BIAS SEEN IN SIMPSON JURY SELECTION : WHITE JURORS FAVORED IN SIMPSON JURY SELECTION, STUDY CLAIMS.

Byline: Michael Fleeman The Associated Press

White jury prospects in the O.J. Simpson wrongful death civil trial had more success than African-Americans in convincing the judge they could set aside their biases, an analysis of the jury pool shows.

Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki allowed into the pool 69 percent of the questioned jury candidates who declared Simpson was ``probably guilty,'' but only 21 percent of those who considered Simpson ``probably not guilty.''

In so doing, the judge favored white jurors: Those who chose the ``probably guilty'' position were overwhelmingly white, along with the few Asian-American jurors questioned. The jurors who said Simpson was ``probably not guilty'' were nearly all African-Americans.

The statistics on the jury pool come from an Associated Press analysis of the 164 jurors questioned by attorneys over 12 days.

Most of these positions reflected the jury prospects' initial gut reactions placed on a questionnaire, and the judge didn't decide whether to dismiss them until after they were questioned by lawyers and, in some cases, the judge himself.

``On the face of it, it seems like there's some percentage of unexplainable eliminations along racial lines,'' said Southwestern University law Professor Robert Pugsley. ``But it also seems (as if) the judge put a premium on people who could express things in terms that this particular judge finds satisfactory, and that may favor more formalistically educated individuals or people more familiar with court jargon.''

Indeed, the judge himself often would explain his acceptance of a juror with strong feelings, pointing out that person's intelligence, articulate speech and ability to separate an opinion based on spotty news reports and office gossip, versus one based on evidence and testimony in a court of law.

Fujisaki has let in some African-American jurors who appeared to him to have met this test, including a man who said he believed that white society is unable to accept an African-American man's acquittal and a woman who said she believed ``in my heart'' Simpson was innocent.

Still, the 102-person pool created last week after a round of questioning about publicity contains considerably more ``probably guilty'' leaning jurors - 38 percent - than ``probably not guilty'' prospects at just 6 percent, the analysis found.

The biggest category of jurors are those who indicated they weren't sure what their opinions were or who had virtually no opinions at all - a group that makes up 48 percent of the pool. This block is split about evenly between African-Americans and non-African-Americans.

Racially, the jury pool is 48 percent white, 35 percent African-American and 17 percent other groups, including Asian-American and Latino.

It's from this group that lawyers will start selecting jurors, following a final round of questioning about the candidates' views on such issues as domestic violence and racism. The next phase of jury selection will begin Tuesday.

Simpson, 49, is being sued by the relatives of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted of murder charges a year ago.

The verdict in his criminal trial exposed a rift between whites and African-Americans on the issue of Simpson's guilt or innocence, with whites tending to consider him guilty.