ecution can't afford to deviate from the provable truth.
But now we know that they did exactly this even before the trial began. Ms Clark and her colleagues knew all along of Mark Furhman's unstable background. In 1981, the 29-year-old Furhman went to his supe- riors asking for a disability pension, saying he was 'stressed out' by having to work with blacks and Mexicans, for whom he said he had irrational hatred. A psychiatrist who duly examined Furhman described him as `narcissistic, self-indulgent and somewhat emotionally unstable'; another as 'very seri- ously depressed and anxious . . . in no way can he be assigned to duty in any part of the Police Department'. But the LAPD refused him a pension, thus leaving us with the certainty that it was continuing to give badge and gun to someone who was either a liar (for falsely claiming a disability he didn't have) or a truthfully self-confessed racist and man of hate.
The prosecution fought to keep all this from the Simpson jury, and in one of his many poor decisions Ito concurred with them. Knowing Furhman to be a bent cop, however, the prosecutors nonetheless fawned over him in front of the jury; now that the truth has at least partially come out about Furhman for the jurors (and no one knows, of course, what additional information they may have been given sur- reptitiously during pillow talk in conjugal visits), the prosecution and Ito have only themselves to blame for looking stupid, if not downright dishonest. They bent over backwards to prevent the jury knowing the truth about Furhman (`You sound like a nigger, talking bullshit'), and it has now come back to haunt both. But then Ito is up for re-election next year, and there are still more white than black or Hispanic voters in LA . . .
Twelve thousand pages of transcripts of the trial have so far been allowed to pile up, and the most critical question now is whether the jury can survive. Besides being separated from their families and normal life since January, they have been guarded by sheriffs, their belongings searched, their newspaper-reading and television-watching ruthlessly censored. Last week, Ito referred to them to their face, patronising- ly, as 'not happy campers'.
They key question now is whether there will be an acquittal or a hung jury. If Ms Clark can plough on relentlessly with her rebuttal so that it stupefies the jury into exhausted submission, then there will no longer be enough jurors and a re-trial would be ordered. Short of miraculous gifts to them, that is the best the prosecu- tion can now hope for.
Otherwise, Orenthal James Simpson will walk free soon, and, given the quality of the prosecution and its police evidence against him, the jury will have made a perfectly understandable and even honest decision — whatever the white folk say at Washing- ton dinner parties.
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