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The acquittal of O.J. Simpson prompted this episode's examination of whether the American jury system is fundamentally sound. Samuel P. King, a Federal District Court Judge, and Jackie Earle, a civil trial attorney, both maintained that the jury likely followed its instructions and applied the rules of evidence correctly, given that the information it received differed substantially from what media audiences saw. King invoked John Adams on the jury as a constitutional guarantor of liberty, while Earle explained how evidence presented to the jury carried different weight than the same material filtered through television commentators. Criminal trial attorney Nick Garcia, the head of the local Criminal Trial Lawyers Association, called in to argue that jury verdicts reflect the communities that produce them, and that racial polarization in Los Angeles—not a flaw in the jury system itself—explained the verdicts in the Simpson, Rodney King, and Reginald Denny cases. The central question is whether the jury system requires reform, or whether it accurately mirrors the divisions of the society it serves.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.
Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
