S01.E07: Conspiracy Theories

[Kromm]

Having seen the real actual glove trying on footage a mere few weeks ago (when I saw the Investigative Discovery documentary that everyone here should watch), I gotta say it's always puzzled me how ANYONE could fall for it. But also how totally Darden got played (and how dumb Ito was as well) for not only allowing this in open court, but having no follow up to examine or discredit it.

Last night I reached into my winterwear drawer and re-tried something I first remember doing back at the time of the trial.

• Take a leather glove. One that FITS you (unlike the one they had OJ try, which may have shrunk due to being dried out). The purpose of using one that fits is to make the demonstration even more effective.
• Pull the glove on to the point where your fingers JUST start to hit the finger holes and stop right at that point.
• TIGHTEN your fingers--press inward with all of them at the same time. You'll know it's enough when the tendons in your wrist start to really hurt.
• While they're tightened, hold your arm up, as OJ did, and make a show of how the glove won't go any further. Because it's true--it won't. You can literally, quite visibly, yank HARD on the glove from the outside with your other hand and as long as you're also pressing those fingers together it won't move.
• That's with a glove with stiffer/thicker leather and a short cuff. But even with a thinner glove, all you really have to do is push two fingers together so they both are guided into one finger hole. That's not what OJ did, I think, because it wouldn't have been necessary (and it would risk people seeing a bulge in the glove), but the point is that it's SO easy to manipulate a glove not fitting--there are several ways--that ANY attempt should have been suspicious.
• THEN add in the fact that the glove WAS dried out, meaning it both was stiffer (easier to brace your hand inside) as well as potentially actually a smaller shrunken size. 
   

The fact that nobody stood there and asked OJ under oath if he was positioning his hand to make the glove going on harder/impossible is the real travesty. Darden could have done it. Even Ito could have, under his own authority. 

Edited March 16, 2016 by Kromm

[toodywoody]

What I remember most about OJ trying on the gloves was that -- even if he weren't the murderer, ha -- these are STILL the gloves worn by the man who stabbed his kids' mother to death, a woman he supposedly always loved. And he's mugging for the cameras and the jury like that. Zero regard for his ex-wife's blood all over these gloves.

That's what MC said bothered her about it. She also said the gloves were frozen or something twice, also making them smaller. So they should have said, hold on the reason they are smaller is because of them being frozen and soaked in blood. So..... let's do a demonstration with the same gloves that are new and see if he could fit into them without latex gloves. And I always have trouble putting on gloves, no matter if they are new or I've had them. They are gloves, not mittens, they are meant to be tight

Edited March 16, 2016 by toodywoody

[mattie0808]

How were Dershowitz and his students watching live and able to freeze the screen? TiVo wasn't around back then, was it? That took me completely out of the scene. Also, did he really have the direct fax line to the courtroom?

 

Didn't he just mute it, not pause it?

 

I assumed he faxed it to someone who worked for Johnny, someone nearby, but not actually *in* the courtroom when he received the fax, and he ran it in. As it seemed every single witness took FOREVER to get through, he probably had a little time to get it to Johnnie before he finished his cross of the cop.

Edited March 16, 2016 by mattie0808

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

No Glove, No Love On American Crime Story
Nothing's a good fit on the latest episode, except the acting and your eyeballs. Sarah D. Bunting made a list.

[Daisy]

The scene with Kardashian and Cowlings where they're staring at each other over the garment bag was CRAZY good.  You could read on their faces exactly what they were thinking, and that they also knew what the other was thinking.  I rewound and watched it several times.  Just SO good.

 

I cannot believe Shapiro threatened Kardashian as an accessory.  I don't know if this really happened, but just when I think nothing else can surprise me about this case, I stand completely corrected and dumbfounded.

 

Clark and Darden in the hotel hallway went on and on and ON and ONNNNNN and I was all, "SERIOUSLY YOU TWO JUST DO IT RIGHT NOW!"  Alas.

 

I watched the trying on of the gloves with trepidation.  My heart was even beating a little faster.  I vividly remember OJ and the gloves.  Although not a huge fan of Cuba as OJ, I had a strong OJ flashback when Cuba did the little turn of the wrists, to show everyone the front and back of the gloves while he was wearing them, to prove how poorly they fit.  What I didn't know until recently was the idea that OJ wasn't taking his arthritis medication.  I mean...this all sickens me to the core, but yet I cannot turn away.  

 

EMMYS FOR EVERYONE.

Even more so because everyone else is just so damn good.

