11 Simpson Jurors Spend Day in Laguna

LAGUNA BEACH — Saturday’s secret lunch took six weeks of planning and a clandestine scouting mission by sheriff’s deputies.

Restaurant employees were told only that the guests at the three tables overlooking the ocean and happily munching on calamari were members of a VIP charity group.

And so with little fanfare and no paparazzi to be seen, the O.J. Simpson jury did Laguna Beach on Saturday, strolling on beachfront walkways and browsing at artwork during the group’s farthest jaunt from downtown Los Angeles.

“I thought they were in really good spirits and very congenial,” said Lee Healy, a spokeswoman for El Torito Restaurant, which owns Las Brisas restaurant where the jury had lunch.

Healy said the outing was the brainchild of her mother, a Simpson trial junkie.

“She lives in Los Angeles and I brought her down for Sunday brunch about two months ago,” Healy said. “She said, ‘Oh, it is so lovely here. I bet the Simpson jury would really enjoy this.’ I thought, ‘Hmm. She’s had some good ideas in the past.’ ”

So Healy dropped Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito a line suggesting the field trip.

On Thursday, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and a sergeant came down to scope out the restaurant and surrounding area, Healy said.

Sheriff’s officials declined to discuss the outing Saturday, referring all inquiries to the judge.

On Saturday, 11 jurors joined three plainclothes deputies for the trip, leaving their hotel at 9:45 a.m. and arriving in Laguna Beach at about 11 a.m., Healy said.

Jurors arrived an hour before their lunch reservation, and strolled under cloudy skies along the grassy paths above the ocean, where artists sit and paint.

“They were nice people, normal, nice people. They came and enjoyed themselves,” said Fouad Ziady, the restaurant’s manager. “We took care of them. There was not much talking, but they were getting along. They were walking together, talking together, like employees of a company.”

After lunch, the sequestered jurors wandered down to Laguna Village to shop and at 4 p.m. “they piled into the vans,” Healy said.

Healy said she held her secret until the last van pulled out of the Las Brisas parking lot.

Of the 12 jurors and two remaining alternates, three did not attend Saturday’s gathering, Healy said, because one had a medical appointment, one had a family engagement and the other one just didn’t want to go. Of the 11 who did go, 10 were women.

During their marriage, Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson had a summer home in South Laguna. They were once regulars at the restaurant’s bar, Healy said.