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From: Jasper
Date: 10/15/02
Time: 12:02:53 PM
Remote Name: 66.72.163.120
Charlie,
I agree that Judge Fujisaki did make it impossible for Baker to pursue a cogent line questioning with Daniel Gonzalez. In the criminal trial, Judge Ito did the same thing to Peter Neufeld when he tried to get straight answers out of Collin Yamauchi. In both cases the process did show YOU AND ME that the witnesses were going the extra mile to adhere to the "party line" and that the judge was sympathetic to what they were trying to do.
Interviews with the jury members following their verdict in the civil trial showed everyone who heard them that they, too, were sympathetic to the police. The civil jury didn't question anything that the police said or did even when "the police" turned out to be Mark Fuhrman and the witnesses were clearly trying to stay true to his testimony no matter how convoluted or contradictory their testimony had to get to do it.
Fujisaki did not allow the defense to call Fuhrman or to argue that O.J. had been framed. Gonzalez was therefore the closest the defense could come to getting that kind of testimony on record. And yes, Charlie, the jurors did have their minds made up before the trial began. They had all of the evidence that they needed for their verdict from the criminal trial and the absences of Fuhrman as a witness or a participant in a frame-up made it easy for them to use it. --Jasper