Is the Simpson Case Relevant to the Rest of L.A.?

Even though it occupies much of my time, I often wonder if the O.J. Simpson trial has anything to do with the rest of Los Angeles.

Is it just a sensational celebrity murder case? Is it a tale of the lives of the rich and privileged who have no real connection with L.A. except as a place to touch down briefly for a change of clothes during their jet-setting? On the other hand, does the upcoming trial have anything to say about our society?

The other day, I discussed this point with John Mack, the longtime president of the Los Angeles Urban League and one of the African American community’s most respected leaders. It turned out he, too, often questioned the Simpson case’s importance.

“It simply boils down to two people brutally murdered and a fellow who happens to have been a big celebrity,” he told me. “But when you look at the bread-and-butter issues that need to be addressed in Crenshaw, South-Central and throughout Los Angeles, it’s a footnote in history.”

Well, I replied, it was important enough for you and other African American community leaders to discuss it with Gil Garcetti on July 19 in one of your periodic meetings with the district attorney. Mack smiled, indicating that I had a point.

That meeting turned out to be a noteworthy development in the Simpson story. Garcetti’s critics cited it as evidence that the D.A. bowed to these community leaders, who happened to be foes of the death penalty. Instead, the district attorney’s office is seeking life imprisonment without parole for Simpson, who has pleaded innocent. Mack played down the capital punishment aspect of the session. He said the death penalty discussion occupied just a few minutes of a long session. “I don’t think Gil Garcetti made a decision not to go to the death penalty in order to appease the African American community and its leadership,” he said.

What I found more interesting than Mack’s impressions of the meeting were his views on the relationship between the Simpson case and the black community. As we talked in his comfortable Crenshaw-area office, I could see that the subject was complicated.

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“One of the things I have been very careful about, as have a number of my colleagues in leadership roles, was to avoid jumping out there and screaming race. . . . The feeling of most of us was that it is really a complicated issue,” Mack said.

“He was a privileged brother . . . who had been carefully packaged and marketed and he was not part of the African American community. . . . It was a contrast to the Rodney King incident where you had a young, poverty-stricken African American male who had no clout of any kind, who had been jacked around by the system.

“When we all first heard about it, the first reaction most of us had, since most of us didn’t know O.J., was . . . there was no way this guy could have done it, this great guy. But . . . we discovered he was not the wonderful, caring, compassionate, loving husband that his handlers had portrayed. The spousal abuse business is bad. Clearly what happened in 1989 when he clearly had badly beaten Nicole Simpson and was allowed to get away with no jail time, to pick his own psychiatrist . . . was clearly a case of class and privilege.

“Then there is the nagging reality we have to deal with. Yes, there are all those things, but it’s an undeniable reality that in Los Angeles and in America, whenever you have an incident where an African American man . . . is accused of killing two white people, especially when one of them was his ex-wife . . . you have all of the racial bigotry and baggage that people carry about interracial marriages.”

With this in mind, Mack said, “I recognize Garcetti has a job to do. I recognize that some of my constituents are convinced that O.J. Simpson did not do it, and do not want to be bothered with the evidence or the facts. I don’t take that position. I take the position that if the evidence . . . would convict O.J. Simpson, then O.J. Simpson should be held accountable. “

But he added, “I think he should receive a fair trial. It’s very important that he not be treated above the law, but he should not be a victim of his celebrity status, either.”

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Afterward, I puzzled over what Mack had said. Obviously, he did not see Simpson as a symbol, or his arrest as symbolic of the treatment of African Americans by the criminal justice system.

Rather, he seemed to be giving a message to Garcetti, his deputies and the investigators: This man may not be part of our community. He abused his wife. He’s not a role model. But the criminal justice system has treated African Americans badly. Blacks, rich and poor, have been abused. So we’ll be watching to make sure he gets a fair trial.

In the end, that may be the importance of the Simpson case. It is not about race so much as notoriety and the media and the public’s obsession with all the details. The real question is whether L.A.’s strained criminal justice system can operate fairly under such extraordinary circumstances.