Ordering Information
Anatomy of a Trial is available in hard copy for $10, shipping included, by contacting the author at jfarhsi@aol.com, on Amazon's Kindle or through "Fulfillment By Amazon" for $7.99 (Prime eligible) under More Buying Choices.
Chapter 10 - Judges Judging Judges
Chapter 11 - More Craziness
Chapter 12 - Aftermath
Chapter 13 - From There to Here
Chapter 14 - ...And Beyond
Chapter 15 - A Blueprint
Postscript - Where Are They Now
Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, Index
Chapter Excerpts
Chapter 1
To Here from There
Lance Ito leaned back in the black leather chair in his chambers, propped his feet up on his cluttered desk, and clasped his hands behind his head.
“Well, Jerrianne,” he asked, “what do you think I should do with the rest of my life?”
*
... in the Simpson case, not only did the judge become the story, the media morphed him into a caricature, then held him accountable for that image: The media-made Ito was starstruck, played to the cameras, didn’t control his courtroom, and was alternately pro-prosecution or favoring the defense. Perceptions warped and contorted like images in carnival fun-house mirrors. What people saw depended on where they stood and the mirrors they were looking into. The conundrum is how that happened in Simpson, why, and what has fed the far-reaching and long-lasting repercussions.
Chapter 2
In the Beginning
News reporters and television producers began to filter into the cavernous nineteen-story Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles soon after Simpson’s arrest for the June 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. They came to cover his initial arraignment and subsequent preliminary hearing, which is a sort of mini trial at which prosecutors present a summary of their case. The preliminary hearing judge must determine if the district attorney has enough evidence for the defendant to stand trial. Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell ruled that to be the case with O. J. Simpson.
Media coverage of Simpson’s four-day preliminary hearing and some of the attorneys’ behavior at that and at an evidentiary hearing that preceded it foreshadowed the media debacles and lawyers’ grandstanding that were to play out for all the world during the trial.
The Book.
The media have written on all aspects of the O.J.Simpson trial, except their own responsibility to the public. The author should know – she's the Los Angeles Superior Court's media liaison and had the cooperation of Judge Ito in writing this book. Court TV managing editor Fred Graham calls this "a thorough and thoughtful account of how the O.J.Simpson murder trial went awry, and its continuing negative impact on the judicial system."
Anatomy of a Trial
Public Loss, Lessons Learned From The People vs. O. J. Simpson
Table of Contents
Introduction - The Reality of Perception
Chapter 1 - To Here From There
Chapter 2 - In The Beginning
Chapter 3 - Careening Off Track
Chapter 4 - Pressing Issues
Chapter 5 - Pack Jackalism
Chapter 6 - Seeing Stars
Chapter 7 - Getting The Picture
Chapter 8 - Who's To Judge
Chapter 9 - If It Please The Court