there will always be tension between the courts and the media, between judges and journalists. Judges are interested in the roadmap and journalists are interested in the destination.

Felde: Hayslett was the traffic cop for the daily media traffic jam. She kept sane by writing daily haikus.

Hayslett: Press reports are wrong. Ito feels numbed and disturbed. What is the outcome?

Felde: One outcome was a giant change in the way judges deal with reporters. Hayslett looks back at the nine-month trial in a new book: “Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. OJ Simpson.”

Hayslett: The Simpson trial is known everywhere.

Felde: And she says that trial has become an excuse for courts to restrict information in legal cases across the country.

Hayslett: Even though the trial itself I think – or the media coverage of it – was an anomaly in many respects, that anomaly is sort of the umbrella under which people are making decisions today.

Felde: Hayslett says judges have closed more court proceedings, sealed more documents, and issued more gag orders. Judge Ito didn’t gag the attorneys in the Simpson trial. They were free to talk to reporters – and they did. Hayslett says Ito believed a gag order would have been overturned because he’d sequestered the jury and could already control what they heard outside the courtroom. Besides, says Hayslett, silencing attorneys doesn’t stop reporters from reporting.

Hayslett: What it does do, it makes the information that they have less reliable and quite often more inaccurate because they cannot get accurate information from the source.

Felde: Some judges have criticized Ito for not clamping down on the way the lawyers behaved inside the courtroom. Hayslett says she asked him privately why he let lawyers go on and on.

Hayslett: And he said, “Nobody knows the case better than the lawyers. It’s their case and I feel it’s my obligation to let them argue their cases and present their cases.”

Felde: Not that he didn’t try subtle hints – like bringing out his hourglass collection, and installing clocks on every wall in the courtroom. It didn’t work. So Judge Ito changed the rules to move things along: no speaking motions, put it in writing; no rolling your eyes in the courtroom; and if you’re going to object, give a reason and shut up. Hayslett says the bench then began to penalize the lawyers.

Hayslett: It was the most heavily fined criminal trial in the history of the state.

Felde: Hayslett says Judge Ito’s philosophy was that the courts belonged to the public. The people should see the law in action. He decided it was OK to mount a camera over the jury box.

Hayslett: He thought it would give the public the same view of the trial that the jurors had. So that was pure and simple. And he said it was just a lucky break that they were able to get the faces of the attorneys and Simpson and so forth.

Felde: That “lucky break” made for compelling television – with a celebrity defendant and theatrical lawyers on both sides. But since the trial, most judges have pulled the plug on televised courtroom coverage.

That changed with the Phil Spector murder case. LA Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler broke with tradition and allowed live cameras in both Spector trials. Hayslett says the pendulum might be swinging back toward greater media access in the courtroom. And that – she says – is a good thing.