Case Was Weak, Race Not Factor, Two Jurors Say

Repudiating criticisms that they were swayed by emotions and ignored the evidence, two jurors from the O.J. Simpson trial spoke out Wednesday, asserting that their swift acquittal of the famed ex-athlete was based on glaring weaknesses in the prosecution’s case.

The jurors talked of their belief in a police conspiracy to frame Simpson and one said the prosecution theory that he killed out of a jealous rage was unconvincing.

The two women, both black, denied that race was a factor in their deliberations.

Unlike one fellow panelist--a white woman who has said she thinks Simpson may have committed the brutal slayings--the two offered strong statements expressing their belief in Simpson’s innocence.

“In plain English, the glove didn’t fit”--and neither did the murder charge against Simpson, juror Brenda Moran said a day after voting to acquit the football great in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

“Mr. Simpson was not guilty. It was not proven. I didn’t have enough evidence to convince me.”

Moran, a 44-year-old computer technician, said she would not speculate who killed Simpson’s ex-wife and Goldman. But she stressed: “I know O.J. Simpson didn’t do it.”

A second juror, Gina Rhodes Rossborough, said she believed there was a strong possibility that Simpson had been set up.

Speaking on the Oprah Winfrey show Wednesday, Rossborough said the bloody glove found in Simpson’s yard could have been planted--a scenario of conspiracy that was central to the defense argument.

“I had my reasons to believe that some of that could be true,” Rossborough told the talk show audience.

The 29-year-old postal worker acknowledged that she believed in Simpson’s innocence before she was chosen for the jury, but said that nothing she heard afterward was powerful enough to change her mind.

“The prosecution, they did a good job,” she told Winfrey in an interview fed by satellite from Los Angeles. “But it wasn’t enough evidence or proof.”

Most of the 12 jurors from the marathon double-murder trial were in seclusion Wednesday, many of them reportedly weighing lucrative offers from networks and tabloid outlets to tell their stories.

Suspicious of Detectives

The battle to sign up jurors for exclusive interviews reached a fever pitch at some locations, with media representatives arriving in chauffeur-driven town cars bearing letters signed by high-profile anchors, and showering jurors and their friends and relatives with fancy gift baskets, T-shirts and caps with network logos.

Two reporters arriving for a 6 p.m. appointment in Paramount with the daughter of one juror found the door to her house blocked by an ABC News producer, who said the juror has spoken to ABC’s Diane Sawyer and the family had decided to talk to no other media. Earlier, Fox News had brought pastries to the house.

But Moran, who appeared before more than 100 reporters jammed onto the roof of a parking structure behind her lawyer’s Beverly Hills office, said she decided to come forward because of allegations that the jury acted rashly or chose to ignore evidence that prosecutors said pointed overwhelmingly to Simpson’s guilt.

“I didn’t come here to serve on a sequestered jury for nine months to be humiliated like that. We were fair. It wasn’t a matter of sympathy, it wasn’t a matter of favoritism. It was a matter of evidence.”

She said she was troubled by evidence such as the glove and Simpson’s blood-spattered socks.

The glove was drenched in blood, and yet the pathway where it was found contained “no blood on the leaves, on the ground,” Moran said. “So why was there so much blood on that glove and not a drip of blood on the ground anywhere around that pathway?”

Moran also said she was suspicious of Detective Philip Vannatter’s actions during the investigation.

“What clicked in my mind is he said he didn’t go to the Simpson residence thinking that Mr. Simpson was a suspect,” she said. “OK, after that, he’s walking around with blood [taken from Simpson] in his pocket for a couple of hours. Why didn’t he book it in Parker Center or Piper Tech? He had a perfect opportunity to do it.”

That echoed comments made by juror Lionel (Lon) Cryer, who in an exclusive interview with The Times hours after Tuesday’s verdict, said he and other jurors were suspicious of actions taken by LAPD detectives.

The contention that four detectives had to be dispatched to Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate out of concern that there might be other victims and because they wanted to personally notify the sportscaster of the deaths lacked credibility in their eyes. “No one was buying all of that,” Cryer said.

