O.J.: Made In America - Part 5

[psychoticstate]

42 minutes ago, Kidlaw said:

I feel like this doc did a good job explaining why many Black people felt the way that they did - and others have explored the Black American angle as well. Now, let's answer the question of the outrage from White America. 

I'm not a representative from White America but I was outraged because a murderer got away with killing two people. Period.  I don't care what color Simpson's skin is or what color skin the victims' had.  It's irrelevant to me.   Murder is murder.

1 hour ago, rwgrab said:

For those who were disappointed, it was because they didn't think the jury did what they were asked to do (decide this one case on its merits). 

That point was certainly proven by the comments Carrie Bess made in this documentary.  I can't imagine how Ron's family and Nicole's family feel, hearing this.  It's like being told Ron and Nicole have to be sacrificed in order to right the wrong done by the King jury and they aren't important enough on their own merits to get justice for their murders.  It makes me even angrier that Carrie Bess was almost snide or proud about the fact.

I was also frustrated that she said that the jury needed to go home - - so that's why they really didn't deliberate.  I've never been sequestered for eight or ten months and I can only imagine how stressful it is but that was their duty being on this jury. 

3 hours ago, KBrownie said:

White America for the most  part has been okay with the injustice in this country when the victims were black and the perpetrators were white.  Not all of course, but a pretty substantial majority.

I don't think a "substantial majority" of White America is just fine and dandy with victims so long as they are black and the perps are white.   No one should be okay with murder, plain and simple.  I don't care about the race of a victim; a victim is a victim and deserves justice. 

I think the media is partly - - if not greatly - - to blame with a lot of this.  Look at how many murders they will report if the victims are the same race compared to how many they will report if the crime is interracial.  Look at the majority of missing children they report on, or even adults - - they cherry pick based on race, attractiveness and sex of the child/adult.

With regard to the Simpson case, the media was on this because they knew it was big business.  Simpson was an A list celebrity accused of a horrible, horrible crime.  It wouldn't have mattered what Simpson's race was or the victims' race - - this was going to be a huge news story no matter what.

[Court]

Both jurors said it was decided quickly because they wanted to go home.

[psychoticstate]

20 minutes ago, KBrownie said:

It's mostly unbelievable to think that anyone would have cared as much or still be so outraged 20+ years later if OJ had gotten away with killing his black wife and black acquaintance. It would have been news for a little while back in 1994 because of the celebrity, but no way would it still be a thing.  No way.

I think this is 100% wrong.  People are angry that Simpson got away with murder.  Period.  It's irrelevant what color skin the victims had. 

[Mittengirl]

I wonder if a small part of the outrage against OJ is from a sense of betrayal?  Here he is, this celebrity who has a beautiful smile, charming personality and just seems like such a nice, mellow guy who would be a great person to hang out with.  Then we find out that he abuses his (ex-) wife and most likely killed her.  Most people like to think they are perceptive enough to see through someone's veneer, even someone they only "know" through the media.  OJ blew that out of the water.  

As an aside, do you think that a celeb of his caliber today would be able to keep secret the fact that police were called to his/her house for a domestic violence complaint?  It seems like now a member of the media would get to the house before the police.

While the days of Mommy Dearest type media sanitization were over before the OJ case, I think the media was more likely to look the other way if the celeb was perceived as a nice guy.  Now the media will go after you if you are a jerk and go after you even harder if you are a nice guy who they may be able to bring down.

[Court]

I think lots of things are still sanitized especially in cases of rape and domestic violence. 

Woody Allen is a prime example. 

[GreatKazu]

I believe people would be outraged if Simpson had killed his first wife. It was the fact Simpson was a big time celeb that made headlines the way it did then. Throw in the fact he then ran from the police and it turned into the biggest high-speed chase ever on top of the belief that he was claiming to want to commit suicide. That ego-maniac and narcissistic bastard was not going to harm himself, but the public did not know that at the time. Simpson could have killed some black, white, or asian associate of his, it still would have played out the same way because of who Simpson was at the time. The public knows this person because he was a high profile personality. If some A-list celeb, such as Tom Hanks, committed the same crime, ran from the cops, threatened suicide, and got away with two murders, people would not forget. I don't care how many years go by.   In this instance, you have Simpson, the guy who cannot keep a low profile. He thrives for public attention and fame. The media fed into that and Simpson helped to feed the media. Simpson only has himself to blame. This is not about his skin color. 

I cannot help but think of the Manson murders. To this day the public outrage is very strong. So much so, people here in California, like me, are signing petitions to keep one of the killers from being paroled. This is a case where the case continues to be in the limelight through documentaries on television, books, Manson's antics, websites, movies, the parole hearings, and because of the relatives of Sharon Tate who have worked hard to ensure the victims are not forgotten and that the killers remain behind bars. This is just like the Goldmans who have worked tirelessly to remind the public that Ron was their loved one and Simpson is responsible for his death. They do so because each time there is a documentary on Simpson and the murders, they are asked to participate. It is one reason why this case remains in the minds of many so many years later.

Such a contrast to Simpson who stated after his acquittal he just wanted to put all of this behind him and live his life. Forget that the mother of his children was murdered and nearly decapitated. He claimed he would never hurt her. He would have stopped a bullet for Nicole, but he cannot bother to discuss her murder or even do what many families of murdered loved ones do - seek justice. 

Edited June 20, 2016 by GreatKazu

[StatMom]

The hidden camera prank show that Sarah mentioned was one of the stories on This American Life last year (I heard it on the podcast version). The whole thing sounded so baffling and bizarre, including OJ's demeanor. It's worth a listen, if only for the WTF?-ery of it all.

ETA: Link to the TAL podcast. OJ story starts about 9:30 in.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/564/too-soon

Edited June 20, 2016 by StatMom
Found link

[Simon Boccanegra]

Bailey: "He invited the lawyers over for a drink and I was the first one there." 

Me: "Shocker. As soon as you heard 'drink,' there was probably a vapor silhouette where you had been."  

[Tara Ariano]

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

O.J.: Made In America's Man Without A Country

The subject of a man who once was king -- and of us, his former subjects.

[Simon Boccanegra]

An excellent conclusion to an extraordinary (sort of) series. I suppose it should all be seen as a piece, but of course, except for the few who saw it in movie theaters, this is a television miniseries. I know that if I had seen it in a movie theater, even as long as it is, I would still have sat motionless until the intermission.  

I thought the strongest installments were the first and last. The middle parts, especially part four, were as good as they could have been with such familiar ground, but they are where most of us came in, as Sarah put it in one of her recaps.  

