DISORDER IN THE COURT

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Though Michael Viner is making a mint off the O.J. Simpson trial, he likes to think he is taking the high road. As the owner, with his actress wife Deborah Raffin, of Dove Audio Inc., Viner has so far signed up four books about the case: Faye Resnick's Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted, which has sold about a million copies in book and audio form; I Know You Want to Tell Me, But I Really Don't Want to Know, a spoof of Simpson's own literary efforts; a work-in-progress by embattled Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman; and The Private Diary of an O.J. Juror by dismissed juror Michael Knox. But Viner, who was subpoenaed by Judge Lance Ito last week to answer accusations that the Knox book reveals too much about the Simpson jurors, insists he is performing a public service. The dismissed juror's memoir, which will be out at the end of the month, "could end up changing the jury system in terms of sequestration," Viner claims. Besides, he adds, look at all the books he has turned down. "We've been offered 25 O.J. projects. It's frightening. We've passed."

Viner is hardly alone in his efforts to profit from the Simpson case. Starting with the mass-market paperback O.J. Simpson: American Hero, American Tragedy (Pinnacle), which materialized about two weeks after the murders, a total of 12 books related to the case have landed in stores to date. Some half-dozen more-including a memoir by Johnnie Cochran's ex-wife, Barbara Cochran Berry (Basic Books), and works by regular trial watchers Dominick Dunne and Joe McGinniss (both published by Crown) and Jeffrey Toobin (Random House)-are still to come. How much more will the market bear? Says Thomas J. McCormack, chairman and ceo of St. Martin's Press, which produced the "quickie" volume Fallen Hero (250,000 copies sold): "the number of confirmed [trial] addicts is immense. Even people who would never consider themselves addicts buy the books."

Some books, such as O.J.'s Legal Pad (Villard) -- which has sold about a quarter-million copies in the three weeks since its publication -- provide little more than good fun on the sidelines of the trial, but other efforts, far from being a gloss on events, may be altering their course. For instance, Resnick's book gave the prosecution insight into the former football star's possessiveness, but to the extent that Resnick was seen to be capitalizing on a tragedy, it also tainted her as a possible witness. A new book, Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, which has 900,000 copies in print, has prompted the prosecution to subpoena 17 hours of taped interviews made available by author Marc Eliot to determine whether Kaelin perjured himself. And one of the latest jurors to be dismissed, Francine Florio-Bunten, got in trouble with Judge Ito in part because of charges, which she has denied, that she was meeting with a literary agent. Although the California legislature attempted to end this chaos by making it a misdemeanor for any juror to profit from a criminal case until 90 days after the conclusion of the trial, that statute has already been successfully challenged by Dove, which recently convinced the courts that Michael Knox's First Amendment rights were being violated.

And free expression is only one of many good reasons, publishers say, to build the O.J. oeuvre. Pinnacle executive editor Paul Dinas insists that both American Hero (500,000 copies sold) and the company's next entry, Clifford L. Linedecker's Marcia Clark: Her Private Trials and Public Triumphs (380,000 printed), have genuine educational value. "A lot of the information you get from these O.J. books helps people understand the legal process, the investigative process and things like dna testing," he explains. Eliot, who received a mid-six-figure advance from Harper Paperbacks for the Kato Kaelin book, says the Simpson story is just too juicy for readers to pass up: "There's lesbianism, other men, sex, drugs," says Eliot. "It's got everything everyone wants, and it's real." And Little, Brown, which paid O.J. Simpson $1 million to pull together some self-serving letters into I Want to Tell You (650,000 printed), points the finger elsewhere. Says Little, Brown ceo Charles E. Hayward: "Of the total dollars generated by this trial, if you stacked up magazines, newspapers, television and radio, my guess is books would come in a distant last." And this, in the end, is the same argument parents have traditionally found so hard to counter: all the other kids are doing it too.

--REPORTED BY SHARON E. EPPERSON/NEW YORK AND JAMES WILLWERTH/LOS ANGELES

With reporting by SHARON E. EPPERSON/NEW YORK AND JAMES WILWERTH/LOS ANGELES