Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Tell me it ain't so.

I'll do anything to prevent it. I'll quit smoking (no, I already did that), I'll quit drinking beer (or I'll at least think about it), I'll stop addressing my wife as "sir" when she gets too bossy. I'll even write negative things about sewers.

Just tell me we're not all going to have to sit through another prolonged trial involving O.J. Simpson? How much of this torture can average human sanity stand?

O.J. was arrested again in the recent weeks on a whole bunch of charges. I know nothing about his guilt or innocence, which means I am legally and morally obligated to assume he is innocent. By the same token, I have to assume he was innocent of the two murders he was tried for more than 10 years ago. Remember, his jury only deliberated a couple of hours before announcing the not-guilty verdict.

It's not at all surprising that the case should have generated so much attention and publicity years ago. A beautiful woman and a friend of hers (who was possibly just in the wrong place at the wrong time) were brutally murdered. A former athletic hero, who subsequently achieved a certain degree of media and entertainment prominence was implicated. Certainly that was going to interest people.

But the attention got silly, and people got obsessed.

I went out to dinner a week or so after the murders, and I took along a magazine to read while I ate. O.J. was on the cover, and the waitress kept trying to draw me into a discussion about the cases.

"Do you think he did it?" she asked. "I don't think he did it. What do you think?"

Between talking and eating, I never did get to finish the article.

I missed the infamous, low-speed chase involving the white Ford Bronco. I was a single guy at the time, and Friday nights in those days were usually spent in a movie theatre with my arm around she I would eventually address as "sir" when she became too bossy. If you look at it as a choice between witnessing an amazing moment in contemporary history and spending it with the woman in my life, I think I came out on the right side.

And then we had the trial, which was analyzed and dissected from just about every conceivable angle. Now I am one who agrees that the administration of justice must always be open, up front and visible, with evidence against the accused being put before public scrutiny. I don't believe that because I'm in the media. I see it as part of a larger set of measures employed to try and make sure trials are fair (they aren't always, but it is a lofty goal for which we should always be aiming). But the scrutiny got ridiculous. Well-paid commentators passed judgement on Marcia Clark's hair styles. Give me a break.

The trial was televised. I was gainfully employed throughout, meaning I saw very little of it. But I heard about it on the radio. I listened mostly to CFRB (I still do, actually), and they had a legal expert from California on every night around the time I was driving home, going over the day's testimony. So that's how I stayed up to date on what was going on, almost in spite of myself.

It was all in the newspapers, of course, but I don't recall a single day when I did anything more than quickly skim a story on the trial. There were other more important things in the Toronto area press for me to concentrate on, such as what movies were showing that Beth and I could attend (I'll be in very deep trouble if I refer to her as "sir" too many times in print).

For reasons I will never understand, I set my VCR to tape the court proceedings the day the verdict was to be announced. Since the time of the announcement was made public well in advance, I was able to arrange to be in my car with the radio on when the verdict came down. I couldn't tell you why I did that either. I viewed the tape when I got home that night, and recorded over it in the days that followed.

One of the big problems I had with this whole fiasco was even with the limited amount of interest I believed I had in the matter, it was becoming clear to me that a major issue was being overlooked, such as did he or didn't he do it?

Despite what the legal system is supposed to represent, I don't think we had a satisfactory answer to that question, and I don't think there are many people around who would give me much of an argument. O.J. may well have been innocent. I just don't think anyone was going to find out from a trial like that.

One of my strong memories of that period dealt with the comparisons people were drawing between the American and Canadian systems. By this point, Paul Bernardo had been in custody for some time, yet there seemed to be little headway in getting him to trial. O.J., on the other hand, seemed to be progressing through the system with a lot of efficiency, and I heard several people complaining that we in Canada didn't have our act together.

The funny thing is those comments abruptly stopped once Bernardo's trial actually got under way. While there will always be a few questions about the way that case was handled (the role of Carla will always be a talking point), I think most people are pretty satisfied with the way things turned out in the end.

Things were such a mess the last time O.J. was on trial, I suspect we're not going to see a repeat, assuming of course the case against him even makes it to trial. On the other hand, the media will make a circus out of it if that's what it's perceived that the people want.

Somehow, you always know the media's going to take the rap.