I think we all want to believe that people who are in the business of doing good are good, but let's face it, there is mediocrity or worse everywhere, even in civil rights leaders. Thank goodness the thoughtfulness and nuance of Mark Whitlock were presented to balance the empty-headed, borderline offensive platitudes of Cecil Murray, quoting Martin Luther King's "Free at last" words (in 2016! Not even in 20-something-year-old file footage!) about the acquittal of a rich double murderer, and doubling down by invoking the truly inspirational Jackie Robinson. The good reverend can join Carrie Bess and Wheezy (that childhood friend who tagged after OJ and AC) on the STFU Express as far as I'm concerned.  But you know what? Even for the people whose comments made me angry or disappointed, I am glad they were there. This needed to be a tapestry of views, opinions, and experiences. That is what made it great.

Keep in mind, what we like to hear and do not like to hear is a litmus test; my result may not be yours. I personally thought Peter Hyams throughout the course of the series was one of the better interviews. I enjoyed his anecdote of the power-player brushoff in the monied LA in which Simpson once had moved. There is no outright snub. You just say sure, we'll get together, I'll come by, we'll do lunch, maybe we'll even work together, and both parties know it isn't happening. Kisses on the cheek and knives in the back...and I wrote that before I realized it is a troublesome analogy here.

The accounts of Simpson's sort-of confessions to intimates were fascinating. I would be shocked if he and Celia Farber had not been a thing at some point. Her description of the effect he can have on someone, how he makes people want to believe the best of him, was convincing. It reminded me that even Daniel Petrocelli, the Goldmans' advocate in the civil case, had to be on guard not to be taken in by the Simpson charm.

Dvořák's 9th Symphony ("From The New World"), written at a time when the composer lived and worked in our then-young country, was used extensively during the segment showing the acquittal and the reactions. The slow movement was adapted for a spiritual, called "Going Home."

If the robbery episode ever gets made into a movie, Don Cheadle has to play Michael McClinton. Loved the "Fuck him."

Do not get me started on the casual use of "innocent" here. Numerous people kept saying OJ was "found innocent." The only verdicts in our system are "guilty" and "not guilty."

Simpson, I thought, was blatantly acting in his high dudgeon directed at the TV image of Garcetti, when he was at home post acquittal. He is not a great actor (even one of the talking heads in this episode called him a famous footballer and "...movie guy," as if he could not make himself say "actor"), so it rang hollow, but he was acutely camera-aware the whole time, sticking to his official line about the "real killers." An earlier episode caught a more revealing unguarded moment, an audio recording with no video, when he said that if the positions were reversed and Nicole had killed him, they would have let her go very quickly, or words to that effect. So, there were positions to be reversed, eh? Not "If Nicole were accused of killing me."

I wish I had taken notes. There was so much I wanted to comment upon. I will want to see this whole superb documentary again. Thank you, Ezra Edelstein and ESPN.  

Edited June 20, 2016 by Simon Boccanegra

[angelamh66]

I am not a representative for all of white America either, but this is why the whole thing outrages me to this day... I can understand wanting to right the wrongs previously done to black Americans but in my opinion, the people who subscribed to that theory backed the wrong horse so to speak.  O.J. didn't deserve the status of a civil rights figure.  He spent his entire life disassociating himself from black America. I think one of the preacher's at the end said as much - that O.J. didn't deserve the support he got and didn't deserve to benefit from the struggles of people who were in there fighting the good fight.  

I actually yelled at my TV when they had the interviews with people in the streets after the verdict thanking God for the acquittal and celebrating as if he were a family member or something - O.J. Simpson did not give a sh&t about any of these people.  At all.  Celebrating the acquittal of a murderer makes no sense to me. And oh, by the way, it changed absolutely nothing.  A rich famous guy bought his way out of trouble... not exactly groundbreaking. 

All that said, I thought the most fascinating thing in this installment was the reporter talking about "getting O.J.'d"  He clearly was charming and sucked people in.  I am actually a defense attorney myself and this is a pretty common characteristic among my clients.  They have to be charming and suck people in to be able to gain the trust necessary to commit their crimes (in my case mostly financial fraud).  O.J.'s charm is what sucked Nicole in in the first place and probably kept her there as long as she was there - she wanted to believe him when he said he wouldn't hit her anymore. 

[bosawks]

i remember listening to NPR a short time after he was sentenced for the Vegas fiasco and the commentator basically boiled it down to "He didn't go to jail because he was OJ Simpson and now he's going to jail because he's OJ Simpson."

Simplistic but there is some truth in that, I think. 

[Simon Boccanegra]

Quote

I think lots of things are still sanitized especially in cases of rape and domestic violence. 

Woody Allen is a prime example.

Well...we should probably wait for Woody Allen: Made in Brooklyn to litigate that one. There are deeds where all parties are in general agreement and other allegations where the record is murky, to say the least, with family members digging in on both sides. I have strong opinions, as I do on the Simpson case, but in the Simpson case, my opinions are informed by a mountain of evidence, not just battling op-eds.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Simon Boccanegra
Quote-box problems

[psychoticstate]

10 minutes ago, angelamh66 said:

I am not a representative for all of white America either, but this is why the whole thing outrages me to this day... I can understand wanting to right the wrongs previously done to black Americans but in my opinion, the people who subscribed to that theory backed the wrong horse so to speak.  O.J. didn't deserve the status of a civil rights figure.  He spent his entire life disassociating himself from black America. I think one of the preacher's at the end said as much - that O.J. didn't deserve the support he got and didn't deserve to benefit from the struggles of people who were in there fighting the good fight.

I have to wonder that if Ron and Nicole had been black, would Carrie Bess and any other of the 90% of jurors she claimed voted for payback, still have acquitted Simpson as a means of revenge for the King verdict?  

I'd also like to hear her thoughts and Linda Jay's on this documentary and most especially Simpson's attitude and condescending and disgusting slur of the persons gathered outside his Rockingham home on the day of the "chase." 

[Simon Boccanegra]

Excerpt from a 2014 piece on Christie Prody, the Nicole lookalike (so some claimed) with whom Simpson was involved from 1996 until 2009. I don't know how reliable she is (she has quite the rap sheet herself by now, and years of drug abuse have taken a toll), but it sounds like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.  

"He did encourage me to color my hair. When I met him my hair was dark. He would constantly try to fix my hair if we were going out, and part on a certain side and comb it down. He would make comments like, 'This is how Nicole wore her hair.' I mean, I got so sick of it," said Prody. 

After the makeover, she bore a striking resemblance to Simpson's slain wife.

"I just got tired of hearing and being compared all the time, and it's like I can't live up to the image of someone who's passed away," said Prody.

She says that towards the end of their relationship, Simpson actually started threatening her and she came to fear that she might suffer the same fate as Nicole. 

