Celebrities on trial:You think the Simpson jury...

Celebrities on trial:

You think the Simpson jury was friendly toward the defendant? Veteran Beverly Hills attorney Paul Caruso says he rounded up an even more sympathetic twelve-some the time he defended the late actor Audie Murphy.

Murphy was accused of firing a gun at a dog trainer who had allegedly made a pass at his girlfriend.

But Caruso knew that the actor was the most heavily decorated soldier of World War II.

“I had 12 World War II veterans in the jury box,” said Caruso, 75. The attorney also blew up a copy of the actor’s Congressional Medal of Honor certificate for everyone to see.

Murphy was acquitted--but not right away.

The first vote was 11-1, although the issue was not Murphy’s guilt or innocence. Caruso said the jurors had voted to delay announcing their verdict long enough to get a free lunch out of the county.

THOSE INITIALS: We caught the Audrey Hepburn movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” the other day, hoping for a respite from the news. So what do we find? One of the characters, a Hollywood agent played by Martin Balsam, is named O.J. He represents Holly Golightly, who is suspected of being an accessory to drug-smugglers.

Our favorite line of the movie, spoken to Golightly, is:

“O.J. thinks it’d be a good idea if you stayed out of sight for a while.”

PAVED WITH BIG MACS: Rick Straube of Palmdale says that from the look of a recent photo in The Times Valley edition, “Denny’s and McDonald’s are on the highway to hell.”

Richard Cowell of Valencia, meanwhile, wonders if the crane in the picture was “adding an ‘Always Open’ sign to ‘Hell’ to keep up with Denny’s.”

L.A. HAS A FUTURE: Part of the adventure of being an Angeleno is the uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring. That’s why we’re always consulting sci-fi novels for answers. We can report that L.A. still exists in Poul Anderson’s “The Stars Are Also Fire,” which takes place several hundred years from now.

And L.A.’s name is unchanged (unlike the movie “Demolition Man,” in which L.A. is re-christened San Angeles, or the novel “Dredd,” in which the City of Angels becomes Mega-City 2).

True, L.A. has seen better days in Anderson’s novel. The largely deserted city is described as “a monstrous wasteland, kilometer after kilometer of ruins,” including “a freeway interchange, partly collapsed in some past earthquake.”

But L.A. still has some wild night life. At the Xibalba bistro, the music is loud and a visitor who has flown in from the moon is approached by a hooker who is half-woman and half-animal--”she smiled at him with great yellow eyes and sharp teeth. Her plumy tail arched up above the delicate features and tumbling black mane.”

No surprise there. We thought we saw a creature matching that description on Hollywood Boulevard not long ago.

miscelLAny It’s amazing how much stuff gets dumped on the freeway, isn’t it? KNX radio’s Dona Dower reported that traffic was held up the other day after a boat fell onto the 405.