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But it already had. In a case in which Fuhrman's racist monologues could have provided a voice-over for the Rodney King beating tape, it wasn't possible to forget race. "The best thing that could come out of this trial is O.J.'s being found not guilty because the jury believes that there was some type of frame-up," says Anthony Taylor, 36, a black Chicago paralegal who carpools to work with a white woman and often discusses the case during their ride. "It would shed light on the racial problems not only in various police departments but in the general population as a whole."
That outcome would appall Larry Miller, a white man who owns a Chicago hot-dog stand. "If white people yell racism, we're bigots. If a black person yells it, it has to be true. I've never known racism to be an excuse for murder."
There may be no verdict that can reconcile feelings so sharply polarized. Never mind that the jury has nine African Americans--a guilty verdict will infuriate many blacks outside the courtroom. An nbc poll last week showed just 2% of blacks would convict Simpson of first-degree murder, which requires proof of premeditation and could send him to prison for life without parole. Only 15% would support even a second-degree verdict, the one appropriate to killings that might be called crimes of passion, which in California would carry a prison term of 15 years to life. Fifty-nine percent believe he should be acquitted.
Acquitted? For the majority of white Americans who think Simpson did it, a cynical reading of that verdict--and cynical readings would be common--would mean that a millionaire jock who beats his wife, then butchers her and another man, can still walk, provided he buys the best lawyers around and they play the race card. For that majority, an acquittal would be the mirror image of the outcome in the first Rodney King beating trial, in which a mostly white jury acquitted four white police officers of what looked to most people like a blatant act of brutality.
As for a hung jury? If it should emerge that it was split largely along racial lines, it would leave most Americans with the impression that black jurors could not bring themselves to convict a black defendant so dear to them as O.J. It would also probably mean another trial, and thanks to a year of saturated publicity, the search for a dozen unbiased jurors is certain to be more difficult than it was the first time. Los Angeles district attorney Gil Garcetti has promised to retry Simpson even if the jury votes 11 to 1 for acquittal. The seminars on dna evidence. The bloody glove. Mark Fuhrman. Kato Kaelin. Could there be anyone, anywhere, who would want to go through that again?
As it awaits the verdict, Los Angeles has been gloomily revisiting some of its worst memories, the ones formed during the riots that followed the first Rodney King trial. The L.A.P.D., which was accused of responding too slowly to the first disturbances that followed the King verdict,will be on low-level alert on O.J.'s verdict day. After Cochran's summation, police chief Willie Williams declared he would hold the entire defense team responsible for heightening tensions in his city: "When this trial is over, they're going to go back to their homes. [But] we're going to have to live with the bile spewed out these last few days."