YETMO

"A Jury of His Peers?"

OJ Simpson's jury has been seated. It is comprised mostly of African-Americans (eight) and there is also one white male. I wonder if he feels good about who his jurors are.

Our constitution says that a defendant is entitled to trial by a jury of his peers. Are these people OJ's peers? Who would on your jury? Who would be on mine? Probably over-eating, under-achieving, left-handers with bad knees and a penchant for political commentary. What factors are considered when composing such an important group with the power to decide life and death or, in this case, freedom or life in prison?

Are economic considerations most important? What about social? Racial? How about educational level? Maybe it's a mixture of all these. What should be the appropriate peer group -- that of the defendant or that of the society at large?

The biggest characteristic of OJ's jury is racial. Of course, many would say it appears that way because of how the media has reported it. But at its most basic level, the racial composition is simply a matter of fact -- two-thirds are black.

Who would be OJ's peers? Given his stature, I'd say business leaders, college graduates, wealthy individuals, prominent citizens, actors and actresses, and the like. I don't know the particular profiles of the jurors. Maybe they all fit into these categories. All this begs the basic question of who is anybody else's peer.

The racial issue (card) in the OJ trial has clearly been put in the forefront. By whom, I don't know, for sure. It's just there. Perhaps the cynics would say, again, that the media did it. Others would say that his being black in a white society necessarily invokes racial considerations.

Like it or not, race continues to play on our hearts and souls and poison our perspective in life. Polls before this trial showed that African-Americans and whites had equal but opposite attitudes towards this case. Most blacks doubted OJ would receive a fair trial. Most whites didn't doubt it for a minute.

Many factors have divided mankind for centuries -- social, political, religious, economic and racial. It's probably idealistic folly to believe that we can begin to change those patterns now but wouldn't it be wonderful if we could take one small step in that direction. Too often we scapegoat. Too often we look towards someone else or something else to blame.

Rarely are we willing to be at cause -- responsible for ourselves and answerable to conditions around us that we create. Rarely are we able to look at all the confusion and chaos and merely say, "So," and proceed to address those imperfections with a constructive mindset and make them better for us and our children.

Yale psychiatrist, James Comer, whose educational philosophies have been successfully employed in some Prince Georges' county public schools, gave us the power of the single syllable -- so. It takes us out of a victim position and empowers us. We don't have to be perpetual slaves to the abominations of racial history. Excuse the metaphor but that is the point. Who will be the first to cast aside race irrelevancies in the OJ case? Is the issue really that his murdered wife was white? Or is it that people prefer to hide their heads in the sand and use race to avoid facing the issue of guilt or innocence.

To be at cause means that we do not have to worry with such insulting concerns as how many blacks are on OJ's jury and whether they constitute his peers. But until such time as we can truly be at cause, as one race of humanity, having a majority African-American jury may be a blessing.

We only need look back at the Rodney King trial and the fallout from the prominently white jury's verdict. I neither condone the LA riots that followed nor blame the Simi Valley jury that acquitted the police officers. But if a racial peer group jury would prevent a violent backlash if OJ is found guilty, then that would be a small price to pay.