The judge in the O.J. Simpson murder case refused Friday to let reporters see three photographs of the bloodied bodies of Simpson's former wife and a friend of hers outside Nicole Simpson's town house, where they were stabbed to death on the night of June 12.
In his written response to a request by several news organizations that had sought access to those and other photographs of the crime scene, the judge said that releasing the three photos of the victims - - one of Nicole Simpson and two of her friend, Ronald L. Goldman - would create "a virtual certainty that the defendant's right to a fair trial will be prejudiced.""The court also finds," he said, "that the prosecution's right to a fair trial would be similarly prejudiced."
When the photos at issue were shown to witnesses at Simpson's preliminary hearing last month, they were kept turned from television cameras and the view of reporters in the courtroom. The news organizations that later sought access to them never asked for the right to publish them. But in his ruling Friday, Judge Lance A. Ito of Los Angeles County Superior Court said that allowing reporters even to see them would prove prejudicial.
"The public display of these items to the news media," he said, "would inevitably lead to graphic, sensationalistic, lurid and prurient descriptions, accurate and inaccurate, that would paint mental images in the minds of potential jurors that would prejudice the right to a fair trial of both parties."
Ito did allow reporters to see seven other photos, of items found near the victims. And he released one of five transcripts of conversations held in chambers between lawyers for the two sides and the municipal court judge who presided at the preliminary hearing. The news organizations had sought to read all five transcripts.
The seven pictures were displayed on a table in Ito's courtroom and, by his order, could not be removed or photographed. They showed a knitted cap, a left-handed brown leather glove, shoe prints in blood, Goldman's left shoe, his driver's license, a bank card bearing his name, and an envelope containing a pair of eyeglasses that Nicole Simpson's mother had left at a restaurant earlier that night.