NEWS ANALYSIS : Simpson Jury Could Defy Conventional Wisdom : Trial: Majority of blacks on panel may prove to be a wild card rather than a plus for the defense, experts say.

Within moments after O.J. Simpson’s jury had been picked, a consensus of conventional wisdom developed that he had gotten a great break.

After all, the jury has eight blacks on it, and polls have shown that blacks are more likely to believe in his innocence than whites are.

“If I were O.J. Simpson, I’d be sleeping more soundly than any night since June 12,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Barry Tarlow. “With this jury, and Johnnie Cochran defending Simpson, the district attorney’s office has a very uphill battle.”

But the conventional wisdom is far from universally accepted in the legal community, with some experts saying a predominantly black jury may not conform to any stereotypes.

“I think a jury with a majority of blacks is more favorable to the prosecution than a jury that has a distinct minority of blacks,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Harland W. Braun. “The reason is a difference in dynamics: If you have a few blacks, they may polarize and feel that O.J. is being put upon by ‘the system,’ but if you are the eight blacks on the jury, you are the system.”

University of San Francisco law professor Sharon Ann Meadows agreed: “I’ve had black jurors tell me they saw their role in the jury room as being protective when there is a black defendant, making sure racist statements aren’t made. That’s not going to be a factor here; you’ll have a group of African Americans more able to objectively view the evidence.”

And she added that there might be a backlash to assumptions that have arisen as a result of the public opinion polls. “As an African American woman, I resent the assumption that because someone is black they’re going to let O.J. off,” Meadows said.

Although it is unusual to have eight blacks on a jury in Los Angeles County, there generally are blacks on juries in Downtown criminal trials and those jurors frequently convict black defendants in murder trials and other cases, said Charles A. Gessler, a veteran public defender.

“I don’t believe the fact that there are eight black jurors means O.J. is going to walk simply because of the race of the jurors,” Gessler said.

Los Angeles defense lawyer Marcia A. Morrissey said she did not think Simpson’s attorneys are so naive as to believe he will get off simply because of the racial composition of the jury.

“They realize he may have some advantage at the outset, but that doesn’t mean they are home free,” Morrissey said. “Downtown jurors know about being victimized by the system and they know about being victimized by crime. It’s a very complex kind of dynamic at work here.”

Another potentially complicating factor is gender. “The one reason this jury is not an unmitigated disaster for the prosecution is that eight of the 12 jurors are women,” said UCLA Law School professor Peter Arenella.

“One would expect that women would be more sensitive and affected by domestic abuse evidence than men. If the prosecution gets in the 911 tape and the other evidence of Mr. Simpson’s alleged abusive and stalking behavior, the women on the jury might be forced to re-evaluate any initial favorable impression they might have had of his character and look at the physical evidence in a new light.”

Others cautioned about drawing any conclusions based on race, gender or any other demographic factors--including the fact that only one of the 12 jurors is a college graduate.

“I’ve learned that if you’re going to rely on stereotypes it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Gerald Chaleff. “There is going to be months and months of testimony and evidence and any preconceived notions the jurors may have going in may change markedly.”

Chaleff said he was particularly offended by suggestions that a black male juror who works for Hertz is likely to be sympathetic to Simpson because the former football star had been the spokesman for the car rental company. “Let’s give the jury some credit,” he said.

Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson said she, too, thinks it unwise to speculate on the outcome of the double murder case based on poll data and the composition of the jury.

However, Levenson said that after reviewing the questionnaires and transcripts of the voir dire examinations she would be quite concerned about several of the jurors if she were the prosecutor.

For example, she said that Juror No. 1233--a 38-year-old black environmental health specialist from Inglewood--expressed skepticism about the testimony of limousine driver Allan Park and said that the police who came to Simpson’s Brentwood mansion hours after the killing had been “overzealous.” The juror described defense lawyer Robert L. Shapiro as “compassionate and concerned that his client receive a fair trial,” while describing prosecutor Marcia Clark as “very aggressive and experienced.”

Levenson said she was puzzled that prosecutors accepted Juror No. 230, a 50-year-old black woman from South-Central Los Angeles. The woman said the work of the coroner’s office on the case was unacceptable.