Prody said, "He would say things to me like, 'You'd better watch out so something bad doesn't happen to you like Nicole.' "

[RemoteControlFreak]

On 6/16/2016 at 11:41 PM, KBrownie said:

The selective outrage over this jury acquitting Simpson by most in the larger, non-black American society is so hypocritical.  Where was the outrage from any groups other than the black community towards the jury for Rodney King? The judge in the Latasha Harlins case? Or any of the other countless white juries and judges in this country that freed/slapped on the wrist whites who had killed/assaulted blacks?  Or all the other times this may have happened when race wasn't a factor and both the victim and accused were the same race.  This wasn't new by any means.  It just happened to not work in favor of the African-American person this time.  And that's why some people were so pissed and still are.  This was a lot of white Americans' first times experiencing this type of betrayal by the system.  It usually works for them.  Not so much for the African-American community.  I hear all the time "didn't they care about Ron/Nicole and their families?" or "how could they do that to them?"  Does anyone really believe that mostly black jury didn't know exactly how they felt?  That they didn't know what it's like to feel that the justice system failed them? I don't think so.  The African-American community has felt that way for about six hundred years and counting.  That is why African-Americans cheered when he was acquitted.  It wasn't about OJ personally, and unfortunately it wasn't about Ron or Nicole either.  It was finally, for once, the system worked for the black man.  But let's not pretend that it was only blacks who weren't particularly concerned about the victims in this case.  For a lot of racists, this trial boiled down to a black man who had done the worst thing a black man could do and be with a white woman and he needed to pay for that.  Let's not forget the long and troubled history of black men and white women in American society.  I don't think people would have cared so much, no matter what they may believe about themselves and their own prejudices, if OJ had been on trial for killing his black ex-wife.  This case was really the perfect storm of so many different things.  It really is terrible that it stopped being about Nicole and Ron from almost the very moment it happened.  All in all, the jury had to work with what they were given.  The prosecution's job was to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that OJ did it.  And they failed.  OJ had the better team.  And like it or not, based on the laws of this country, he was entitled to a fair defense.

 

There was plenty of outrage around the world from people of all colors about Rodney King.  

I think what a lot of what white America objected to in the Simpson case is exactly what you point out -- that a system that had often worked to unjustly accuse a black man, now worked to unjustly acquit a black man.  Unfairness is unfairness.  Two wrongs don't make a right and most people wouldn't celebrate this.  This wasn't 
"the system working." This was the system broken.  Just in a different way.

Anyone who thinks that the jury wasn't influenced by race is fooling themselves. There were mountains of evidence to show that OJ Simpson had the motivation, opportunity, and means to commit this crime and mountains of evidence showing that he did it.  In fact, there was so much evidence that his defense lawyers didn't introduce a speck of counter-evidence to dispel this. The jury instead chose to follow Johnnie Cochrain's directions to "send a message."  And they did.  I probably would have done the same were I in their position.

Let's not kid ourselves to think that the jury reached their decision based on careful examination of the evidence and any kind of thoughtful deliberation. 

Edited June 20, 2016 by RemoteControlFreak

[psychoticstate]

12 minutes ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

There was plenty of outrage around the world from people of all colors about Rodney King.  

I think what a lot of white America objected to is exactly what you point out -- that a system that had often worked to unjustly accuse a black man, now worked to unjustly acquit a black man.  Unfairness is unfairness.  Two wrongs don't make a right and most people wouldn't celebrate this.  This wasn't 
"the system working." This was the system broken.  Just in a different way.

Anyone who thinks that the jury wasn't influenced by race is fooling themselves. There were mountains of evidence to show that OJ Simpson had the motivation, opportunity, and means to commit this crime and mountains of evidence showing that he did it.  In fact, there was so much evidence that his defense lawyers didn't introduce a speck of counter-evidence to dispel this. The jury instead chose to follow Johnnie Cochrain's directions to "send a message."  And they did.  I probably would have done the same were I in their position.

Let's not kid ourselves that the jury reached their decision based on careful examination of the evidence and any kind of thoughtful deliberation. 

Exactly.  Unfair is unfair.  No one should be celebrating an unjust verdict. 

I don't believe the jury deliberated, thoughtfully or not.  Author Jeffrey Toobin, who was working with the defense, said they spent a whopping 2 hours.  2 hours.  That's an insult to everyone involved.  That's not even enough time to sit down with a timeline of what the prosecution suggested, and a timeline of where everyone was.  Out of the many, many witnesses in this case, they only wanted the testimony of Allan Park (the limo driver) read back?  Come on.  I think that was because Park was the only witness they couldn't write off in some way so they re-read his testimony to find something to discount him with.  And they did - - because he thought there was 2 cars in the driveway instead of one, in their minds, that meant he was unreliable about everything he testified to.

35 minutes ago, Simon Boccanegra said:

Excerpt from a 2014 piece on Christie Prody, the Nicole lookalike (so some claimed) with whom Simpson was involved from 1996 until 2009. I don't know how reliable she is (she has quite the rap sheet herself by now, and years of drug abuse have taken a toll), but it sounds like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.  

 

Mike Gilbert, Simpson's former agent, wrote a bit about Christie Prody in his book.  He said she was an out of control addict and someone who relished threesomes with Simpson. The National Enquirer had reported that Simpson had beaten her and Prody's mother feared that her daughter would end up like Nicole.  I believe it.   Prody was an idiot in my opinion for getting into a relationship with a man accused of murdering his ex-wife, much less when he began grooming her to look like that dead ex-wife.

[AuntiePam]

13 hours ago, Kidlaw said:

If there is ever to be another doc on OJ, I think it would be good to examine why this case resonated so much with White America. I feel like this doc did a good job explaining why many Black people felt the way that they did - and others have explored the Black American angle as well. Now, let's answer the question of the outrage from White America. 

 

Maybe because for the first time, white America believed a black man got away with murder -- murdering white people at that -- because he was black.  It's the exact opposite of what black America had experienced.  Whites have gotten away with murdering blacks for years.  Now "we" knew what it felt like.

[Pollock]

12 hours ago, psychoticstate said:

I was also frustrated that she said that the jury needed to go home - - so that's why they really didn't deliberate.  I've never been sequestered for eight or ten months and I can only imagine how stressful it is but that was their duty being on this jury. 

I don't remember if it was said in the documentary but in multiple interviews of the "not guilty" jurors (like this one http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-10-10/news/1995283069_1_aldana-simpson-verdict ) stated that the two people who voted guilty during the first round never revealed themselves during the deliberations. Then, the jury asked to have the limo driver testimony read back to them. Waiting for that to be done, they took another vote. 12 votes for not guilty. They still heard the testimony again but that didn't change their vote. 

So one could argue that those two "guilty" are most responsible for OJ being set free. Have they fought for it, they could have change other people minds, if not, mostly going for a hung jury then a mistrial.* As Aldana (juror from the interview) puts it : "On our last vote, we all agreed. What do they expect us to do? Go back and fight the other way?". 

