COURT WATCH : When Pain Explodes

The nature of pain is that it drives human beings to extremes. To screams, to bodily contortions. Physical pain can often be managed; psychic pain is not so easily controlled.

Pain, spilling over and engulfing bystanders and onlookers, was on unnerving display at the O. J. Simpson trial Thursday. Fred Goldman, father of the slain Ronald Goldman, again lashed out at Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran. But this time Goldman seemed barely able to contain his rage. In his closing arguments Thursday Cochran referred to retired Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman as a “genocidal racist” and likened him to Hitler. Goldman decried Cochran, calling him “the worst kind of racist,” “a horror walking around amongst us.”

Then the normally silent Simpson family, the defendant’s sisters, mother and children, took umbrage at the attack. “It’s wrong, even when you’re hurting, for someone to get up and personally attack our lawyers and say that they’re liars,” said one of Simpson’s sisters.

Who’s wrong here? Cochran, for vigorously defending his client? No, that is his job. Goldman, for his emotional public response? No, this man lost his son in a brutal slaughter. Simpson’s family for believing him innocent? No, that is what most people would do if a relative was on trial.

What we’re seeing here is the overflow of pain, past pains coming to the surface and more recent wounds being reopened, day after day. It’s a good thing it’ll be over soon. The trial is debilitating, and not just for the Goldmans, the Browns and the Simpsons.