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The criminal-justice system is "on the verge of a crisis of credibility," says Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti. He admits that in the Menendez brothers' cases, he and his team underestimated "the emotional pull" the abuse defense had on the jurors. Garcetti hopes to head off such tendencies among jurors by changing the system itself. At his initiative, a team of judges along with the heads of the state and county bar associations has formed a task force to study the possibility of altering rules about juries. Among ideas to be explored: broadening the pool of jurors to include a greater range of society, as well as judges stressing the importance of values and personal responsibility when they instruct jurors on how to deliberate.
Whitfield scoffs at such so-called reforms. "It is the very narrow- mindedness of some prosecutors that is always the best edge for a defense," she says. "They think they can just come into court, put on their evidence, and that will be the end of the story. They stop there. Well, thank God, juries don't." Legal scholars say juries have always been unpredictable, refusing to bend to controls the authorities hope to impress on them. "The tradition is that juries are the ultimate arbiter of law, not judges and not the state," says Anthony D'Amato, a law professor at Northwestern University. "And if they think the law is ridiculous, juries may ignore it. Instinctively, juries are getting it that they don't have to listen to the judge's instructions."
Are juries therefore influenced by the talk shows, or do talk shows merely cater to popular inquisitiveness? Talk-show host Montel Williams argues that "we reflect society -- we don't create society." Rose Mary Henri, executive producer of the Sally Jessy Raphael show, says: "I think we've helped the public awareness of domestic abuse and many of the abuse problems that exist, but I have no idea what kind of impact that has on someone who is serving on a jury."
And what does Oprah Winfrey have to say about Oprahization? The queen of talk is willing to concede some culpability. She says she and her colleagues have made society more sensitive to the idea that crimes are not committed in a vacuum. "What happened to you in the past is a part of who you are today," she says. However, she adds, "If, in the process, we have made people think that people are not responsible for their lives, then that is a fault." Ever the pioneer, she delivered that opinion last February on a segment entitled Can You Get Away with Murder?