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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jury Is Lucky To Be Sequestered

Ellen Goodman Boston Globe

Damn, I wish I were on that jury.

It’s not that I want to be away from my family for six months. It’s not that I want the notoriety. It’s not that I want the macadamia nuts in the hotel minibar.

What I want is to be sequestered.

The way I figure it, the jury only has to live with this gawdforsaken trial eight hours a day. The rest of us are going to bed with you-know-who and waking up with you-know-who.

Somewhere in the seven months between the murders and the trial I became aversive, allergic, anorexic to the story. Now I start hyperventilating if I see the initials.

Can’t watch it, can’t listen to it, can’t read it, can’t drink it, can’t bear it. Can’t get away from it.

The case is like a force of nature. Close your eyes and your ears and it just seeps in through your pores. It’s like sharing the neighborhood air around Chernobyl.

Here I am in Our Nation’s Capitol, riding up to the Hill to talk about welfare reform and a local radio talk show host is wondering what the L.A. prosecutor is going to wear to court. I’m in another cab on Pennsylvania Avenue reading about the balanced budget amendment and the driver is psychobabbling about why people kill for love.

I’m in bed later, channel-surfing and suddenly I’m drowning in you-know-which citrus. I go from Larry King to Geraldo to CNN to E.T. to Court TV and there he is, on 13 channels at the same time.

This morning, I sit at my computer, eager to do combat with the House biologist, Newt Gingrich, who’s saying that women in the trenches get monthly “infections” and men are “little piglets.” But I am being stalked by the man, the trial, the coverage.

There was an ABC poll a couple of weeks ago that said 84 percent of the American public had OD’ed on you-know-which-initials. There were people getting green at the sight of Kato Kaelin and people longing to spray paint the next white Bronco on the street. The media moguls say they’re watching anyway. How, pray, can you get away from it?

But if I were only a juror, oh how different life would be. If I were a juror, I’d get my newspapers pre-edited, trial-free, cut up like paper dolls. The headlines like “HE BEAT ME AS I CRAWLED” would be in the recycle bin.

If I were a juror they’d put a bag over my head when I walked by the newsstand so I wouldn’t see the Newsweek, Spy, Examiner, Globe cover stories of you-know-which former football player and which “bombshell” that was set to explode in the courtroom.

If I were a juror, they’d put a block on my TV so I wouldn’t hear a word of you-know-which former Hertz adman. All I could watch would be Cary Grant on AMC and the seven dwarfs on Disney. Dopey, Sleepy and Bashful would be such a nice change of pace from Bailey, Cochran and Shapiro.

Of course I would have to pay attention to what was happening in the courtroom. But I would be sheltered from the titanic battle of the legal egos. (Where is Jimmy Carter when you need him for a little down-home mediation? Writing poems?)

I’d also have to concentrate on the evidence. But I would be blissfully protected from the cottage industry of commentators, speculating on the redeeming social value of the coverage, especially their own roles. I wouldn’t be solemnly, soberly and self-servingly told that this trial was really about celebrities or spouse abuse or money or pathological liars or race relations.

Left to my own devices, spending a mere eight hours a day on you-know-who, I might be naively lulled into believing that more important things were going on outside the courtroom than inside. Like, say, earthquakes and wars.

Devoid of interviews with the neighbors of the people who knew the family dog’s veterinarian, I might come to the conclusion that this case was about murder. I might even - although this is a stretch - think that my job was to help decide whether or not this man committed two murders. Best of all, I would have hours every evening happily sequestered without hearing the name O.J. Simpson.

Uh oh, I said it. I think I’m getting hives.