 

Also what I liked was... Kardashian really being the one asking... Okay. if OJ didn't do it. who did?. Like I would think the defense would be asking themselves (somewhat privately) or something but everyone was just ignoring that. And even if for one inkling of a moment I thought OJ was innocent ... never once since I've seen him in this thing, has he stated "I wonder who did this, why aren't people focusing on that - than on me." Maybe I watch too much Murder She Wrote, or something, but innocent people tend to ask these pertinent questions. Especially when there are kids. 

 

 

the next time my co-worker asks me if I think OJ is innocent - I'm gonna say flat out no. (again my OJ-ucation is basically coming from this series) - but Clark's whole conspiracy theory slap down pretty much sold me. 

 

He said that in his overly dramatic closing argument.

 

 

I think he used that line during closing arguments.

 

thanks. 

 

The white woman was his mistress, and the kid was theirs, while he was married to Barbara. Somehow it ended with the two women becoming friends. I guess being jerked around by the same man can create a bond.

 

ahhh. 

gotcha. thanks. 

[dubbel zout]

Didn't he just mute it, not pause it?

Ah, probably that was what happened. 

 

I assumed he faxed it to someone who worked for Johnny, someone nearby, but not actually *in* the courtroom when he received the fax, and he ran it in.

 

It looked like the fax came to the courtroom, but that's because a court officer delivered it to Douglas.

[meep.meep]

So, keeping a giant box full of years-old credit card bills... is that something people used to do?

Back when you could deduct sales tax on your income tax, it was a lot more common to keep all of your receipts.  She was moving from place to place and maybe didn't unpack and dispose of things.  Who knows how old the purchase was?

 

They should have cast the Rock as OJ. 

[jtallman]

Yep. I can't understand why out of EVERYONE in the world they chose to cast Cuba?! He's got zero charisma. OJ was tall, dark and handsome. He was charismatic and that's why so many people loved him. Cuba just looks goofy, and he's got this Michael Jackson voice going on. He's not a very good actor, and it's sad to me that every time he's on screen I am completely taken out of the immersion and remember, "Oh, that's Cuba Gooding Jr." in an otherwise stellar cast.

 

Exactly this. With everybody putting in these fine performances, Cuba's is just not hitting the mark.

[desertflower]

It is hard to believe Shapiro tried on the gloves, but apparently not only did Shapiro try them on, a couple others did as well. This is from the E! News fact checking article:

"Fact or Fiction: FACT, though the Shapiro heroics may have been beefed up to give him a redemption moment amid all the scripted buffoonery. (Toobin wrote that most of the defense lawyers were trying on and "goofing around" with the gloves and both Cochran and Shapiro noticed that the extra-large gloves looked a little small.) And while the defense team memorably seized the moment and never let go, prosecutors and legal experts in real life thought the gloves didn't look that small on Simpson. Moreover, the former Isotoner exec who was actually on the stand at the time testified, "At one point in time, those gloves would actually be, I think, large on Mr. Simpson's hands," and he attributed the snug fit to the latex gloves the defendant was wearing underneath."

Here's the link to the full article. It's got all the episodes so far so you have to scroll toward the end for the most recent episode. But how in THE WORLD were they allowed to mess around with evidence??

http://www.eonline.com/news/738102/american-crime-story-the-people-v-o-j-simpson-fact-v-fiction-where-the-ripped-from-reality-fx-series-gets-creative

Edited March 16, 2016 by desertflower

[whiporee]

 

Yes, this is an important point to me. If I was forced to try on gloves soaked with the mother of my children--a person I said I loved--I would be reluctant, maybe even devastated. It is difficult to imagine treating the whole thing like a hammy middle school play tryout. Even if you were innocently accused of something so heinous you would hopefully still remember that two innocent people were dead and stop mugging for your 'audience'. Ugh.

I understand feeling this way, but I don't think it's fair, any more than I think it's fair that people hold the fact that Simpson didn't look for the "real killers" after he was released. When you are in a situation like that, where you are facing life in prison, everything else would become secondary. ANYTHING you can do to keep yourself out of prison you do, and you stop caring about anything else. And if you are innocent (and I think he had deluded himself into thinking he was innocent, or at least justified) it would be impossible not to appear happy if a gambit like that failed as badly as that seemed to.

I do think there was an element in Gooding's performance that was missing, though. At the time, and watching the clips, Simpson had more of a "can you believe this shit," or "see, this is what we've been saying" look on his face than Gooding showed. Simpson was a better actor than last night showed.

Edited March 16, 2016 by whiporee

[Simon Boccanegra]

They didn't make much last night of a telling moment, although it was there: Simpson "forgetting he was onstage" and easily slipping off the gloves he had theatrically struggled to pull on.  

