JURY OF THE CENTURY

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

With the horrific doings in Oklahoma City, the doings in Los Angeles have quietly and appropriately slipped to the back pages of most people's minds. The Simpson double-murder trial is still a circus, but with all the sidebars and sideshows it's a slow-moving one, like a line of aged elephants lumbering around the big top. For months, the media focus had been on big names: Judge Lance Ito as he slowly lost his patience, breezy houseguest Kato Kaelin as he triumphantly pranced into his 16th minute of fame. But court watchers were reminded again last week that the most important people in the Simpson case are the ones known, like deli patrons, simply as numbers.

On Friday morning, two weeks of rumbling about clashes and cliques in the jury pool culminated in an unprecedented if short-lived mutiny. Thirteen jurors, upset by the dismissal of three deputies guarding the group, refused to come to court and demanded instead that Ito come to the hotel and hear them out. When the judge refused, the jurors relented; but when they filed into the courtroom, a majority of them (a biracial group of African Americans and Caucasians) were wearing black clothing as a symbol of protest. Testimony was canceled for the day so that Ito, once again, could turn his attention to the physical and psychological needs of his jury panel. Said Simpson defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey: "I've never seen anything like this. Not in 40 years."

Certainly the Simpson jury is well on its way to making judicial history as the most contentious and trouble-plagued panel in memory. Since the trial began in January, six jurors have been dismissed for reasons ranging from medical issues to misconduct, which leaves only 12 active jurors and six alternates. And with months of numbingly exhaustive testimony still to come, Ito is in danger of losing even more jurors to stress, boredom, personality conflicts or unforeseen dilemmas. Last week, juror No. 453, a flight attendant, asked Ito to let her go because she just "can't take it anymore."

Her request, which Ito has so far refused to grant, came amid the snowballing tensions prompted by the public statements of dismissed juror Jeanette Harris. She was ousted from the jury on April 5 for not reporting her experience with domestic abuse on the jury form. (Harris and her husband both deny that any domestic abuse ever took place.) She immediately proceeded to give interviews that portrayed the Simpson panel as a sandbox teeming with childish feuds and racist infighting. Among other things, Harris alleged that the guards from the Los Angeles County sheriff's office gave preferential treatment to the white jurors. Ito halted testimony to look into her charges, and last week, when juror No. 453 also accused the guards of insensitivity, the judge summarily replaced three of them, despite protests from law-enforcement officials.

Ito's biggest mistake, say some legal experts, may have been in talking too freely with the jurors in the first place. "Judge Ito has had more conversation with the jurors than is typically the case,'' says Steven Penrod, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota. "Some judges would maintain a greater distance. I think it's clear that they don't hold him in reverence, as most jurors do with the judges they encounter.'' But Thomas Hafemeister of the National Center for State Courts, who studies jury stress, believes Ito has been doing the right thing to avoid a total meltdown. "He's trying to stay in touch with the jurors,'' Hafemeister says. "If you're formal, distant and removed, that increases the stress levels. It's almost inevitable that you would have trouble with the jury here, with the length of the trial, the extreme public attention and the sequestration.''

Sequestration is always difficult, notes psychologist Valerie Hans, author of Judging the Jury. But the O.J. jurors have been subjected to "one of the most intrusive juror questionnaires I have ever seen. It asked many private questions.'' Watching fellow jurors being investigated and dismissed--in one case the juror's hotel room was searched--has only exacerbated the panel's feeling that they have lost their privacy and, like O.J., are under arrest. Says noted defense attorney Leslie Abramson: "They're being guarded by people who are used to treating everyone like prisoners. They need crisis counseling.'' But, adds Abramson, "there is not a shred of possibility that Ito, who is a smart fellow, is going to declare a mistrial over the defense's objections without some legal justification. And so far, I haven't seen one.'' (Any mistrial not sanctioned by the defense could prevent Simpson's being tried again.)

What courtroom observers have seen, however, is a group of very fragile people. Juror No. 453, the flight attendant, has been staring dejectedly down at her monitor for weeks, indifferent to the proceedings. When the jurors left the courtroom on Friday after their session with Ito, which was to resume Monday morning--several seemed to have tears in their eyes. In one sense, the fact that 13 jurors (including the white woman and black man alleged to have been involved in a racial incident) joined the protest is heartening evidence that the group is bonding, as most juries do, and can agree on a course of action. But, cautions psychologist Hans, it does not bode well that they are "bonding against the court.''

"This is a really dangerous situation,'' says prominent Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Andrew Stein. "You have jurors making demands on the court. If some say, 'You put the bailiffs back on, or we're not going to work' and the rest say, 'You keep them off, or we're not going to work,' what do you do?"

What Ito will try to do is placate the jury without tainting their deliberations. Now that he has allowed the panelists to air their grievances, "to put the genie back in the bottle is much more difficult,'' says Minnesota's Penrod. "If I were in his situation, I would bring the jury in and underscore the seriousness of their undertaking and the fact that their attention really needs to be fastened on the courtroom.'' Then, perhaps, the judge could do a better job of picking up the pace and give them something to hold their attention from one grueling day to the next.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty and James Willwerth/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by ELAINE LAFFERTY AND JAMES WILLWERTH/ LOS ANGELES AND ANDREA SACHS/NEW YORK