THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : How Jurors’ Reason Could Decide Case

A while back I read a pioneering study by a Columbia University psychologist suggesting that purely racial considerations may play a much smaller part in the predominantly African American O.J. Simpson jury’s deliberations than most people seem to believe.

What’s more important, said Dr. Deanna Kuhn, is how people reason. Are they, for example, narrow, stubborn thinkers convinced all cops are racists? Or are they more sophisticated reasoners, capable of abandoning old notions, absorbing new information and considering alternative scenarios?

These complexities don’t seem to be part of the strategy of chief defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran, who is African American. He looks like he is playing the race card hard, even though he denies it. Why else would he have worked so hard to portray Detective Mark Fuhrman as a racist, and to constantly remind the jurors that Detective Tom Lange lived in Simi Valley, site of the first Rodney King beating trial?

But Cochran’s efforts may have been hurt by the appointment this month of a juror who shows promise as a leader and a freethinker. For the new juror, a 60-year-old white woman, has a record that indicates she might influence the other jurors in ways other than race.

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Tuesday morning, I went into the courtroom to look at the jury. The new juror is a stern-looking woman with a strong jaw who appears to be a determined sort. But she smiled in an amused way when a prosecutor’s aide had trouble with an arrow on a computerized big screen during the testimony of limousine driver Allan Park.

She had had an interesting experience as a juror in the past. As she described it during Simpson jury selection last year, she was the holdout when all her fellow jurors were prepared to vote. They asked her to reread the testimony of a witness. When she and the other jurors read it, they came around to her point of view.

Another incident also indicated leadership potential. When the woman was an alternate, she wrote a letter to the judge on behalf of all the panelists. We don’t know the subject, but it’s unlikely that she’s just another follower if she drafted the letter.

Dr. Kuhn’s study, done with Columbia’s Michael Weinstock and Robin Flaton, said jurors such as her are engaged in one of the most complicated and socially significant reasoning tasks that ordinary citizens are asked to perform.

The social scientists’ research was based on an in-depth study of 160 men and women who were shown a 25-minute re-enactment of a murder trial and then reached a verdict. Afterward, they were interviewed on how they made their decision. This was far different than the usual juror research, based on polls and other studies (often hastily and inadequately done) of demographic groups.

Kuhn and her associates concluded that jurors are divided into good and bad reasoners. “The bad ones grabbed onto a story that makes sense, that sounds good and does not consider the alternatives,” Kuhn said. Such people are more easily influenced by strong, clear opening and closing statements by attorneys who know how to tell a simple story.

Good reasoners, on the other hand, “considered alternatives, engaged in reasoning, saying, ‘It couldn’t be this because the evidence doesn’t fit.’ ”

What’s important, said Kuhn, is the reasoning ability of the jurors who emerge as leaders. “If you had a bad reasoner with a strong personality, he would dominate,” said Kuhn. “If you had an adequate reasoner with a strong personality, it would counterbalance this.”

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Nobody knows the answer to the personality question. In fact, we know little about the jurors. Even if we reporters spend our entire time in court staring at them, it is impossible to get beyond the blank expressions most of them affect.

We don’t know how they are getting along. Do they self-segregate by race at mealtime or during social activities? Will separate leaders emerge for the African American and the white jurors? Or are they mixing it up, consumed by a mutual interest in finding out the truth of the Simpson case? Most of all, we don’t know how they reason.

The voir dire examination didn’t deal with reasoning ability. Rather, prospective Simpson jurors were asked conventional questions about race; their knowledge of the case; their feelings about Simpson; their experience with domestic violence, and their taste in movies and hobbies.

It may turn out that none of these factors were all that important. What may count most is the recent addition of the newest juror and the thinking capacity, the smarts, behind her determined face.