LOCAL VIEW : HOW TO MAKE O.J. CASE PAY COUNTY COULD AUCTION OFF TRIAL EVIDENCE TO RECOUP STAGGERING COST OF CELEBRITY JUSTICE.

Byline: Joseph Honig

COMES the revelation, albeit macabre, that Orenthal James Simpson, whose former occupation - commercial pitchman - was downsized on account of murder, has applied for a trademark to sell, of all things, cutlery.

You heard right, fella's got to make a living - and steak knives never go out of style. Not even in these low-cholesterol times.

Similarly, less than a week after a civil jury decided Simpson took the lives of his ex-wife and her acquaintance, the one-time sports icon's lingering nemesis, ex-Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden, announced he would market a line of crime novels (to be written with veteran L.A. mystery writer Dick Lochte).

All this in the wake of those multimillion-dollar, nonfiction publishing deals for everyone from Darden, his prosecutorial colleague, Marcia Clark, to criminal defenders Johnnie Cochran Jr. and Robert L. Shapiro.

(Cochran now hosts his own daily Court TV broadcast; Clark's new syndicated television offering - something called ``Lady Law'' - will debut next fall. Shapiro's deal with CBS News to comment on the civil case fizzled because of his attorney-client relationship with Simpson. He says he's interested in buying the Los Angeles Dodgers.)

Meantime, the taxpayers of Los Angeles County are still out the millions it cost to acquit O.J. Simpson in criminal court - and find him guilty in the recent wrongful death case. Not to mention uncounted thousands in police overtime to protect citizens from overzealous expressions of relief and rancor after both verdicts were announced.

And no one's coming up with a way this fiscally ailing region - the county specializes in selling off its properties for ready cash, then leasing them back - can ever recoup the staggering costs of celebrity justice.

Until now.

Until my friend Harry the publicist took a look at our crumbling infrastructure, our jammed classrooms, our near-bankrupt county health care system and decided it was time for local government to finally make money from the Simpson saga. ``We can't afford not to,'' he told me. ``Another case like this one and your daughter will be attending first grade in an unheated garage.

``Everybody'' concluded Harry, ``is making out but the public.''

Like the broadcast barons who paid not a farthing to transmit live pictures from Judge Lance Ito's downtown courtroom (though our county supervisors did, in fact, consider, then reject the idea of charging for the criminal trial video).

Like second-tier players such as Brian ``Kato'' Kaelin (a radio program and acting jobs), former O.J. girlfriend Paula Barbieri (newly announced millions for the model's Simpson story) and all those TV lawyers and law professors - many with limited, if any, homicide or wrongful death trial experience - hired for judicial color commentary.

And like those now infamous Brentwood landmarks such as Mezzaluna restaurant, a Starbucks outlet favored by Nicole Brown Simpson and a pair of local sweet shops, where O.J. sightings aren't all that rare.

(``Business,'' the late Lee Strasberg said in ``The Godfather Part II'', ``is business.'')

So Harry the publicist, a man with whom I play pool, softball and an occasional hand of poker, announced he had the solution to that ongoing account payable we call the Simpson case.

And because I am a customer of the public libraries, parks and protective services, I listened. Listened as my friend sketched a marketing strategy so outlandish, in such dubious taste, that no self-respecting promoter could be immune to its possibilities.

``We auction off the evidence,'' Harry said softly. ``We `Jackie O' the bloody glove, footprint casts, those socks they found in his bedroom.''

``The county of Los Angeles (could) get Christie's or Sotheby's or Butterfield & Butterfield to sell real, live pieces of the `trial of the century' to collectors worldwide.

``After all, what prince, potentate or plunger worth his reputation would hesitate to bid on limited editions of courtroom history?

``If you think,'' Harry added, ``Mrs. Onassis' costume pearls and an old presidential humidor had value, what about mounted-in-glass blood and fiber samples gathered by storied investigators Fung and Mazzola?

``What about,'' asked Harry, ``the knit cap?''

``I rest my case.''

And several hours later, trying to drive around the potholes of downtown L.A., I thought about the millions we spent after a young mother and young man were slain at knifepoint. Fortunes devoted to prosecuting and defending the faded hero now judged responsible for their killings. Fortunes earned because of our hunger to know more about life and death on a couple of gilded blocks of West Los Angeles. Millions of dollars pushed across retail counters by people better versed in Simpson lore than in the comings and goings of their own children.

And there's more. The cutlery deal, if it ever happens. A ``Fresh Juice'' beverage line, according to reports about possible O.J. business plans. Such are the sidebars to a saga in which Nicole Simpson's father sold photographs of his motherless grandchildren for $20,000.

So I know it's unseemly, this notion of attempting to replenish public coffers with the remnants of a murder case. But some estimates put our country up to $10 million in the hole after both Simpson trials. The very same county whose brand-new, state-of-the-art jail stood vacant for months until last-ditch creative accounting opened its doors.

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, heirs to a legendary American fortune, didn't need the millions raised by auctioning their late mother's possessions.

Los Angeles County, where we wonder, each year, if our flagship public hospital will be shuttered for good, can't afford not to at least consider giving people of great means what they might want.

My friend Harry is right. Dignity, at least as it applies to the Simpson matter, stopped being an issue years ago.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--2) Auction may be the answer: What true fan of the O.J. Simpson case could pass up DNA testing like that inspected by Judge Lance Ito, above, or the picture of Simpson's cut finger, right, submitted into evidence.