[OSM Mom]

I remember watching it live at the time and was dumbstruck that they would let OJ try on the gloves like that. Of course they wouldn't fit. They were wet with blood, which made the leather shrink. And the fact that they were put in the freezer and not worn much, and having OJ wear rubber gloves. Yeah.. Nobody would have been able to get them on.

Great performances by everyone. And I'm still shocked when I hear the F bomb drop on cable.

[TVHappy9463]

Please give all the Emmy's to Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown. This has been so intense. I lived every moment of this and that glove performance was incredible. If people watching today aren't convinced by now after that bar scene that OJ did it then they don't want to see it.

[Kromm]

They didn't make much last night of a telling moment, although it was there: Simpson "forgetting he was onstage" and easily slipping off the gloves he had theatrically struggled to pull on.  

This is the key point a lot of all this talk about how they'd shrunk, or even how the latex undergloves got it the way. Both were likely true. But even STILL it was likely as much to do with him pressing his fingers together so the glove wouldn't slip on. It was literally him lie through action (vs. testimony). 

[starri]

I had to look away during the glove scene.  It was just too much.  And the scene of Darden on the phone apologizing to Fred Goldman's answering machine just twisted the knife even more

 

I did really appreciate them showing Clark and Darden in a more relaxed setting.  And the scene where she took apart the defense theory for Darden's friends was terrific.

[Shannon L.]

 

They didn't make much last night of a telling moment, although it was there: Simpson "forgetting he was onstage" and easily slipping off the gloves he had theatrically struggled to pull on.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago in the "If it doesn't fit...." thread.  I didn't watch the whole trial--I just saw bits and pieces on the news--and that part made me sit up and gasp.  Have you ever tried to take off too small gloves that have been forced on?  You have to peel them off. But, OJ snapped them off like he couldn't get rid of them fast enough.  I know the prosecution had to come up with different reasons why the gloves didn't fit, but did they ever mention how easy he got them off (not that it would have mattered with this jury, I guess)?

 

I, too, had a hard time watching the glove scene.  I managed to get through it, but I had my finger on the ffwd button just in case.

[Neurochick]

I am of two minds when it comes to this show.  I always believed OJ did it, even before the Bronco chase. 

 

But, I can't hate on the defense lawyers.  Decades ago, I was shopping in a store and a store security guard grabbed me and accused me of shoplifting because I looked like a girl who shoplifted from that store the day before.  I was only 14 years old, he opened my bag and then, when he didn't see anything, said I could leave.  The thing is, I would NOT want to live in a country where the state could just decide that a person was guilty and that was that.  In this society you need people like Cochran just to make sure some overzealous prosecutor and police officer won't just throw you in jail.

[Chicago Redshirt]

The fact that nobody stood there and asked OJ under oath if he was positioning his hand to make the glove going on harder/impossible is the real travesty. Darden could have done it. Even Ito could have, under his own authority. 

 

I think it's not that simple. OJ was not under oath. OJ couldn't be forced to testify because he had the same privilege against self-incrimination as anyone else. One could argue that putting on the gloves and as portrayed here saying "It doesn't fit" or whatever was "testimony," but it could be argued that it was merely a demonstration. That's what Darden portrayed it as, and Ito understood it as, and the defense didn't object to. The defense would have every right to object to any attempt to have OJ give sworn testimony. 

[biakbiak]

Courts used to have fax machines in them to receive faxes during trial not all trials but it was requested.VF confirms that it happened though points out that Cochran actu ally screwed it up and called it a "Columbian necklace," they can't confirm if he was actually teaching at the time.

[ByTor]

I was shouting at the screen like I was watching a horror movie: "Don't let him try on the gloves!". It is funny how you can know what is going to happen but STILL hope for a different outcome.

Sorry...off topic alert! But I understand what you mean. When I saw Titanic, there were people in the theater who gasped when the ship hit the iceberg!

[ridethemaverick]

I am of two minds when it comes to this show. I always believed OJ did it, even before the Bronco chase.

But, I can't hate on the defense lawyers. Decades ago, I was shopping in a store and a store security guard grabbed me and accused me of shoplifting because I looked like a girl who shoplifted from that store the day before. I was only 14 years old, he opened my bag and then, when he didn't see anything, said I could leave. The thing is, I would NOT want to live in a country where the state could just decide that a person was guilty and that was that. In this society you need people like Cochran just to make sure some overzealous prosecutor and police officer won't just throw you in jail.

I agree. I think it's easy to call defense lawyers scumbags and slimeballs when you can't conceive of a time you would ever need one.