* By the way, and OTT, how much does it take to declare a jury enable to reach a verdict? My google skills failed me. Is it a long process?

It's sad that they didn't do it but all jurors had 9 months of this shit show going on. If they didn't have an idea of what their verdict would be even before the closing arguments (aka, the recap) it would have meant they didn't pay attention or dozed off 10 hours a day on the sideline. I fail to see to whom they owed anything more than what they already did: being there, listening. They gave 9 months, cut from the world, listening to tedious arguments (and boy, I read some testimonies transcripts here http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/transcript.html because of the glove story on another topic, that must have been horrible to follow), trying to get what's real from what's not, replaying the day alone in a bedroom when most of them must have been used to rehash their days and thoughts with loved ones, like we all do, to help process. All of the jurors, alternates or not, had already sacrifice a lot to do their duty. I get it's frustrating for us that they didn't discuss it further, but the side of me who can't be appart of my family for more than 7 days really admire them for not burning the hotel down.

 

As for celebrating the verdict, the documentary did a good job to show that a fair amount of the African Americans did indeed think (or convinced themselves) he was innocent and framed by the same system screwing them over and over again, so why not celebrate? 

Side effect of this documentary also, it made me more curious about racism in American Justice System history and I found this documentary about the Scottsboro Boys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro:_An_American_Tragedy I assume most of you are aware of the case and the documentary but for those who aren't, it really is worth the watch. Fair warning: some of you who are familiar with southern accents may want to perforate your own eardrums when actors are reading transcripts from the trial. 

[DangerousMinds]

10 minutes ago, Pollock said:

I don't remember if it was said in the documentary but in multiple interviews of the "not guilty" jurors (like this one http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-10-10/news/1995283069_1_aldana-simpson-verdict ) stated that the two people who voted guilty during the first round never revealed themselves during the deliberations. Then, the jury asked to have the limo driver testimony read back to them. Waiting for that to be done, they took another vote. 12 votes for not guilty. They still heard the testimony again but that didn't change their vote. 

So one could argue that those two "guilty" are most responsible for OJ being set free. Have they fought for it, they could have change other people minds, if not, mostly going for a hung jury then a mistrial.* As Aldana (juror from the interview) puts it : "On our last vote, we all agreed. What do they expect us to do? Go back and fight the other way?". 

* By the way, and OTT, how much does it take to declare a jury enable to reach a verdict? My google skills failed me. Is it a long process?

It's sad that they didn't do it but all jurors had 9 months of this shit show going on. If they didn't have an idea of what their verdict would be even before the closing arguments (aka, the recap) it would have meant they didn't pay attention or dozed off 10 hours a day on the sideline. I fail to see to whom they owed anything more than what they already did: being there, listening. They gave 9 months, cut from the world, listening to tedious arguments (and boy, I read some testimonies transcripts here http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/transcript.html because of the glove story on another topic, that must have been horrible to follow), trying to get what's real from what's not, replaying the day alone in a bedroom when most of them must have been used to rehash their days and thoughts with loved ones, like we all do, to help process. All of the jurors, alternates or not, had already sacrifice a lot to do their duty. I get it's frustrating for us that they didn't discuss it further, but the side of me who can't be appart of my family for more than 7 days really admire them for not burning the hotel down.

 

As for celebrating the verdict, the documentary did a good job to show that a fair amount of the African Americans did indeed think (or convinced themselves) he was innocent and framed by the same system screwing them over and over again, so why not celebrate? 

Side effect of this documentary also, it made me more curious about racism in American Justice System history and I found this documentary about the Scottsboro Boys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro:_An_American_Tragedy I assume most of you are aware of the case and the documentary but for those who aren't, it really is worth the watch. Fair warning: some of you who are familiar with southern accents may want to perforate your own eardrums when actors are reading transcripts from the trial. 

Deliberation is not meant to be simply a straw poll.

[AuntiePam]

17 minutes ago, Pollock said:

 replaying the day alone in a bedroom when most of them must have been used to rehash their days and thoughts with loved ones, like we all do, to help process. All of the jurors, alternates or not, had already sacrifice a lot to do their duty. I get it's frustrating for us that they didn't discuss it further, but the side of me who can't be appart of my family for more than 7 days really admire them for not burning the hotel down.

This!  I understand why the jury's not allowed to talk about the case until both sides have presented their case, but how on earth can anyone expect them to remember 267 days of testimony?  Were they expected to review 45,000 pages of trial transcript?  It was an impossible task.

ETA: I served on a jury once, in Seattle, 30 years ago.  A black man was accused of burglary.  He'd been seen in the neighborhood, and the prosecutor said that a shoe print on the door of the house matched the shoes he was wearing.  We got the case late on a Thursday and returned Friday to deliberate.  I was the only juror who thought the case wasn't proven.  I held out until the end of the day and gave up.  Those 11 other jurors apparently saw something I didn't see and I felt that I must be wrong.  My only hope was that it was a first offense and that the guy got probation.

Edited June 20, 2016 by AuntiePam

[RemoteControlFreak]

1 hour ago, psychoticstate said:

Out of the many, many witnesses in this case, they only wanted the testimony of Allan Park (the limo driver) read back?  Come on.  I think that was because Park was the only witness they couldn't write off in some way so they re-read his testimony to find something to discount him with.  And they did - - because he thought there was 2 cars in the driveway instead of one, in their minds, that meant he was unreliable about everything he testified to.

This brings up a good point about extrapolating ambiguity and the logical fallacy made about this by the jurors and their defenders 

[RemoteControlFreak]

1 hour ago, Pollock said:

I fail to see to whom they owed anything more than what they already did: being there, listening. They gave 9 months, cut from the world, listening to tedious arguments (and boy, I read some testimonies transcripts here http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/transcript.html because of the glove story on another topic, that must have been horrible to follow), trying to get what's real from what's not, replaying the day alone in a bedroom when most of them must have been used to rehash their days and thoughts with loved ones, like we all do, to help process. All of the jurors, alternates or not, had already sacrifice a lot to do their duty. I get it's frustrating for us that they didn't discuss it further, but the side of me who can't be appart of my family for more than 7 days really admire them for not burning the hotel down.

To whom do they owe something more?  They owe it to the People of the State of California who were trying O.J. Simpson for murder.  The fact that they were tired, had been away from home for a long time, or that the testimony may have been boring, does not excuse this obligation. 

Remember, these jurors wanted to be on this case. There was ample opportunity to not get on this jury because of the hardship of sequestration or pretty much anything else.  Jurors even lied to get on the jury, denying histories of spousal abuse or employment by Hertz in two memorable cases.  Saying "I'm tired and I want to go home" is not fulling their duty to the People.

