Court Reform

Arturo Bermejo Hernandez knows all too well that Mexico's judicial system needs fixing. His two sons are doing six-year sentences in Mexico City's maximum-security prison after a trial that no one in his family knew about, much less understood.

There's a saying legal reformers toss around often these days, in gloomy conversations marked by sighs and fretful frowns. "Nothing costs the state more," they say, "than a cheap judicial system." They do not need to elaborate. For five years now, Russia has been trying to cast off the repressive legal system it inherited from the Soviet Union. Politicians talk of forging a "law-based government" with a truly independent judiciary.

Were you ever molested as a child? Do you think violence against homosexuals is on the rise? What do you think of Playboy magazine? Why aren't there more black golfers, tennis players and corporation presidents? Those are the kinds of wide-ranging, deeply probing and often difficult questions that lawyers have asked--or sought to ask--prospective jurors as trial counsel decide whom to remove from the panel because of bias or viewpoints that may harm their case.

File away everything you've been learning about federal vouchers for private education. Bone up on charter schools. Stop worrying about the pros and cons of environmental deregulation. Get ready for green taxes. With Democrats moving into the White House for the first time in 12 years, the policy debate in Washington is about to be realigned.

The fire that trapped telephone worker Michael Grammer in a Costa Mesa manhole 2 1/2 years ago burned him over 70% of his body--and plunged his family into poverty. Grammer, 37, and his wife, Vicki, have had to care for their four young sons on $336 monthly that the injured cable splicer received from workers' compensation. But last week, as a jury was deliberating in his negligence lawsuit against Pacific Bell, the telephone company agreed to pay Grammer $1 million.

You don't expect defense attorneys to sympathize with the prosecution, but a lot of them are privately hoping that O.J. Simpson is convicted. That unusual twist is prompted by the strong possibility that a Simpson acquittal or a hung jury will give unbeatable momentum to a proposal that will change the way criminal trials are decided: It would permit verdicts with less than unanimous votes by juries. Momentum seemed to be gaining Wednesday when Gov.

Los Angeles County court officials announced Tuesday that they will adopt a system requiring most prospective jurors to report for jury duty only for one day unless they are selected for a trial. The change, to begin in May and be in effect in all courts by the end of 1999, represents a reversal of an earlier decision by county court authorities. It will give citizens significant relief from what is widely regarded as the most onerous of civic responsibilities.

They call him the Indiana Jones of the Chapare. Godofredo Reinicke has intervened in confrontations between anti-drug commandos and coca farmers, sped to a hospital trying to revive a baby fatally overcome by tear gas and performed an impromptu autopsy on a casualty of police bullets in front of an angry crowd. Reinicke, an anesthesiologist turned human rights investigator, helps bring justice to the jungle. The Chapare jungle is the center of Bolivia's U.S.-sponsored war on cocaine.

The summons to jury duty seemed to Richard Olvera like a harmless call to civic service--until his uncle warned him of perils lurking in the Downtown Criminal Courts Building. "If you vote guilty, the [convicted] guy will get revenge," Olvera said his uncle predicted. The more Olvera thought about it, the more sense his uncle made.

As the simple cartoon begins, a sleeping figure resembling a crash dummy is seen from above, lying in bed. The man suddenly awakens as the first of eight gunshots is fired in his direction. Walking down a corridor, the gray figure is hit by shots in the arm, the chest and finally the head. He crumples and falls to the floor. The three-minute color segment may not win any awards as entertainment.