Johnnie Cochran was brilliant. His client may have been a scumbag but it wasn't his job to make moral judgments. His job was to provide the best defense. He did that. No matter how noble this show makes Darden and Clark out to be, if I were on trial for my life, I wouldn't want the defense version of those two on my case. Cochran all the way.

[Daisy]

Sorry...off topic alert! But I understand what you mean. When I saw Titanic, there were people in the theater who gasped when the ship hit the iceberg!

 

 

LOL right? I think it's just the dramatic tension of writing to be honest. even though you know... there's that little part of you that wants it to be okay/safe/right.

[Umbelina]

Back when you could deduct sales tax on your income tax, it was a lot more common to keep all of your receipts.  She was moving from place to place and maybe didn't unpack and dispose of things.  Who knows how old the purchase was?

 

They should have cast the Rock as OJ. 

Yeah, and I just remembered another thing.  You used to be able to deduct your credit card interest as well.  If you had a small business of any kind, keeping the statements was also a really easy way to separate out business expenses.  Obviously, larger businesses had accountants, but they probably looked at credit card statements as well. 

[RedheadZombie]

I had to look away during the glove scene.  It was just too much.  And the scene of Darden on the phone apologizing to Fred Goldman's answering machine just twisted the knife even more

 

I'm glad they showed that. He always seemed particularly close to the Goldman family, and they comforted him when he broke down at the press conference following the acquital.

[desertflower]

I don't know if Chris Darden was/is as charming in real life as this actor is portraying him, but he has totally won me over. I keep rooting for him even though I know what the outcome is going to be. I hope Sterling K. Brown gets a lot more acting gigs after this, because he's fantastic.

[jaync]

I'm 5'10" and have small hands but I still have to wear size xlarge gloves. Just because Nichole bought OJ xlarge gloves does not mean that they fit him. Being a football player I would think that he might need an XX Large size to fit his hands.

I​IRC, the gloves were the biggest size that Isotoner made in that style.

Thing is, the gloves didn't have to fit exactly for O.J. to have worn them when he killed Nicole and Ron. That one of them came off at the crime scene could indicate that they weren't a perfect fit to begin with.

 

Loved Dale keeping it real with Johnnie. Blaming others for your life choices and the consequences thereof is just punk assness.

 

I still watch this and wonder why they are giving Clark such a positive edit? The true star of the trial was Johnnie. 

​Maybe it's because overall Clark's aspects were positive? In terms of the trial, Cochran is being portrayed in the manner of a rockstar, and showing that he was trifflin' in his personal life doesn't change that.

  

Darden, you big dummy. Sterling K. Brown, you big panty dropper.

[Umbelina]

I wonder about that scene with Johnnie and the reporters though.

 

It just didn't ring true to me.  What reporter worth his salt would let Johnnie change the subject that easily?  No follow up, just because they are somehow stunned into shame by the mention of two murder victims and "an innocent man?" 

 

Yeah, I don't buy that not one of them wouldn't have the stones to get more than that from him.  He's good, but he isn't the only person in the universe, and those reporters had a job to do as well. 

 

I honestly don't remember that at the time though, so maybe he really was able to squash it so glibly. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

I don't know if Chris Darden was/is as charming in real life as this actor is portraying him, but he has totally won me over. I keep rooting for him even though I know what the outcome is going to be. I hope Sterling K. Brown gets a lot more acting gigs after this, because he's fantastic.

 

Yes, Sterling K. Brown is awesome. I love him on Army Wives, but couldn't stand his character in the short arc he did on Person of Interest.  There was something else I also watched him in. I think Eli Stone? But he's a fantastic character, and he's pretty much nailed the character of Christopher Darden as I remember him, and even from some of the interviews I've watched of some of the old documentaries and the Dateline special. And it's not mimicry.

 

That said, and it may just be me, but I got the sense that Marcia shut Darden down about making OJ wear the gloves as a way...not to get him back exactly, but that the fact that he didn't kiss her, had something to do with it. And if it didn't, just how they interacted, I sensed some tension, because she wanted him to kiss her and she was disappointed and then upset that he didn't? I don't know. It's how that scene played for me.

 

At one point, I really thought they were using the actual trial footage of OJ "trying" to put on the gloves. But then the camera panned up and it was...Cuba. But he still was playing it wrong--the look on his face, the way he tried to make the gloves fit, wasn't how he did it during the actual trial. Hell, all they had to do was Google it or you tube it to see how he did it!

Edited March 17, 2016 by GHScorpiosRule

[txhorns79]

That said, and it may just be me, but I got the sense that Marcia shut Darden down about making OJ wear the gloves as a way...not to get him back exactly, but that the fact that he didn't kiss her, had something to do with it. And if it didn't, just how they interacted, I sensed some tension, because she wanted him to kiss her and she was disappointed and then upset that he didn't? I don't know. It's who that scene played for me.

 

I would agree Marcia was disappointed that they didn't kiss, but I think she shut him down on the gloves because, even without the hindsight of knowing how it turns out, it really was a terrible idea on his part.  I mean, if Marcia could have set Chris on fire with her eyes during the whole scene where OJ was trying on the gloves, she would have.  I can't even imagine how furious I would be if my second chair not only ignored my direct order, but ended up humiliating us on national television with an ill advised stunt.    

Edited March 17, 2016 by txhorns79

[Kromm]

That said, and it may just be me, but I got the sense that Marcia shut Darden down about making OJ wear the gloves as a way...not to get him back exactly, but that the fact that he didn't kiss her, had something to do with it. And if it didn't, just how they interacted, I sensed some tension, because she wanted him to kiss her and she was disappointed and then upset that he didn't? I don't know. It's how that scene played for me.

But that's just it. It's just a "scene". This enters the territory of stuff the show had no way of knowing the reality of, so any subtext we are envisioning is based on what's in Ryan Murphy & Company's minds more than anything else. I mean the notion the two of them had an affair, or even just flirted, didn't start with Murphy, of course, but any notion that Marcia said or did anything that affected the trial BECAUSE of that can't be even vaguely substantiated. 

I've heard she was pleased with this show overall after the first few episodes. I wonder if that holds up after this last episode. I mean she's willing to fess up to mistakes, but I doubt she wants to cop to actual professional misconduct (even if it's just implied). 

[GHScorpiosRule]

No, I get that it was just a scene. My question wasn't, oh, did this happen in real life? Just pretend that this show isn't based on a real life crime and real people.  I would still have the same question if they were fictional characters. Was that tension I sensed because he didn't kiss her? Or, was it just me?  I wasn't even thinking about whether that actually happened, because, we don't know.

[Kromm]

No, I get that it was just a scene. My question wasn't, oh, did this happen in real life? Just pretend that this show isn't based on a real life crime and real people.  I would still have the same question if they were fictional characters. Was that tension I sensed because he didn't kiss her? Or, was it just me?  I wasn't even thinking about whether that actually happened, because, we don't know.

Well that's the rub. The confusion between reality and the show. I mean this is the kind of thing that really takes a shot at her professional ethics (if she made a professional judgment call in reaction to a personal interaction). So it's worth being skeptical first, I think.because there's really little reason to believe it did happen other than the fact that it puts a nice cap on a soap opera addition to the storyline.

[mojoween]

The look on the real Marcia's face when OJ was fumbling with the gloves would melt glass.

When Cuba got up to walk to the jury, he made this look with his face and moved his head and it just looked like, as someone so excellently put it, that OJ was a big dumb dolt and not the suave guy he came across as back then. I can't believe the hundreds of people who work on this show couldn't see how wrong it all was.

Poor Cuba. It's not his fault and I'm sure he is most glad to not be a ringer for OJ.

[Chicago Redshirt]

I wonder about that scene with Johnnie and the reporters though.

 

It just didn't ring true to me.  What reporter worth his salt would let Johnnie change the subject that easily?  No follow up, just because they are somehow stunned into shame by the mention of two murder victims and "an innocent man?" 

 

Yeah, I don't buy that not one of them wouldn't have the stones to get more than that from him.  He's good, but he isn't the only person in the universe, and those reporters had a job to do as well. 

 

I honestly don't remember that at the time though, so maybe he really was able to squash it so glibly. 

 

There are several reasons I can think of why a reporter might drop the "Johnnie used to screw around on his ex-wife" story.

 

1. The story had already been played out on "A Current Affair." The only follow-up was to get a comment from Johnnie, which "A Current Affair" didn't do. Reporters generally hate doing a followup on some other organization's story, and particularly when that organization is a tabloid. 

2. Really, the story actually IS irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's gossipy that Johnnie was running around town, I guess, but this was taking place years ago. Maybe if it were fresher, it would be more interesting.

3. What else can reporters reasonably expect to get from Johnnie other than "No comment" after that point in the scrum? I could see maybe trying to talk to him one on one, and maybe IRL some did.

4. Pressing Johnnie on it doesn't seem very wise; why risk alienating one of the main sources while covering the so-called story of the century in the OJ trial, one that is going to last for weeks or months to come, to press on some warmed over gossip?