[jaync]

Quote

How insulting that the acquittal of a double murderer would be equated to Jackie Robinson, his career and his talent.

That was a total "Really?" moment. Ol' man was nuts.

The church footage of O.J. was cringe-worthy. He wasn't even going to try to get that kofia to fit, and couldn't get it away from his head fast enough.

[BananaRama]

22 hours ago, Kidlaw said:

For me personally, I never heard anyone talk about progress. Just that the OJ verdict seemed fair considering this is how the US operates when others kill Black people.  No one I know thought the OJ verdict represented some sort of progress for race relations or for Black people, specifically. Progress for race relations wasn't on anyone's minds because many people have sadly come to the conclusion that there is no further progress that can be made. 

This trial may not have had any progression for race relations, but it was successful by shining a spotlight on the faults and cracks in the LAPD.  What a bunch of knuckleheads!  The detectives, the crime-scene investigators, the patrolmen -- someone at all levels of the department -- made glaring mistakes.  Los Angeles is a huge city.  These guys deal with murders everyday and yet they made rookie mistakes.  Some of the things that they did were so stupid that if this was a murder trial involving non-celebrities -- I think the jury would still struggle to settle on a guilty verdict. 

[BananaRama]

On ‎6‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 9:41 PM, KBrownie said:

The selective outrage over this jury acquitting Simpson by most in the larger, non-black American society is so hypocritical.  Where was the outrage from any groups other than the black community towards the jury for Rodney King? The judge in the Latasha Harlins case? Or any of the other countless white juries and judges in this country that freed/slapped on the wrist whites who had killed/assaulted blacks?  Or all the other times this may have happened when race wasn't a factor and both the victim and accused were the same race.  This wasn't new by any means.  It just happened to not work in favor of the African-American person this time.  And that's why some people were so pissed and still are.  

Well said.

[Kbilly]

During the OJ rap video my mouth was agape like Dominick Dunne at the verdict. Dear lord this man and his fame addiction.

The Vegas crime was such a mess--all of the players were so unsavory. OJ was so much more upset during this trial than the murder trial--that was so bizarre. And his cavalier behavior at the civil trial was disgusting. 

I can't remember if it was part 4 or 5 but the up close shots of Nicole's neck were....I can't find the right word.

So the scratchy voice friend was still loyal in the 5th episode--he believed OJ didn't do it? I liked when the manager finally saw the light in Florida--but still years after OJ had basically confessed to him he was a murderer when they were smoking pot.

[Pollock]

1 minute ago, DangerousMinds said:

Deliberation is not meant to be simply a straw poll.

I agree with you, I really do. But in reality, deliberations are what a jury choses them to be. A straw poll can also give you justice in its true meaning (a innocent is liberated or a guilty is sentenced). It wasn't the case here and it's truly a dramatic mistake.

A jury of peers is imperfect by nature. I won't even give in the group dynamic discussion and how it can affect deliberations and the fairness of the process but I just want to add that we all obviously come with our lives and biases imbeded, even if we want to think we can be fair and dutyful at all costs, it's not true. You can try to be as fair as possible given your set of circumstances. This jury was no different and the circumstances were really dire and the case fucked up. The truth is none of us have any idea how it's like to be in a (comfy) prison for 9 months so I'm just trying a little bit of empathy, the same empathy I give the Goldmans and Browns for the horrible loss of their loved ones and I feel the slap and anger they must have felt with the verdict. But honestly, if the two who didn't agree with the verdict didn't speak up and chose to change their votes in a matter of hours, what else is there to do? Were they supposed to talk amongst themselves for hours to review a case they lived with for so long just to save appearences? Everybody deliberated in their heads for a long time, the vote was just a formality at this point if there was no antagonist. I want to think I would have done better than them because it makes me feel good about myself but the reality tells me that I'm not a middle-age person born in the 50s/60s in America sequestred for 250+ nights and sitting 250+ days in a courtroom while tons of informations are dropped on me in a gigantic circus lead by a charismatic lawyer during the 90s after the tv showed me multiple instances where the police was used as a violent tool against a race so I just don't know. And because I don't know if I could have done it or done it better, I don't judge them harshly. 

 

Quote

This brings up a good point about extrapolating ambiguity and the logical fallacy made about this by the jurors and their defenders 

Quote

To whom do they owe something more?  They owe it to the People of the State of California who were trying O.J. Simpson for murder.  The fact that they were tired, had been away from home for a long time, or that the testimony may have been boring, does not excuse this obligation. 

I'm sorry, I can't separate the two quotes to put my remarks at the adequate place. The two jurors who were finding him guilty, given the option, still chose to change for not guilty while waiting for the testimony and then again after hearing it again. 

For the rest, to me, they fullfilled it. We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this! Most of them at least. Again, the two who choses to stay silent could be blamed eventually, but not the other 10. They had a opinion that nobody challenged. To be clear, I'm not defending the verdict or the jury, again, I think they made a terrible mistake. I just disagree with the idea that in those circumstances, they didn't do what they had to do because it was a quick deliberation. If found guilty, a 10 minutes discussion and a vote wouldn't have gathered the same outrage I suppose.

Anwyay, I think I'm repeating myself at this point while I'm trying to be clear, so I'll leave it at that!

[DangerousMinds]

1 hour ago, BananaRama said:

This trial may not have had any progression for race relations, but it was successful by shining a spotlight on the faults and cracks in the LAPD.  What a bunch of knuckleheads!  The detectives, the crime-scene investigators, the patrolmen -- someone at all levels of the department -- made glaring mistakes.  Los Angeles is a huge city.  These guys deal with murders everyday and yet they made rookie mistakes.  Some of the things that they did were so stupid that if this was a murder trial involving non-celebrities -- I think the jury would still struggle to settle on a guilty verdict. 

Remember there was a civil trial soon after and the jurors didn't seem to struggle reaching a verdict.

[Bastet]

Quote

Remember there was a civil trial soon after and the jurors didn't seem to struggle reaching a verdict.

Different jury, yes, but also different attorneys, different judge, different evidence (although obviously with significant overlap), and a different burden of proof in the civil case; they were answering the same question, but didn't have to answer with anything near the same degree of certainty.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Bastet

[psychoticstate]

5 hours ago, Pollock said:

A jury of peers is imperfect by nature.

This is true.  However, would anyone really consider the criminal trial jury a jury of Simpson's peers?  Even Simpson wouldn't have said that.

 

7 hours ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

Remember, these jurors wanted to be on this case. There was ample opportunity to not get on this jury because of the hardship of sequestration or pretty much anything else.  Jurors even lied to get on the jury, denying histories of spousal abuse or employment by Hertz in two memorable cases.  Saying "I'm tired and I want to go home" is not fulling their duty to the People.

