Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi Page B

society owed them a “debt of gratitude.”
    There also can be little question that the Simpson jurors unfortunately were the embodiment of what one English barrister said about juries in general, that a jury is “twelve people of average ignorance.” Although it’s hard to imagine how this particular jury could have been too much worse, I have never agreed with this description of juries as a general proposition. I look at juries as representing upward of five hundred years of collective human experience. Also, the knowledge of one juror is the knowledge of all twelve—that is, if one juror, because of experience or insight, sees something in the evidence the other eleven do not, as soon as he or she brings this fact, observation, or inference to the attention of the other jurors, the entire jury profits from the perception. When you look at juries in this light, it is easy to see why they normally reach the verdict called for by the evidence. But in this case, there certainly was no “collective” wisdom. The sum was no greater than the individual parts.
    A few examples will suffice. One juror, a seventy-two-year-old black woman who originally had been an alternate, said during the jury selection process that she never read newspapers, magazines, or books. The only publication she subscribed to was the racing form, but she said she didn’t really understand it. This juror, after the verdict, said: “I didn’t understand the DNA stuff at all. To me, it was just a waste of time. It was way out there and carried absolutely no weight with me.” Another black female juror felt that the domestic violence evidence the prosecution introduced, showing that Simpson severely beat Nicole and she was in fear of her life at his hands, had no place at the trial. This benighted soul informed us that “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.” Simpson’s history of physical brutality and violence against Nicole was completely irrelevant, according to this juror. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker observed that this juror’s reasoning was “akin to saying obesity is unrelated to eating. If it’s eating you want to talk about, go somewhere else. This discussion is about fat.”
    A younger black female juror, we were told by court observers, appeared to be one of the brightest of the jurors. The juror, who had a college degree, was reasonably articulate and had some elementary knowledge of DNA . When she appeared on
Nightline
and was asked who she thought was the most impressive witness at the trial, she said she felt Dr. Henry Lee was. When asked why, she pointed out that when Dr. Lee approached the witness stand to testify, he had turned to face the jurors and smiled warmly to them.
    So we know the jury was a problem. The seminal question is whether this murder trial had to be cursed with this jury. The answer is no. I don’t think I can discuss the issue any more clearly than I did in my December 1994
Playboy
interview, which was on the stands on November 1, 1994, before the trial started.
    bq.
    Playboy: You’ve found considerable fault with the defense in this case [referring to my assessment of the defense’s performance at the preliminary hearing as well as the quality of written motions it had filed, etc]. Has the prosecution done anything wrong?

    Bugliosi: Actually, the prosecution may have made the biggest error by far in this case—dwarfing anything the defense has done. I have no doubt that the DA and his staff are not prejudiced or antiblack in any way. However, because Simpson is black and every survey shows that blacks are overwhelmingly sympathetic to him, it’s common knowledge the DA’s office fears that blacks may hang up the jury—though the office can’t acknowledge this. If this fear—that the sympathy blacks have for Simpson at this point may override the evidence at the trial—is justified, and