Talk about instant gratification.
The Los Angeles Times recently invited NICAR to town to put me and nine other reporters, editors and researchers through a week-long computer-assisted journalism boot camp. The goal: To lighten the load on the paper's overworked in-house computer gurus by introducing at least a few newsroom types to the rudiments of transferring files and analyzing statistics on a spreadsheet or database program.
Our mission-besides trying to complete a game of computer Solitaire during class breaks or when the instructor wasn't looking-was to overcome the fear of ASCII, DOS, ANSI and a handful of other tortured acronyms, and to eventually integrate the powerful tool of computer analysis into daily reporting or projects.
But no sooner had I walked back into the newsroom the next Monday morning, then my (gulp) newly acquired "expertise" was put to the test. And on no less a story than the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
The judge and attorneys on the case were close to making the first cut of the jury pool, and my editor was eager to turn a quick profile of those still in the running to determine the fate of the Hall of Fame running back.
All we had to go on were three pages of responses each member of the jury pool on questionnaires about their backgrounds, impressions about the case, what they had learned from the media and their own experiences with crime. Under normal circumstances, we'd either eyeball the responses or tally up a few categories-race, sex, educational background--and paint a broad-brush portrait of the panel. But the NICAR training helped us to dig deeper, be more precise and do more extensive comparison. We set this up by using the Microsoft Access program. After looking at the three-page forms, I decided to create about 30 fields to capture each juror's age, race, sex, educational level and home city, as well as key responses about media exposure, attitudes and personal habits that could be represented by symbols or a simple yes or no. Thus, I recorded whether each watched the infamous chase of the white Bronco and for how long; heard anything about Nicole Brown Simpson's previous 911 call to police alleging O.J.'s domestic abuse; had met Simpson in person; and had ever seen him play football.
I recorded what their friends said about Simpson (guilty, not guilty, no opinion); what each potential juror thought about Simpson; whether each had experienced domestic abuse, resorted to domestic abuse or thought it should be treated differently than other assaults. I noted how each felt about discrimination against African Americans in Southern California (not serious, somewhat serious, very serious, etc.); whether each had been a victim of crime and the worst type of crime; who owned knives; who enjoyed detective novels or television shows; and who dated people of a different race. With a data researcher reading them off, it took me hours to type in the responses but we were able to have all 92 files in the Access database by about 4:15 p.m. I kept two files- those who made the cut and those who didn't- and kept adjusting them almost instantly as the judge and attorneys made their decisions. For the next 45 minutes, it was just a series of frantic Access drills-group by, count, descending order, difference divided by the first number - for each category of interest. By deadline, we could say that 61 percent of the jurors who had not been eliminated were black, 25 percent were white; 19 percent said they experienced domestic violence at home, and many more saw Simpson at his worst during the Bronco chase than ever saw him in his glory playing football. The effort on that first day enhanced our story and provided fodder for the graphic. Yet the biggest payoff came on Tuesday, when I used the database to perform a different analysis. Rather than concentrate on the jurors who made the cut, I decided to compare those who were still in the running with those who were weeded out. At first, I intended to look at characteristics such as race and geography of the two different pools when-thanks to Access-something unexpected jumped right out at us.
Each panelist was asked to express an opinion about the reliability of DNA testing (somewhat reliable, very reliable, etc.), and the numbers showed that 39 percent of those who had been excused were likely to believe in it compared to 10 percent who remained in the pool.
Since the prosecution's case rests overwhelmingly on DNA tests linking Simpson's blood to the crime scene, this seemed to be a significant difference and it became the lead of my front-page story the next day. A jury consultant I interviewed underscored the significance further for our readers by saying that the effect was a "plus for the defense because there aren't people who have already made up their minds that it [DNA testing] is irrefutable evidence."
The story also noted other important differences that seemed to favor the defense in the jury pool. More than 80 percent of the rejected jurors had been crime victims and 31 percent had experienced domestic violence themselves - percentages much greater than those left in the jury pool. The second-day story was well received and it couldn't have been possible without the NICAR training. While it required far less knowledge and skills than the ambitious computer-assisted investigative projects featured in recent Uplink newsletters, it nonetheless shows how far a little computer work can go.
-Ralph Frammolino can be reached by e-mail at frammol@news.latimes.com.