5. I would say that 20 years ago, before the Drudge Report, TMZ, Perez Hilton, the Monica scandal, mainstream reporters would be less likely to dive in the muck and the scandal of things.

[Umbelina]

Nah, it was still pretty mucky.

 

;)

 

Remember, this takes place just 2 short years before Lady Diana was chased by the paparazzi to her death.  They were out there.

 

The reason for relevancy was that OJ and Johnnie had so much in common.  Black first wives, blond mistresses (one of whom later married, the other took JC's name anyway,) beating their women. 

 

I like your other points though.

[helenamonster]

No, I get that it was just a scene. My question wasn't, oh, did this happen in real life? Just pretend that this show isn't based on a real life crime and real people.  I would still have the same question if they were fictional characters. Was that tension I sensed because he didn't kiss her? Or, was it just me?  I wasn't even thinking about whether that actually happened, because, we don't know.

 

Mileages vary. I personally didn't think this, in the context of the show. Yeah, I think Clark was definitely...I don't know what word to use--miffed? disappointed?--that things didn't "work out" with Darden in that way, but after that hilarious "I think we should go for it" moment when her face changed faster than a traffic light (bless you, Sarah Paulson), I got the feeling that she had totally put that all behind her. She was upset at Darden, her junior, questioning her authority and pushing a strategy that she knew was doomed to fail. Honestly at that point I think any potential sexual feelings for him totally evaporated and she was just pissed on a professional level.

 

However, I do see how it could be interpreted the way you're seeing it. I just personally didn't see it that way.

[FanOfTheFans]

Watching Darden have O.J. put on the glove is one of my clearest memories of the trial. I had only watched on and off between classes and annoyed that the soaps were not on. Yet somehow I caught that moment live. I remember thinking that it was obvious that O.J. was putting on an act for the jury. When I watched the news and talk shows later that day, I thought that everyone would be rolling their eyes at O.J.'s act instead almost all of them bought it, talking about how the glove did not fit and what a mistake by the prosecution. It was at that moment I understood how easily the media and most people could be manipulated into believing a lie and fraud. It was absolutely ridiculous.

^^^^

Nailed it.

[FanOfTheFans]

So, keeping a giant box full of years-old credit card bills... is that something people used to do?

You used to be able to deduct credit card interest debt on your taxes. Many people kept receipts for this purpose too.

[whiporee]

 

that OJ was a big dumb dolt and not the suave guy he came across as back then. I can't believe the hundreds of people who work on this show couldn't see how wrong it all was.

 

That's what is missing from the show, and thanks for pointing it out. Gooding is doing his best, but he's too small, and he's not playing OJ Simpson like he was in 1994 -- he's playing him like the guy who broke into the Las Vegas hotel room. The Simpson during the trial wasn't broken at all -- he was suave and powerful and looked like someone who had everything anyone could want. Gooding hasn't portrayed that part of the story at all. 

 

I think the series has been great, and the retelling has been great. But either the directors or Gooding has been making the exact wrong decisions when it comes to portraying OJ Simpson in 1994. Maybe that would seem too unpalatable to many, but in 1994, OJ Simpson was not a paranoid, washed up ex-athelte. He may not have been at the level he was in the Naked Guns (or Capricorn One) or even Monday Night Football, but he carried himself much better than the way Gooding is showing him. That takes a lot out of the story, because the fall of OJ Simpson was a hero's fall, not just another loser ex football player being jerky. 

 

I'm not defending OJ Simpson, but as I read your post, I thought you caught the aspect that has been missing from this show -- OJ Simpson was, at that time, larger than life, and reducing that aspect of his portrayal has been detrimental to the story they are telling.  

Edited March 17, 2016 by whiporee

[Chicago Redshirt]

I think it's important to distinguish between tabloids/paparazzi and mainstream media. There have long been tabloids and paps who would do just about anything and have no standards. But the mainstream media would have thought itself above a lot of the things tabs/paps would do.

 

The LA Times would not print a topless pic of Marcia Clark. And I don't think the LA Times would have initiated a story about Cochran having had a mistress X years ago and allegations of his having abused his wife. But maybe I'm looking at them through rose-colored glasses.

[7isBlue]

I agree. I think it's easy to call defense lawyers scumbags and slimeballs when you can't conceive of a time you would ever need one.

Johnnie Cochran was brilliant. His client may have been a scumbag but it wasn't his job to make moral judgments. His job was to provide the best defense. He did that. No matter how noble this show makes Darden and Clark out to be, if I were on trial for my life, I wouldn't want the defense version of those two on my case. Cochran all the way.