Exactly.  They wanted to be on the jury for the notoriety of it but they didn't want the nitty and gritty for being on the jury.

 

8 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

I understand why the jury's not allowed to talk about the case until both sides have presented their case, but how on earth can anyone expect them to remember 267 days of testimony?  Were they expected to review 45,000 pages of trial transcript?  It was an impossible task.

Each case might be different but the jurors should have been allowed to take notes.  And this is why the exhibits were at the ready for the jurors to view during their deliberations. 

 

8 hours ago, Pollock said:

By the way, and OTT, how much does it take to declare a jury enable to reach a verdict?

This is really dependent upon the judge.  The judge can always order the jury back to continue deliberations or decide to declare a hung jury.

[RemoteControlFreak]

1 minute ago, psychoticstate said:

Each case might be different but the jurors should have been allowed to take notes.  And this is why the exhibits were at the ready for the jurors to view during their deliberations.

If I recall correctly about the Simpson trial, jurors were allowed to take notes but they had to turn the notebooks in when they left court at the end of each day and pick them up again in the morning. 

[Simon Boccanegra]

Jeffrey Toobin, p. 422, on note-taking:  

There was one hint of what was to come. Bill Hodgman had spent much of the previous month working on an elaborate chart entitled "Unrefuted Evidence," a summary of all the non-DNA, non-Fuhrman-related evidence in the case. It was arranged in the form of a big pyramid, and Clark saved it for her conclusion. The chart was extremely impressive, and it listed things like Nicole's purchase of the gloves, Park's fruitless buzzing for Simpson, the blood to the left of the shoe prints and the cut on Simpson's left hand. It was a rather complicated graphic, and Clark did not discuss every point on it, so she offered the jurors an option.  

"If you would like to take notes on this," Clark said, "I can leave it up for a little while."  

Not one juror wrote down a thing.  

There are good and bad things to say about Marcia Clark, and I found her closing argument insufficiently confident, authoritative, and forceful, but I begin to understand why. If she had the perception that the jurors, at least many of them, "didn't care," I take that perception seriously. She was the one who was looking at them every day. She was not a courtroom rookie, nor an idiot. She could read a room.  

Was Ms. Bess the older female juror who famously said that she never reads anything except the racing form, and she doesn't understand that? 

Edited June 21, 2016 by Simon Boccanegra

[biakbiak]

Also, it was a lot of testimony but it wasn't 267 days of it, one of the complaints about how Ito handled the trial was the amount of time he allowed for arguments without the jury present. 

[Simon Boccanegra]

Quote

The church footage of O.J. was cringe-worthy. He wasn't even going to try to get that kofia to fit, and couldn't get it away from his head fast enough.

 

Yes, that was total amateur hour. You don't give the kofia to OJ to put on himself. You have someone from the church put it on him. He should not have been in control of the experiment.  

Other topic: The jurors in the civil case deliberated for five days. They requested several read-backs. The first was something complicated involving DNA, another was of the testimony of AC Cowlings, and another was something Petrocelli describes in his book as "a whole raft of material." The first full day of deliberation was 29 January 1997, a Wednesday, and the verdict of liability was announced on the following Tuesday, 4 February. So, there was also a weekend in there.  

Edited June 21, 2016 by Simon Boccanegra

[smiley13]

Yet another lawyer with a book.  How many people have made a living with their "books" about the murder of two people?  Pretty sad IMO.

[Simon Boccanegra]

Civil trial reactions in the Los Angeles Times from two criminal trial jurors, 1997:  

Two jurors from the criminal trial--one black, one white, but both of whom had voted for acquittal 16 months ago--split on Tuesday's verdicts.

"I love it. I couldn't be happier," said Anise Aschenbach, a 62-year-old white woman who said she thought Simpson was guilty but felt compelled by jury instructions to acquit him. "It conflicts with our verdicts, but it sure doesn't conflict with the way I felt inside about whether he did the crime.

"I always had that feeling that he did it," she said. "In the criminal trial it had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the difference between then and now. They [civil jurors] only needed 51%, plus they had some additional evidence that I thought was important too.

"It has nagged me that [Fred Goldman] felt that he hasn't had 12 people say that O.J. killed his son. This will mean some closure."

But her fellow juror, Yolanda Crawford, who is black, said she was shocked that the civil jury even reached a verdict, let alone a unanimous one. "I thought they'd definitely end in a mistrial or a hung jury," she said.

"I still feel good about my decision. I still believe there was reasonable doubt," she said.

Crawford stressed that she did not believe either jury was swayed by racial prejudice. "Race was not a part of our verdict. I don't think race was a part of this verdict," she said.

[DangerousMinds]

1 hour ago, smiley13 said:

Yet another lawyer with a book.  How many people have made a living with their "books" about the murder of two people?  Pretty sad IMO.

What about the one who tried to profit from the murders HE committed?

Edited June 21, 2016 by DangerousMinds

[Kidlaw]

12 minutes ago, auntl said:

I think that TPTB mishandled this case at every level. No one did a good job - the police, the evidence gatherers, the prosecutors, or the judge. It's like anything else in life. If you don't do a good job, you won't get a good result. In all fairness, how many "mistakes" was the jury supposed to ignore before they said forget it, we can't trust any of this. I know that juror 9 said it was payback, but I honestly believe that if there wasn't such gross incompetence, they would have at least had a hung jury.

I once read that the founding fathers knew that it was impossible to set up an air tight justice system. Consequently, they tried to set it up so that if there was an error, it would be on the side of a guilty man going free, rather than an innocent man going to prison.

Even though I think that OJ was guilty, I think that our justice system worked properly in this case.

Well said and I agree completely. While I'm not God and can never say 100% OJ did it, I still believe he did it. I think he believed Nicole was his property and he wasn't going to let her go. Ron Goldman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Unfortunately, the state's police force in LA was run by a bunch of racist frat boys and the DA's office made high school Mock Trial level mistakes (including employing the "I have a Black friend!" bingo spot by putting Darden on the case). 

When all of your actions become case studies and legal training for District Attorney's offices around the country on how to NOT prosecute a murder trial, then it's quite clear that you did a crappy job proving your case. And if the state does a crappy job proving its case, then the state should rightly lose.  You don't become the bad hypothetical in legal training when you've done a great job.

As you stated, this is how our Constituition is set up.  To protect the innocent even if it means letting the guilty go free.  Now, I'm sure our founding fathers didn't expect the justice system they created to work in favor of a Black man who is likely guilty, but there it is. 

[Cheyanne11]

13 minutes ago, Kidlaw said:

Well said and I agree completely. While I'm not God and can never say 100% OJ did it, I still believe he did it. I think he believed Nicole was his property and he wasn't going to let her go. Ron Goldman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Unfortunately, the state's police force in LA was run by a bunch of racist frat boys and the DA's office made high school Mock Trial level mistakes (including employing the "I have a Black friend!" bingo spot by putting Darden on the case). 

