Leaked information continued to plague Simpson trial judge Lance Ito, who wanted desperately to have a relatively uncontaminated pool of prospective jurors available for the jury selection process, which was still weeks away on this date twenty years ago. One move Ito considered was to issue a restrictive order, commonly called a gag order, which would order the parties to the case and their staff to refrain from making public statements or to talk to the media about the case. Ito probably knew what criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, who represented such notables as celebrities Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder, and (subsequently) convicted murderer Scott Peterson, once noted: Lawyers, particularly prosecutors, in a court case can easily have surrogates, such as those in law enforcement, pass information along to the news media that the lawyers want to make known. Leaks also dominated my daily haiku. Here’s the one I wrote on Aug. 30, 1994.
To gag or not to,
Will an order stop the leaks?
It won’t solve the case.
Anatomy of a Trial blog 