Brilliant or not, what galls me about the "Dream Team" (and most of the defense attorneys in the high-profile cases where the defendant is most likely guilty thanks to DNA, their ridiculous defenses, etc.) is that the trial becomes a game, to be won at any cost. It's disgusting. Both Cochran and Dershowitz couldn't shut up about how insurmountable the evidence against Simpson was to anyone who put a mic in front of them...until they were hired by Simpson. It is intellectually dishonest, at best. At worst - I cannot find words to describe the vileness they embody, yet they have no shame. Robert Shapiro should be spat upon for the rest of his life.

[FozzyBear]

So, keeping a giant box full of years-old credit card bills... is that something people used to do?

In the mid-1990s before online banking? Yes. Many people kept all financial statements for 7 years for tax reasons.

[WicketyWack]

Did the Simpson children really not know where there father was all that time? Were they not in school?

 

From a 1995 article in People Magazine:

 

[Nicole's] family has been scrupulous about not discussing the murders or poisoning Justin and Sydney against O.J. "We don't talk about Daddy being in jail," Nicole's sister Tanya Brown told PEOPLE on the eve of the verdict. "We just play jungle gym." At their private school, meanwhile, mention of the case has also been forbidden. Even the managers of Pavilions Place, their local supermarket, place cardboard over magazines that feature Simpson on the cover. Indeed, every effort has been made to keep the children's lives normal: Justin has taken karate lessons, and Sydney has continued with her dance classes.

 

But for father and children, some tough adjustments lie ahead. According to family friend Sheila Weller, author of Raging Heart, Simpson had originally explained his long absence by telling Sydney that he was away helping the police. But the little girl learned from a classmate that Simpson was in jail and for three months refused to talk to him—"until he leveled with her," says Weller. Then last spring, adds Weller, "she asked her grandmother if he was in jail because he was accused of killing her mother." After consulting a psychiatrist, the family finally told her about the case.

[reggiejax]

The opening scene was just so perfect in how it captured the way conspiratorial nonsense mucked up the works. I remember the talk of "Columbian Neckties". I don't remember if they went further in the description of them in real life, but on the show they didn't quite get it right. Yes, the victims throat is slashed very deeply, almost to the point of decapitation, which is what happened to Nicole. However, there is a little more to it. The "necktie"  part comes from the fact that once the throat is slashed, they reach inside and pull the tongue down through the wound, so it hangs out from the wound, approximating the appearance of a "necktie". This of course, did not happen to Nicole, so it kind of blows that theory out of the water, not that it had much merit to begin with. 

 

Still, I am not surprised the Detective (Lange?) didn't know what they were. Probably because they used the lesser known name for it. I had heard of them, only because I had watched an episode of the Michael Mann TV show "Crime Story". However in that show, they were referred to as "Sicilian neckties". The Sicilian of course coming from the fact that they were given out by members of the mob. I would hear of it a few other times, and each time they were referred to as Sicilian neckties. Until the OJ trial, I had never heard of them referred to as Columbian neckties. At the time, it was confusing, but on second thought, it was not a stretch to believe that Columbian drug lords would borrow that particular method of brutality. It certainly sends a statement. But the idea that they would send that message secondhand, to a friend of the person who was in trouble with the drug lords, stretches all credibility. If anyone was going to recieve a Columbian necktie, it would have been Faye Resnick. Or probably not as, despite her drug problems, it seems unlikely she would ever piss off drug dealers to that extent. And not to be too gross, but they would have employed other methods on her before going that route. Just sayin.  

[rallymantis]

Let me jump on the pile of Sterling's Sweeties (no? eh, it's after my bedtime as I write this) to say, not only is he ss-s-sss-mmmmokin', his characterization is to this series as the real-life Darden seemed to be to the trial: the Everyman, with all the heroism & bumbling that implies.  I feel like I'm in the rollercoaster car with him.

 

Let me also add praise to one of the best scenes so far: David & Malcolm & the Louis Vitton garment bag.  DAMN.  They both brought it: the unbearable tension, the sudden release, the nagging feeling that didn't go away -- for either, despite what AC said.

 

Let me finally recall what Dominick Dunne wrote about Nicole's sisters & their courtroom behavior: occasionally bored & slutty, compared to the uprightness of OJ's mom & sisters, and the agonized watching of the Goldmans.  He encouraged them, via his VF column, to show up & represent every day, since it was the last thing they could do for Nicole.

