DRAWING LINES AND LESSONS

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

SUSAN ESTRICH LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

"IT'S A CIRCUS, IT'S A DISGRACE, and the sooner it's over the better for Los Angeles. This trial is increasing people's cynicism about race in this city, and the defense attorneys are playing to wounds in the black and Jewish communities. Johnnie Cochran is the best defense O.J. could buy. But it will be terrible for the criminal justice system if it works. The jury is being asked by him to do politics, and it's a recipe for disaster. Juries have to realize they're not political leaders and they're not an audience on Oprah. The most you can ask a jury to do is to pass judgment on who did what to whom. We have to understand that you cannot and should not solve social problems in criminal juries."

NORA EPHRON WRITER AND DIRECTOR OF SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

"FROM THE BEGINNING OF this trial, I have believed that we were watching Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill all over again. To me this murder is a gender crime, and I have been fascinated that everyone--the media, the public, law-enforcement personnel--has fallen into the defense-sprung trap of looking at it as a racial episode. In the process, of course, it has become one. But as we wait for the verdict, I feel exactly the way I did that weekend back in 1991 when Anita Hill testified: we absolutely knew who was telling the truth, but the bad guys won."

VINCENT BUGLIOSI AUTHOR AND PROSECUTOR IN THE CHARLES MANSON TRIAL

"THERE IS NO REAL RACIAL ISSUE IN THIS case, only a manufactured one. The Rodney King case was a racial case. The defense, showing no respect or concern for the black community, has blatantly used it to help their client, who is black in color only. The fact that a racial issue can be produced out of pure moonshine only confirms the malleability of the American people."

JILL NELSON FORMER WASHINGTON POST REPORTER AND AUTHOR OF A MEMOIR, VOLUNTEER SLAVERY

"O.J. SIMPSON IS NOT Everybrother. I keep thinking about the thousands of black men who have been arrested since Mr. Simpson who cannot afford legal representation, and about whom we hear nothing. Likewise, Nicole Simpson is not Everyvictim, and Mark Fuhrman is not Everyracist. When we create these false archetypes as a culture, we avoid confronting the very real systemic issues and problems that are elements of the trial: violence toward women; racism; and our national obsession with celebrity, race, sex and money. Whatever the verdict, I don't think the O.J. Simpson trial will have a deep, profound or lasting resonance in American culture. It will not be transformative. It's a bad miniseries gone out of control."

DERRICK BELL AUTHOR OF FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL AND CONFRONTING AUTHORITY

"O.J.'S TRIAL HAS SERVED well the need for the society, and particularly the powerful corporate and government leaders, to have the public diverted during a period of great economic turmoil, when literally millions of people are being downsized out of their jobs, often by corporations that are showing respectable profits. Anxiety is great, and while much of it is shifted by politicians to affirmative action, welfare, crime and other race-related issues, the O.J. case has served to take up thousands of hours of media time with what amounts to entertainment. The Amos 'n' Andy show served a similar purpose during the Great Depression."

MARSHALL WITTMANN SENIOR FELLOW AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

"WHAT THE DEFENSE HAS DONE IS MAKE IT a trial about whether America is racist or not. The irony is the black defendant has enjoyed all that the justice system has to offer anyone. The very existence of this defense team is the refutation of the defense argument that the defendant should be acquitted because this is a racist society. The trial reinforces the predispositions people had before the trial took place. I don't think it's changed any minds. I think what we're seeing now is 30 years of moving from a colorblind society to a balkanized society. In my view the racial spoils system that has existed has exacerbated that situation to the point where a trial of a double murder becomes a trial of society. It's an unfortunate product of more than 20 years of government-imposed racial preferences, which have deepened the divisions of society."

JOHN MACK PRESIDENT, LOS ANGELES URBAN LEAGUE

"MARK FUHRMAN SYMBOLIZES ALL THAT IS repulsive and offensive to most African Americans and to some whites, and he conjured up some painful memories. He got people mad as hell all over again. There appears to be a tendency on the part of some whites to dismiss Mark Fuhrman as one bad apple, but unless and until people face up to these real problems of race--particularly symbolized by the L.A.P.D.--we are going to remain polarized. Any way you cut it, the L.A.P.D. and the criminal justice system continue to be on trial in a case like this, given the history of the double standard against African Americans and other minorities. But by the same token, when you think about the average young African American, O.J. Simpson is not symbolic of that kind of police victimization. So at an emotional, visceral level, I don't think you have the same sentiment out there that you had with the Rodney King verdict."

ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN NATIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

"AS A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR and as a Jew, I am appalled by racism and disgusted by the words and actions of Mark Fuhrman. Having said that, Johnnie Cochran's analogy of Fuhrman to Hitler and his deeds was outrageous and an insult to the millions of innocent victims of Nazism. The metaphor trivializes this profound historical tragedy. I also think it is offensive that a man who fights for another man's justice would be so insensitive as to bring in as his bodyguards and security apparatus members of the Nation of Islam, who have in the past years engaged in crude and vulgar racism and anti-Semitism. By doing that, he legitimizes them and their attitudes. And that is being done by a lawyer, an officer of the court."

KAREN GRIGSBY BATES LOS ANGELES WRITER AND SOCIAL COMMENTATOR

"UP UNTIL YESTERDAY THE impact of race as an issue in the trial pretty much had non-negative effects. But Fred Goldman's outburst [regarding the Holocaust] has changed that. After Goldman's outburst, things are never going to be the same. He personalized it by attacking Johnnie Cochran. The man is doing his job. That Goldman brought the Holocaust into this is a hot-button issue. Essentially, he said our suffering counts more than yours. And the reaction among black people is 'don't you dare.' There is such a ground swell of resentment among African Americans toward that attitude--and that he has been backed up by various Jewish organizations only makes it worse. While acknowledging his loss is huge and that he has the right to be hurt, Goldman lost a big chunk of moral edge when he played the Holocaust card."

ELMORE LEONARD CRIME NOVELIST

"I WAS SURPRISED BY THE WAY THE DEFENSE brought in the race question, which was probably the only defense they had. Then they lucked out when Fuhrman was revealed to be a racist. I wasn't surprised to find out that he was a racist, especially when he said he had never uttered the word nigger in the past 10 years. I still think Simpson will be found guilty because of the blood evidence. He left his mark in too many places. I don't see how they could find him anything but guilty."

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN NOVELIST AND PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

"BECAUSE WE SPENT AN AWFUL LOT OF ENERGY in the past 15 years pretending that race isn't an issue, anything that shoves it in our face can't be all bad. Criminal trials, especially where there's been loss of life, never leave people feeling any better. But they should give us some kind of perspective, some kind of hope, that even if we human beings do irrational, terrible things to one another, there's also part of us that wants to do better and is trying to do better."

THE REV. RICHARD D. LAND PRESIDENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMISSION OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION

"HOW MANY OF US, IF WE REALLY EXAMINE our lives, have interracial friendships? I'm not talking about professional contacts, but those we meet socially and personally. We tend to lead lives in our own subcultures, and that has not been overcome by the removal of de jure segregation. We need more Americans to begin the relationships that will change this."

CHUCK STONE AUTHOR AND SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

"YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT I AM A MINORITY within a minority: I think O.J. is guilty. All the evidence points to it. Cochran knew exactly what he was doing with his exhortations and biblical references. It reflected what Alex Haley called 'the core ethos of the black community,' but I was appalled by it because it was judicial demagoguery. That's a hell of a burden to put on a jury. They're feeling besieged. It's the age we're in, it's the era of anti-affirmative action, The Bell Curve and Dinesh D'Souza. If they are viewed as siding with whitey, then what's happened to Chris Darden--ostracism--will happen to them. I think Johnnie Cochran is a black edition of P.T. Barnum. Either way we're going to be in dark days. Maybe the best thing to happen will be a hung jury; then neither side wins, and both black and white can feel justified."

TAVIS SMILEY LOS ANGELES RADIO AND TELEVISION COMMENTATOR

"THE QUESTION OUGHT not to be, Will they [African Americans] riot, but rather, What if they don't riot? If the city doesn't burn, will we return to business as usual? Will rogue cops still police our streets? Will the coroner's office still go about its work so sloppily? It's as if we have a problem that these two Americas both know exists--one endures it, the other condones it, nothing gets done on it and now people have the gall to ask what impact this is going to have."

STEPHEN GILLERS LAW PROFESSOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY "ONCE AGAIN, WE ARE REMINDED OF THE uncomfortably close relationship between justice and money. If Simpson were middle-class or merely rich, good defense lawyers confronting the mass of scientific evidence and police testimony against him would have pressed for a plea bargain. Although the Simpson trial is to trials like Mount Everest is to a child's sand castle, unrealistic defendants may not appreciate that their court-appointed or bargain-basement lawyers lack both the talent of a Johnnie Cochran and the investigative resources of an O.J. Simpson. An acquittal in the Simpson case will give other defendants false hopes that their cases can be beat as well. As a white man with a healthy skepticism of authority, I was nevertheless stunned that a Mark Fuhrman could have remained so long on a prestigious, presumably professional urban police force. Because no future juror who has heard the Fuhrman tapes will soon forget them, the damage wrought by the Simpson trial will be the reluctance of jurors, black and white, to trust the word of white officials who gather or present evidence against black defendants. Even meritorious prosecutions may be lost unless and until police agencies prove to us they can remove the racists within them."

--Compiled by Andrea Sachs