A SIMPSON REMAKE

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Last month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki ruled that no cameras will be allowed in his courtroom when the O.J. Simpson wrongful-death lawsuit commences this week. Not only that, but the attorneys in this civil case--unlike their loose-lipped counterparts who starred in the criminal proceedings--have been muzzled by a strict gag order. Courtroom sketch artists will be permitted to ply their trade, sort of: they may not draw during the proceedings and so must produce their sketches from memory after leaving court each day. And Fujisaki, who has a reputation for take-no-prisoners briskness, will not read any motions from the attorneys that are more than five pages long. "History will repeat itself," Fujisaki noted in a written order, "unless the court acts to prevent it."

Still, despite the judge's best efforts, much about the Sequel of the Century will seem like deja vu. John Q. Kelly and Daniel M. Petrocelli, lead lawyers for the families of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, who hope to hold O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths, expect to admit some 2,000 pieces of evidence, including the bloody glove. Nearly 350 witnesses will be called, including Kato Kaelin and Mark Fuhrman, though the judge has ruled that Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden will not testify. Both sides estimate that it will take at least four months to try the case. Then again, Simpson I was expected to last only six months, not the nine months it ultimately devoured.

Thanks to the criminal trial and its endless postmortems, the attorneys can already identify some of the potential land mines in the case and have been filing motions to defuse them. The plaintiffs' lawyers want to exclude all testimony regarding possible evidence tampering and racist cops. Simpson's attorney, Robert C. Baker, has moved to exclude anything pertaining to violence between Nicole and O.J. Both motions are likely to fail, and a controversial new California law, which permits statements of crime victims to be admitted in court, will open the door to a dramatic reading of Nicole's diary, in which she describes Simpson's beating her. Those entries were excluded as hearsay during the criminal proceedings.

What no one can adequately prepare for is the trial's main event: the testimony of Simpson himself, who under civil rules is obliged to take the stand. The former football star has undergone a grueling nine days of depositions, enduring 248 questions in a row about how he cut his hand in his Chicago hotel room the night of the murders. Though Simpson made no obvious missteps, he was not a model witness. At one point during pretrial depositions, Simpson ignored several of Baker's admonishments to be quiet. Finally Baker, a veteran civil lawyer who specializes in medical-malpractice defense, shouted, "What am I, a potted plant?"

Other new faces on the witness stand will include Nicole's friend Faye Resnick, who wrote a book about the tempestuous relationship between Simpson and Nicole and whose testimony is expected to open the door to further mutual character assassination and details of the couple's party-hearty life-styles; and former playmate Paula Barbieri, who will testify that she broke up with Simpson the morning of June 12, 1994, perhaps providing the spark for an explosion of rage that night.

Fred Goldman, father of the murdered Ronald, has said this trial is less about money than it is about "a search for justice." That's a good thing, for even if the plaintiffs are victorious, Simpson, with an IRS lien on his Rockingham estate and unpaid legal bills from the first trial, won't be able to pay much in damages. And despite a civil trial's more relaxed standards for a guilty verdict--jurors need find only that a "preponderance" of the evidence points to guilt, and only nine of 12 jurors need agree--such a verdict is by no means certain, even though Santa Monica has far more whites in its jury pool than downtown Los Angeles has. TIME has learned that a mock trial recently conducted by the plaintiffs' attorneys resulted in a nearly even split among the jurors. The issue that again saved Simpson: doubts about the reliability of the blood evidence.

Meanwhile, Simpson continues to live in a purgatory of presumptive guilt, heckled when he goes out, unable to make a living and fighting to retrieve a semblance of family life. On the civil trial's opening day, Simpson will be at a hearing in Orange County, trying to regain custody of his children Sydney, 10, and Justin, 8, who live with Nicole's parents. Although the records in that case have been sealed, Sydney is reported to be afraid of her father and resists going on her regular visits with him. The children say Simpson stays up all night watching television, and he has been seen wandering around the house in his underwear, cursing Nicole's sister Denise. Orange County commissioner Thomas Schulte, who is presiding over the custody hearing, believes that Simpson's household is not the best place for the children, and he has told both sides he will consider placing Sydney and Justin with a third party, even in a foster home, if the two sides do not compromise. That will be hard to do if they end up ripping each other apart every day in a Santa Monica courtroom.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles