Neufeld talks too fast.
Court reporters can’t keep up.
Ito picks on him.
4/26/95
Defense lawyer Peter Neufeld — yes, the same Peter Neufeld featured in blog posts last November and December when I noted the bi-coastal kerfluffle he caused by double-booking court appearances — made the news again in April because of his -fast-talking ways. Here’s what I said about it in the audio journal I kept during the Simpson trial:
“Judge Ito had asked Neufeld to slow down a little and said something to the effect that with the pace and his Brooklyn accent the court reporters are having difficulty keeping up. So that was immediately turned inside out that Judge Ito was making fun of Neufeld’s accent and in fact, I believe he prefaced his remark with ‘I don’t mean to single you out, Mr. Neufeld, but we need to slow down the pace. The pace that you are going and your Brooklyn accent, the court reporters are having difficulty keeping up’ or words to that effect. So, the headlines were something about, ‘Ito says lawyer talks funny’ – like he was really kind of making fun of his Brooklyn accent in the story.”
I had noted his accent earlier in my journal.
“… not only does he have a New York accent but its an accentuated New York accent so he pronounces her [witness Andrea Massola] name Ms. Mazzoler instead of Mazzola and he pronounces words like saw ‘sawr’. He has an extra vowel in his vocabulary. Instead of a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y. It is a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y and r!”
It seems like I was as grasping as the news media for a scrap of something to write/talk about, but at least my excuse was I had a long commute, which is when I talked into my tape recorder about events of the day.
Anatomy of a Trial blog 