S01.E04: 100% Not Guilty

[Chaos Theory]

It's weird watching everything Marcia Clark does and knowing how horribly wrong it goes. It seems like every move she made was the wrong one even when it looked right like putting Darden on her team. It just made black people hate them more. Honestly I don't think there was any way they could have won the case once the book came out and the jury was picked and considering the time period. She was always going to lose. She just lost really really badly.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[FuriousStyles]

This is another reason why Nicole was so vilified IMO. Many black women felt that Nicole "stole" OJ from his black wife and family. Many black women also felt that had OJ killed a black woman, there would have never been as much media coverage of the trial as there was; I know I felt that way at that time, still do.

Yeah I have mixed feelings about the last part. I dont know for sure if there would have been the same level of media attention if Nicole were black and I dont know if there wouldnt have been. I think OJ's celebrity as well as the brutality of the murders played a big role in why it became such a national/international circus. The interracial aspect I think was secondary.

[DangerousMinds]

It's weird watching everything Marcia Clark does and knowing how horribly wrong it goes. It seems like every move she made was the wrong one even when it looked right like putting Darden on her team. It just made black people hate them more. Honestly I don't think there was any way they could have won the case once the book came out and the jury was picked and considering the time period. She was always going to lose. She just lost really really badly.

I have a hard time believing any of those jurors bought and read Faye Resnick's book though.

[Umbelina]

Potential jurors.

 

You didn't have to read it, all of the outrageous parts were on the news, print, radio, tv, magazines...everywhere.  You would have had to be a hermit to not know about "the Nicole parts."

 

No one gave a damn about Faye's childhood betwetting.

[Ina123]

I was not watching very carefully. Was anything said about Ron being there because Nicole had left her sunglasses at the restaurant and he was coming by to return them? I am sure this was part of the story. Did they cover that?

[Ina123]

I have never known anyone that expressed negativity toward Nicole. I cried when i heard the first verdict. All I could think about were those poor victims, incredibly brutally murdered.

Me either. We all thought she was beautiful and OJ was scum. I never heard any remarks against her. She was a battered woman and we all had empathy. How can you listen to the 911 tapes and not? We never thought of Ron and Nicole as anything but victim's of OJ.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I was not watching very carefully. Was anything said about Ron being there because Nicole had left her sunglasses at the restaurant and he was coming by to return them? I am sure this was part of the story. Did they cover that?

It wasn't Nicole's sunglasses, but her mother's glasses he was returning. And no, so far no mention of how or why Ron was there.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Marcia made serious errors in judgment that caused her to lose the case as soon as she accepted the jury panel. Clearly, she miscalculated the anger still present from Rodney King or that black men had been unfairly profiled and charged by the LAPD for decades.

She was also completely off on the expectation that Black women (especially divorced ones) would automatically sympathize with Nicole. Ditto comments upthread, plenty saw Nicole as yet another blonde White woman who "stole" one of "their" men. You have to wonder where Marcia got her assumption from (I hesitate to call it "White privilege" since it doesn't seem like much of that was working for her at the time) and whether she had talked to even one Black woman personally.

 

Man, it's hard to decide who was more clueless, Marcia Clark, particularly with her jury selection plan, or Bob Shapiro about pretty much every thing relating to race and race relations.

[Inquisitionist]

 You have to wonder where Marcia got her assumption from (I hesitate to call it "White privilege" since it doesn't seem like much of that was working for her at the time) and whether she had talked to even one Black woman personally.

 

Do you mean whether she had talked to black women about the OJ matter or in general?  Because I think an earlier episode indicated she had received personal expressions of gratitude from black women after successfully prosecuting cases of domestic violence committed against them.

[Joimiaroxeu]

About the OJ matter. But even then she must have had her head buried in the sand and I don't know how she could have gotten that so wrong.

[Epeolatrix]

plenty saw Nicole as yet another blonde White woman who "stole" one of "their" men.

While there are women who think this, is there anything from an actual juror who believed this? I see it everywhere as a common assumption, but not from anyone with an informed view (a juror, a reporter who interviewed a juror, etc).

[Joimiaroxeu]

While there are women who think this, is there anything from an actual juror who believed this? I see it everywhere as a common assumption, but not from anyone with an informed view (a juror, a reporter who interviewed a juror, etc).

Who knows whether any of the actual jurors thought this but I'd have been/still would be shocked if any of them openly admitted it. That would make them look like they let a double-murderer off partially due to their jealousy and envy. This was prior to the advent of shameless social media use. I think at the time most people still would've been too proud to show that face in public, especially under "official" circumstances.