[BooBear]

Having seen the real actual glove trying on footage a mere few weeks ago (when I saw the Investigative Discovery documentary that everyone here should watch), I gotta say it's always puzzled me how ANYONE could fall for it. But also how totally Darden got played (and how dumb Ito was as well) for not only allowing this in open court, but having no follow up to examine or discredit it.

 

Yes. Even at the time I don't think it was that big of a deal. From my point of view the gloves clearly fit. There was no way that they didn't.  But it was a mistake because it is a version of the don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. Darden assumed things would go a certain way but clearly, the dream team had other plans. In some ways I have wondered if there was a press conspiracy with the defense to make a big deal out of it. Not that they wanted OJ to get off but the trial had been such a snooze-fest up until that point they wanted a "perry mason moment" to talk about. In that sense Darden was right that they needed to be more showy.  And that was why Darden didn't have any defense because in his view it was so obviously nothing but once the press got hold of it as a "moment" it became something that took on a life of its own.

 

I still say though that anyone who was seriously considering the evidence and didn't already have their mind made up, would not have been impressed by that at all.

[whiporee]

Brilliant or not, what galls me about the "Dream Team" (and most of the defense attorneys in the high-profile cases where the defendant is most likely guilty thanks to DNA, their ridiculous defenses, etc.) is that the trial becomes a game, to be won at any cost. It's disgusting. Both Cochran and Dershowitz couldn't shut up about how insurmountable the evidence against Simpson was to anyone who put a mic in front of them...until they were hired by Simpson. It is intellectually dishonest, at best. At worst - I cannot find words to describe the vileness they embody, yet they have no shame. Robert Shapiro should be spat upon for the rest of his life.

 

That's the nature of American jurisprudence. It's adversarial. And it's win at all legal costs. Remember that the defense only has three things going for it -- the presumption of innocence, the rules and its lawyers. Every other advantage goes to the state -- the police force gathering evidence, the first and last words at a trial, the ability to compel and assign risks to witnesses, the power to imprison during the trial. If there is an avenue to acquittal, a defense attorney has the moral obligation as one of the upholders of the country to do all they can to get the acquittal. Because once you have situations like Shapiro -- who was trying to protect his own reputation at the expense of his client -- then this legal system becomes something else. 

[Hanahope]

I liked that the show depicted the explanation, the reason, the prosecution/Darden wanted OJ to try on the gloves.  They were so tired of the defense having all these 'grand moments' and 'dramatic scenes' that riveted the jury, as opposed to the prosecutions pedantic presentation of the evidence, which was putting the jury to sleep.  That was a fault of the prosecution, too much time spent on domestic violence, on dna (yet to come i presume), every little detail, instead of putting on a smaller amount of the best evidence.

 

And, I presume, Clarke was just too much of a stiff in the courtroom, couldn't let herself go, to debunk the defense's conspiracy theory, as she obviously could have done, as shown in the bar.

 

But Darden, believing that the prosecution needed its own 'big moment' thought the glove would do it, and forgot the golden rule of trials, never put your case in the defense's hands. it would have been a much better to allow the defense to do it, then argue that of course OJ would try and tank the demonstration.

 

I do wish that the show had depicted that it was Ito that truly, yet again, messed things up by having OJ try on the actual gloves, rather than the better exemplar.  And its also incredible to learn/see that the attorneys could just mess with the evidence there in the courtroom like that.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Hanahope

[txhorns79]

But Darden, believing that the prosecution needed its own 'big moment' thought the glove would do it, and forgot the golden rule of trials, never put your case in the defense's hands. it would have been a much better to allow the defense to do it, then argue that of course OJ would try and tank the demonstration.

 

The rule would be you don't ask a question or stage a demonstration when you don't know what the outcome will be.  That was Marcia's point in telling Chris not to have OJ try on the gloves.     

[Kromm]

Yes. Even at the time I don't think it was that big of a deal. From my point of view the gloves clearly fit. There was no way that they didn't.  But it was a mistake because it is a version of the don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. Darden assumed things would go a certain way but clearly, the dream team had other plans. In some ways I have wondered if there was a press conspiracy with the defense to make a big deal out of it. Not that they wanted OJ to get off but the trial had been such a snooze-fest up until that point they wanted a "perry mason moment" to talk about. In that sense Darden was right that they needed to be more showy.  And that was why Darden didn't have any defense because in his view it was so obviously nothing but once the press got hold of it as a "moment" it became something that took on a life of its own.

 

I still say though that anyone who was seriously considering the evidence and didn't already have their mind made up, would not have been impressed by that at all.

People on that jury arguably weren't looking dispassionately at evidence. They likely qualified as "already made their mind up".