When all of your actions become case studies and legal training for District Attorney's offices around the country on how to NOT prosecute a murder trial, then it's quite clear that you did a crappy job proving your case. And if the state does a crappy job proving its case, then the state should rightly lose.  You don't become the bad hypothetical in legal training when you've done a great job.

As you stated, this is how our Constituition is set up.  To protect the innocent even if it means letting the guilty go free.  Now, I'm sure our founding fathers didn't expect the justice system they created to work in favor of a Black man who is likely guilty, but there it is. 

I just keep going back to Ron Goldman and how his absolutely horrific death was truly a "wrong place, wrong time" scenario.  The 'if only's must still weigh on the Goldmans: if only Ron hadn't gone home first and had dropped off the glasses earlier, if only he had taken longer to shower and got there later.  I don't know how you ever get over that.

Our legal system is set up that better that 10 guilty people go free than one innocent person is imprisoned and I support that.  I can accept the not guilty verdict.  But I don't think the jury did their job correctly in that they barely deliberated and, imo, their verdict was largely based on issues other than the evidence.

[vmcd88]

I'm a 46 year old African American woman and I've always believed that OJ is/was guilty.  Back then I was shocked by the verdict and I still am.  Every time I see the film of people cheering that OJ was not found guilty I feel sick to my stomach.  OJ murdered his wife and left her on the street like garbage for her children to find her. Then he proceeds to portray himself as the victim.   He's a psychopath.  After the verdicts he thought he could just go back to his life.  Good for Fred Goldman and the wrongful death lawsuit he brought against OJ.  Were it not for Fred, OJ wouldnt be in jail right now.     

[smiley13]

It would have been interesting for that to be addressed.  I want to know more about their background as well.

[RemoteControlFreak]

13 hours ago, biakbiak said:

Also, it was a lot of testimony but it wasn't 267 days of it, one of the complaints about how Ito handled the trial was the amount of time he allowed for arguments without the jury present. 

Which was absurd when the trial was televised and analyzed on TV 24/7.  The sequestration of the jury was a joke.  It was impossible to shield them from all of this.

[psychoticstate]

5 hours ago, Simon Boccanegra said:

Crawford stressed that she did not believe either jury was swayed by racial prejudice. "Race was not a part of our verdict. I don't think race was a part of this verdict," she said.

So in direct opposition to what Carrie Bess said during this documentary.  Of course Yolanda Crawford said this in 1997.  Back in 1997, Carrie Bess was also denying that race played any part in the trial deliberations (and I use that word lightly.) 

I also don't understand why Crawford seemed surprised that the jury came to a unanimous verdict of liable and why she was expecting a hung jury.  The criminal trial couldn't be mentioned so why expect a hung jury?

3 hours ago, Cheyanne11 said:

I just keep going back to Ron Goldman and how his absolutely horrific death was truly a "wrong place, wrong time" scenario.  The 'if only's must still weigh on the Goldmans: if only Ron hadn't gone home first and had dropped off the glasses earlier, if only he had taken longer to shower and got there later.  I don't know how you ever get over that.

I know.  I think this is why the Goldmans' grief gets me so much more than the Browns' (and I'm not diminishing their pain.)  Ron had absolutely nothing to do with that entire jacked up situation.  He didn't know Simpson; Simpson didn't know him.   His death was so, so pointless and so wasted.

6 hours ago, smiley13 said:

Yet another lawyer with a book.  How many people have made a living with their "books" about the murder of two people?  Pretty sad IMO.

I bought Daniel Petrocelli's book when it first came out and I still have it.  It's excellent.  Petrocelli was the perfect attorney for the Goldmans - -he had Simpson's number and had him dead to rights.  

3 hours ago, auntl said:

I think that TPTB mishandled this case at every level. No one did a good job - the police, the evidence gatherers, the prosecutors, or the judge. It's like anything else in life. If you don't do a good job, you won't get a good result. In all fairness, how many "mistakes" was the jury supposed to ignore before they said forget it, we can't trust any of this. I know that juror 9 said it was payback, but I honestly believe that if there wasn't such gross incompetence, they would have at least had a hung jury.

I once read that the founding fathers knew that it was impossible to set up an air tight justice system. Consequently, they tried to set it up so that if there was an error, it would be on the side of a guilty man going free, rather than an innocent man going to prison.

Even though I think that OJ was guilty, I think that our justice system worked properly in this case.

I'm a voracious audiobook listener (because I don't have as much time to read as I would like.)  I am currently listening to Mark Fuhrman's "The Murder Business" - - about how murder has become big business for media outlets and how some of these media outlets ruin the investigations.  One of the cases he's discussing, of course, is the Simpson case.  He mentions how his partner Brad Roberts did good work at the scene and discovered evidence and yet was not brought in to testify or given credit for what he did.  Fuhrman mentioned

*when the decision was made by higher ups to personally notify Simpson, officers who were currently not at Bundy detecting should have been sent versus himself, Lange and Vannatter.  He said he did not understand the need to notify Simpson personally and yet not extend that courtesy to the Brown and Goldman families.  

*Vannatter had not been in charge of a murder investigation in some years and acted almost giddy over the celebrity connection.  

*At the Bundy crime scene, Lange made the decision to decrease the "line" where media and civilians were allowed to be, allowing people to see Nicole's body and the crime scene in general and forcing Lange to take the blanket from inside the property to cover her body.

*Fuhrman made the decision at Rockingham to walk around the outside of the property instead of standing at the gate, ringing the buzzer nonstop with no answer.  He noted the Bronco and odd angle and noticed the small bit of blood on the driver side door when his flashlight reflected on it.  He immediately notified Lange and Vannatter who apparently questioned whether it was blood and did not seem very concerned.

*When Vannatter was called back over to the Bundy scene, he left Fuhrman in charge at Rockingham.  Fuhrman ordered that the Bronco be impounded and towed immediately to preserve any evidence.  Vannatter overruled him and the media used the hood of the Bronco to rest their coffee, equipment, etc., potentially destroying/damaging evidence.

*Fuhrman noted that Dennis Fung only took samples from several blood spots in the Rockingham driveway versus taking samples from all.  He argued the point but was shut down.

* The initial search warrant that Vannatter (I think?) got was very poorly done with too broad and vague descriptions.  Vannatter was going to leave the original at the Rockingham property (the original is never left; you always leave a copy.) 

I am still listening but I thought it was interesting.  It does seem as though the higher ups, at least, were looking out for Simpson at the start versus investigating the murders. 

[DangerousMinds]

Does anyone know how the Brown and Goldman families were notified?

