Swift Sword of Justice

By Jill Smolowe

This season's replacement soap opera for the Buttafuocos of Long Island is the Bobbitts of Manassas. There is Lorena Bobbitt, the Ecuadorian-born manicurist who could go to prison for 20 years if she is found guilty of what the lawyers call "malicious wounding." Then there is John Wayne Bobbitt, who, although acquitted of marital sexual assault last week, may never, as they say, be whole again. Despite the bloodletting, the Bobbitts are less Greek tragedy than downmarket War of the Roses. The onetime bouncer and the struggling beautician had been trapped with each other under the same roof and over the same barrel -- until last June 23.

During the astonishingly brief two-day trial last week, it seemed as though Lorena and John were describing scenes from two different marriages. Lorena, 24, charged that John often raped her. "He told me forced sex excited him," she testified tearfully. Asked if he had ever forced Lorena to have sex, John, 26, mumbled, "No, I did not." More specifically, Lorena charged that on June 23 John penetrated her against her will. John recalled that after he crawled into bed that night, "she put her knees up around me" and draped her arms across his back before he drifted off to sleep. What came next seemed to be the only point on which both Bobbitts could agree: Lorena seized a kitchen knife and sliced off John's penis. (It has since been surgically reattached, though it will not be known for some time whether John will regain his full sexual powers.)

Long before the trial got under way, many Americans reached heatedly personal conclusions. Some of Lorena's supporters embellished the V-for- victory sign with a scissorlike motion of their fingers. Men crossed their legs delicately and condemned her as an avenging harridan. But when the case was stripped dry of emotional content, the contradictions and inconsistencies in testimony left more than a reasonable doubt as to what transpired in the hours before Lorena emasculated John. In just four hours the jury rendered the verdict: not guilty.

On the stand Lorena insisted rape had driven her to rage. But on June 23, she had told the police in stilted English, "He always have orgasm, and he doesn't wait for me to have orgasm. He's selfish." John's defense attorney Gregory Murphy noted, "That doesn't sound like the statement of a woman who has been raped." Lorena also claimed that John tore off her underpants; one expert said the 8-inch tear in the undergarment indicated the use of force, and another countered that the rip had been start ed with scissors. The jury noted that Lorena didn't scream during the alleged rape and that she showed no signs of forcible entry or sexual activity that day.

Unless Lorena strikes a plea bargain, prosecutors, who relied on her testimony in trying John, will have to cast him as a star witness to try to convict Lorena. Ironically, pros ecutor Paul Ebert's failure to convict John will make this easier, since it weakens her claim that her act was justified. Dur ing his closing argument last week, Ebert signaled that he could parcel out his disdain with an even hand: "You might say perhaps that these two people deserve each other."

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Manassas