The juror also referred to Simpson as a “superb athlete” and said, “I respect him as (an) individual based on his past accomplishments.” Levenson also noted that this woman expressed skepticism about the validity of laboratory testing because a urine sample of hers had been mishandled, leading to an incorrect report that she was pregnant.

Arenella said he thought potentially the most serious problem facing prosecutors is that “most of the prospective jurors who expressed some confidence about the reliability of DNA evidence (expected to play a major role in the case) have been excluded from the case.”

He also said, “The defense should be dancing in the street” because a “predominantly African American jury will be more receptive to the defense strategy of putting the police and prosecution on trial rather than Mr. Simpson.” Terri Waller of the National Jury Project agreed, adding that “black jurors, as a group, are more suspect of allegations of criminal wrongdoing by African Americans.”

Whatever the jurors’ views, prosecutors and defense lawyers in the Simpson case apparently believed they could get a fair hearing from this panel, and that no better jury was possible, several experts said. They noted that each side had used only 10 of its 20 peremptory challenges.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said he was not surprised by the composition of the jury sworn in Thursday.

“I could have told you that’s the way it was going to turn out as soon as we saw the (original) 300 who were going to be potential jurors. We have juries throughout the county, all white, all black, all brown. It really doesn’t make that much difference as long as each one of those jurors swears and, in fact, follows his or her oath to base his or her decision strictly on the law, strictly on the evidence.”

The makeup of the jury also may have a beneficial impact on how a verdict in the case is received in the community.

“This jury composition means that O.J. Simpson certainly should receive a fair trial,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. “Some people may be concerned that African Americans are overrepresented, considering their percentage in the population of Los Angeles County.”

Blacks make up about 11% of the county’s population, while whites account for 56%. However, there is only one white on the jury--a 22-year-old insurance adjuster who experts speculated would not play a major role both because of her minority status on the panel and because of her youth.

In addition to the eight black panelists and the white juror, there are two Latinos and one man who described himself as part Native American and part white.

Mack was among those who expressed the view that having a predominantly African American jury “is not necessarily a slam dunk for O.J. Simpson.”

He said that blacks are unlikely to react to the case as a bloc. “There is a fallacious assumption made by too many white people who assume that you have an African American who is guilty and that because he is a brother, black folk automatically will let him off the hook. There is a deep sense of fairness, a deep sense of doing the right thing by most black people.”

Several experts, including Levenson, advised against relying too much on polling data since it is one thing to rapidly respond to a survey and quite another to listen to evidence for three months before making a decision.

“Polls give people’s first impressions,” Levenson said. “But the process of taking the oath, sitting as a juror and hearing the evidence can lead to different conclusions than first impressions. . . . The polls seem to indicate that the prosecution has an uphill battle (with black jurors) but we know that we get verdicts against blacks from juries with blacks. On the other hand, we have to remember that this is not just any black on trial, it’s O.J. Simpson.”

In a Los Angeles Times poll of 1,703 people, conducted Sept. 17-23, only 13% of blacks thought Simpson was guilty, while 37% thought he was not guilty and 50% said they didn’t know. On the other hand, 42% of whites thought he was guilty, 10% thought he was not guilty and 47% had not reached a conclusion. Among Latinos, 27% thought Simpson was guilty, 18% not guilty and 55% said they had no opinion.

Criminal defense lawyer Edi M. Faal said not to spend too much time analyzing the 12 jurors selected--because they may not be around for deliberations. “I personally don’t believe the jury that was sworn in Thursday will be the jury that will decide the case,” Faal said.

“I think this is going to be a long trial and quite a few of the present jurors will be excused for one reason or another. We lost five jurors in the Denny case,” he said, referring to the 1993 trial of two men accused of beating truck driver Reginald Denny in the early moments of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. “We were down to the last alternate. The picking of the alternates is critical.”

The selection of 15 alternate jurors in the Simpson case is expected to begin Tuesday.

* EASING RESTRICTIONS: Tentative accord reached to let jurors watch edited news. B1