Like Cryer, both Rossborough and Moran said they gave little weight to defense arguments about racism. Cryer had characterized the attacks on Detective Mark Fuhrman as mere “blips” in the trial. Moran said she quickly rejected Fuhrman’s testimony.

Moran said the tear in her eye that many in the courtroom noticed during Cochran’s final arguments mentioning Fuhrman was caused by thoughts of her sister, who was killed in a car crash--not by any “racial elements” in the emotion-laden argument.

“When I read the letter [written by Kathleen Bell about a troubling encounter with Fuhrman] he had made a statement that a white woman and a black man together--if he stops them for any reason and there’s no problem, he’d find a problem. So in my mind he’s not credible. I couldn’t believe anything he would say,” Moran said.

She said she was surprised when Fuhrman did not return to the stand late in the trial for further questioning. She also dismissed suggestions that some may call for a revamping of the jury system because of the Simpson case.

“If they do that, they’re hurting themselves, because they had a darn good jury here,” Moran said.

Moran had little reaction to defense attorney Robert Shapiro’s charge Tuesday that co-counsel Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. dealt the “race card” from “the bottom of the deck.”

“That’s his comment. We didn’t even deal with that deck, period. We didn’t even get to that issue,” Moran said.

‘Everybody Had Questions’

Moran believes that the domestic abuse issue was “a waste of time,” a sentiment also expressed by Cryer.

“This was a murder trial, not domestic abuse. If you want to get tried for domestic abuse, go in another courtroom and get tried for that,” she said.

Moran and Rossborough confirmed initial accounts of two jurors at first favoring a guilty verdict, but characterized the deliberations as lacking rancor.

Moran said those favoring acquittal did not have to work at convincing the other two.

“They turned themselves around,” Moran said. “We talked about it inside the [courtroom]. They had the perfect opportunity to stick with what they thought. But we discussed it in the courtroom and everyone looked at the evidence book, we all discussed it openly and they changed their vote.”

She bristled at suggestions that the jury rushed to reach a verdict.

“We’d taken this case serious for nine months, we didn’t [just] take it serious for four hours. . . . We had nine months to weigh the evidence. We looked at the evidence in the jury room in deliberations, we went over that again. It didn’t take us nine more months to figure it out. We’re not that ignorant.”

Moran said she made up her own mind “after I listened to all the evidence, all the people who came to testify,” and after deliberations.

Rossborough said after the first straw vote of 10-2 for acquittal, an avalanche of questions followed as jurors shared the points that had been bothering them for months.

“We all just brought everything up,” Rossborough recalled. “Everybody had questions.

“We went though the process to clear everybody’s conscience about this case,” she added, saying they wanted to be “able to wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of what you did.”

The daughter of Anise Aschenbach, the older of two white jurors on the panel, spoke briefly early Wednesday to clarify her remarks of a day earlier. She said her mother felt compelled to acquit Simpson because of holes in the prosecution evidence, not because of pressure from other jurors.

“She’s very upset,” said the daughter, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Denise. The daughter said Aschenbach believes that Simpson probably was guilty “but the law wouldn’t allow a guilty verdict.”

She characterized her mother as a strong woman who is unafraid to stand up for her beliefs. During voir dire, Aschenbach had disclosed that she was the lone holdout in a previous case in which she had served as a juror. The daughter said her mother had turned around an 11-1 vote for acquittal to a conviction.

Rossborough said the jury was not troubled by racial divisions, as some pundits had predicted would occur. She characterized relations among jurors as warm.

“We got to know each other during the nine months,” she said. “I’ve grown to love these people. They are my family.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Leslie Berger, Bettina Boxall, Edward J. Boyer, Jack Cheevers, Patrick J. McDonnell, John L. Mitchell, Lucille Renwick, Lisa Richardson, Tracy Weber, Elaine Woo and Nancy Wride.

* SIMPSON COVERAGE: Related Simpson verdict stories inside. A4-A7, D3