02/05/97 - 09:36 AM ET - Click reload often for latest version

Judge Fujisaki was able to keep trial in control



Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki (AP).

By banning TV cameras in the courtroom and slapping a gag order on lawyers, Fujisaki turned the Simpson civil trial into a textbook demonstration of an efficient legal system at work, analysts say. But Fujisaki also robbed the public of a chance to see the antidote to the histrionics and grandstanding of the criminal trial.

O.J. Simpson was found liable Tuesday for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

From the beginning, Fujisaki made it clear he planned to do everything to distinguish himself from Lance Ito, the criminal trial judge.

Bound by a common Japanese-American ethnic heritage, Fujisaki and Ito are in other ways opposites. Ito, 43, was considered an up-and-comer when he was assigned the Simpson criminal trial. Three years earlier, savings and loan mogul Charles Keating had been convicted in Ito's courtroom in a high-profile case.

Fujisaki, 60, was on the verge of retirement and little known when he got the civil case. He wasn't the first choice for the job. The case fell to him after Simpson's lawyers used a routine challenge to remove another Superior Court judge they considered unfavorable.

Ito's judicial philosophy was to let the lawyers put on their cases their way.

As the Simpson criminal trial ballooned into a nine-month marathon, Ito struggled for control by investigating jurors and videotaping members of the media chewing gum or sucking on cough drops in the courtroom. He seemed intimidated by the lawyers and catered to media celebrities, observers say.

Fujisaki's style was to seize control of the proceedings, expecting everyone else to fall in line.

He put lawyers, jurors and the media on notice from the start that there would be no funny business. And for the most part, there wasn't.

Early on, he threw a court artist out for inadvertently drawing jurors. "Do you not understand English?" the judge barked at artist Bill Robles.

Fujisaki was also hard on lawyers. During a slow moment for defense lawyer Robert Blasier, Fujisaki interrupted, "Your scintillating examination has put at least one of the jurors to sleep."

"The atmosphere was very business-like, not anything like the circus atmosphere of the first trial," People magazine reporter John Y. Hannah says. "His interest always was to keep it moving."

"He didn't want to be tested and he wasn't," says Adam Pertman, who covered both trials for The Boston Globe.

But unlike Ito, Fujisaki tempered his crack-the-whip attitude with kindness. The court artist was let back in the courtroom, and the judge apologized the next day for his remark to Blasier.

In Ito's courtroom, the smallest infraction from gum chewing to whispering was punished with expulsion. In Fujisaki's court, spectators read newspapers, chewed gum and chatted with friendly bailiffs.

Fujisaki took long walks in a shopping area, stopping frequently for a large Italian lunch. Even at his harshest, he usually wore a smile.

The judge benefited from the fact his trial was in Santa Monica. The relaxed atmosphere of the sleepy suburban courthouse here, with its swaying palm trees and sea breezes, was light-years away from that of the grim downtown Criminal Courts Building.

"I mean you can go out to lunch here," says author Dominick Dunne, a TV commentator during both Simpson trials. "Everyone's mood has been slightly elevated."

Most analysts think Fujisaki gave Simpson a fair trial, although his brusque judicial style might have left an impression, particularly among blacks, that he was unfair to Simpson, civil lawyer and community activist Cynthia McClain-Hill says.

Even his most controversial decisions - limiting testimony about Det. Mark Fuhrman and the defense's police conspiracy theory - were on safe legal ground, analysts say. To order a new trial, a higher court would have to find that the judge altered the outcome of the case. And there was just too much evidence against Simpson, they say.

"Very early in the trial, Fujisaki said he didn't want to repeat the excesses of the criminal trial," says Jeffrey Toobin, author of a Simpson trial book, The Run of His Life. "And he didn't.""

By Gale Holland, USA TODAY