[Crs97]

My discomfort with Mr. Goldman can be summed up in the documentary I watched in which he read the last paragraph from his book about Ron.  In the midst of the beautiful tribute, he has a sentence about how much his current wife misses Ron, which includes "who has been more of a mother to you than your biological mother ever was."  My reaction was, "Wait, what?"  Why would you put that as part of your ending tribute?  Why do you feel the need to trash his mother in print?  I don't care if she was terrible; she is the reason Ron lived to begin with.  You could have praised your wife in a million different ways without even mentioning Ron's biological mother.  I can sympathize with his terrible loss without admiring him.

 

Did anyone else think "Flashback of Rachel on Friends" when they saw Kim Goldman?  Also, he had another younger sister (half-sister, right?).  Why do we only see Kim?

[Umbelina]

The other kids belonged to his wife.  They were not blood related, though they all certainly thought of themselves as brother and sister.  They met more as teenagers, not children.

 

The story with Ron and Kim's blood mother is complicated.  It's quite true that she had almost no contact with her children for most of their lives, really, since Kim was in diapers.  She'd talked to Ron a few times when he was an adult, because he reestablished contact.  Then she came, quite literally, out of the woodwork, and added her name and her lawyer to the people vs OJ in the civil trial.  It definitely had the appearance of just looking to cash in, and it really made Fred and Kim sick.  I don't think his mother attended the criminal trial, or ever even sent either of her children a birthday card, or Christmas gift.  I hesitate to judge her, but it's very odd that a father was granted full custody back then, very rare.  She never visited her children.

[Simon Boccanegra]

She'd talked to Ron a few times when he was an adult, because he reestablished contact.

 

And the last time before his death was in 1992, when he called to tell her he was going to be on a television show. Her husband told him not to call again. Sad.  

[FozzyBear]

Yeah, it's strange to think of it this way, but Marcia's problem was that she was not a racist. She was colorblind, and it bit her in the ass. She thought people were people, and that all people would care most about justice, regardless of the color of their skin. She didn't consider different life experiences, or agendas, she just looked at the evidence.

She should have been more aware of the Rodney King effect, and she should have questioned Darden more if/when he really did try to hint to her that lots of people wanted OJ acquitted. She should have listened to the jury consultant about "gold digger" and the resentment AA female jurors had toward a white woman landing OJ as a husband. She was naive.

Ehhh, Marcia Clarke wasn't so colorblind as to prevent her from trotting Chris Darden out every time they had to address a possible racial issue. I'm not saying that she didn't like and admire him or even that she was a racist, but it did seem like he got handed an awful lot of "black" issues. I think Marcia was more a case of being shocked anyone would bring up race...unless she wanted to do it.

[DonitsYum]

 

The show continues to knock it out of the park with casting. I heard Connie Britton for about two minutes before she disappeared into Faye Resnick. I can't get over what this show has done with these actors -- it's like they're completely embodying their roles. So fascinating.

 

One thing you can give Ryan Murphy, he gets the best out of his actors and makes excellent casting choices.  That's why the casting of Cuba Gooding is so puzzling to me.  He's doing his best but he just doesn't fit.

[SFoster21]

He addresses that in his book. It happened, it gutted him, and it was frequent.

At the time, I could NOT stand him, not because he was an Uncle Tom (btw, read the book sometime; Uncle Tom kills Simon Legree), but because he appeared lazy, incompetent and apologetic. Crappy trial lawyer.

[WescottF1]

I actually unknowingly talked to Fred Goldman on the phone once.  In the nineties I worked for a large health insurance company and Fred was a policyholder.  He called to make some changes and I was so focused at the task at hand I didn't realize who he was.  After the call ended, I looked at the name and since I had a bunch of his information, I just cross-referenced a couple things on Google and sure enough, it was him.  

 

I do remember him being quite pleasant as most of our callers were usually pissed at the Devil Insurance Company for something.  Not sure what I would have said to him had I recognized him off the bat, but hopefully would have found tactful way to compliment him on his tenacity in the face of what happened.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

On 3/2/2016 at 3:08 AM, Ina123 said:

I was not watching very carefully. Was anything said about Ron being there because Nicole had left her sunglasses at the restaurant and he was coming by to return them? I am sure this was part of the story. Did they cover that?

 

On 3/2/2016 at 5:06 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

It wasn't Nicole's sunglasses, but her mother's glasses he was returning. And no, so far no mention of how or why Ron was there.

It was mentioned in the first episode right before Marcia received the crime scene photos:

Was [Ron] [Nicole's] boyfriend?
It's unclear. He was returning glasses that were left in the restaurant by her mother.
"By her mother." That sounds ridiculous.
I agree. I've never heard of a restaurant that offers that service.
In any case, we can assume that the killer walked in on the two of them or that Goldman walked in on the killing.