[Willowsmom]

Something llke this LAPD sends officers to the house. They used to ask local departments to send officers if the family lived elsewhere.

[psychoticstate]

1 hour ago, DangerousMinds said:

Does anyone know how the Brown and Goldman families were notified?

DM, the Browns were notified via a phone call.  When told Nicole was dead, Denise - - who had picked up an extension - - began screaming that "he" had killed Nicole. 

The Goldmans were also notified by a phone call.  Fred Goldman said that he was asked if he had been following the news about Nicole Brown's murder.  He answered that he had but had no idea what that had to do with him.  He was told then that the unidentified male was his son.

Neither were given the special little snowflake treatment that Simpson was.  And being her ex-husband, he was not her next of kin, despite what the LAPD said.  He was the children's father but her next of kin would have been her parents down in Dana Point.

[LadyHam]

11 hours ago, auntl said:

I think that TPTB mishandled this case at every level. No one did a good job - the police, the evidence gatherers, the prosecutors, or the judge. It's like anything else in life. If you don't do a good job, you won't get a good result. In all fairness, how many "mistakes" was the jury supposed to ignore before they said forget it, we can't trust any of this. I know that juror 9 said it was payback, but I honestly believe that if there wasn't such gross incompetence, they would have at least had a hung jury.

I once read that the founding fathers knew that it was impossible to set up an air tight justice system. Consequently, they tried to set it up so that if there was an error, it would be on the side of a guilty man going free, rather than an innocent man going to prison.

Even though I think that OJ was guilty, I think that our justice system worked properly in this case.

See, I just don't understand how someone can think OJ was guilty, but think the justice system worked in this case. I'm not jumping on you. I've heard it a lot where people have said that they feel deep down in their bones that OJ was guilty, but the state just didn't prove it. 

How?  Do people feel the glove or other evidence was planted?  Do people feel the evidence was so contaminated it was unreliable?

Even if the glove was planted at Rockingham by Fuhrman (which I don't believe for a second) it still would have come from the Bundy crime scene. It still had OJ's, Nicole's and Ron's blood on it.  Plus, the gloves were a very rare glove, and only about 200 pair were sold. There was a receipt that shows Nicole bought those gloves for OJ. There were numerous pictures of OJ wearing those gloves. OJ could not produce the gloves. He said they were given away. I say they were in the custody of the LAPD because they were part of a murder investigation. 

Do people feel OJ's blood was planted at Rockingham because Vannatter brought OJ's vial of blood over there to give directly to the criminologist?  Vanatter brought the blood over there in a sealed envelope and handed it off to Fung (the lead criminologist) within 3 minutes of his arrival. The envelope was ever opened. All the evidence (including the blood evidence) was already collected by the time Vannatter arrived there with the vial of blood.  If Vannatter had wanted to plant any blood in this case, wouldn't it have made more sense for him to plant it at Bundy, where the murders had occurred?

Do people feel the evidence was collected in such a way that all of it should have just been disregarded and deemed utterly useless?  As much as Barry Scheck attacked the collection techniques and spouted off left and right about how contaminated everything was, he is now basically making his living off of how reliable DNA is and how it's virtually impossible to contaminate it.

Even if you disregard the evidence that people thought was planted (the glove, the blood drops at Rockingham, the socks in OJ's bedroom, the blood on the back gate at Bundy), that still leaves the blood drops at Bundy that were left next to the bloody Bruno Magli shoe prints and the fact that the limo driver saw OJ walk up the driveway (or at least a six foot tall, 200 pound African American man) and into his home at around 11 pm the night of the murders.  That right there would have been more than enough to convict him.  Defedants have been convicted of just one drop of their blood at the crime scene.

OJ's blood at Bundy and the limo driver's testimony are the 2 pieces of evidence that the defense team did not dispute.  They never even tried.  Does  the defense want people to believe that since Mark Fuhrman said some terrible things on tape to a screen writer, that people should now believe that the lab personnel running the tests on all the evidence collected in this murder are now willing to falsify their lab results so they can be a part of his vast conspiracy to frame OJ?

The defense team did what all defense teams do .  You poke at the evidence and create holes in it.  If the defense created enough reasonable doubt in OJ's case to acquit him, then every single conviction that used the same collection techniques should have been thrown out.  Every conviction that had Fuhrman or Vannatter on it should have been thrown out.  The very first thing Johnnie Cochran should have done immediately after OJ's acquittal was go file a civil lawsuit on his behalf suing the LAPD for violating his civil rights.  Johnnie Cochran was one of the best, most successful civil rights attorneys of his time.  He made his living off of suing the LAPD for civil rights violations.  Why did he drop the ball and not pursue anything in this case?  He sure put enough pressure on the jury to do the right thing, but then he drops the ball and does not pursue a civil suit for the great "legal injustice" done to OJ?   Let's face it, he didn't do anything because he knew the defense team got lucky by bamboozling the jury with their smoke and mirrors and underhanded tactics.  I will never, ever agree with this verdict.

Edited June 22, 2016 by LadyHam

[Midnight Cheese]

17 minutes ago, LadyHam said:

See, I just don't understand how someone can think OJ was guilty, but think the justice system worked in this case. I'm not jumping on you. I've heard it a lot where people have said that they feel deep down in their bones that OJ was guilty, but the state just didn't prove it. 

How?  Do people feel the glove or other evidence was planted?  Do people feel the evidence was so contaminated it was unreliable?

Even if the glove was planted at Rockingham by Fuhrman (which I don't believe for a second) it still would have come from the Bundy crime scene. It still had OJ's, Nicole's and Ron's blood on it.  Plus, the gloves were a very rare glove, and only about 200 pair were sold. There was a receipt that shows Nicole bought those gloves for OJ. There were numerous pictures of OJ wearing those gloves. OJ could not produce the gloves. He said they were given away. I say they were in the custody of the LAPD because they were part of a murder investigation. 

Do people feel OJ's blood was planted at Rockingham because Vannatter brought OJ's vial of blood over there to give directly to the criminologist?  Vanatter brought the blood over there in a sealed envelope and handed it off to Fung (the lead criminologist) within 3 minutes of his arrival. The envelope was ever opened. All the evidence (including the blood evidence) was already collected by the time Vannatter arrived there with the vial of blood.  If Vannatter had wanted to plant any blood in this case, wouldn't it have made more sense for him to plant it at Bundy, where the murders had occurred?

Do people feel the evidence was collected in such a way that all of it should have just been disregarded and deemed utterly useless?  As much as Barry Scheck attacked the collection techniques and spouted off left and right about how contaminated everything was, he is now basically making his living off of how reliable DNA is and how it's virtually impossible to contaminate it.

Even if you disregard the evidence that people thought was planted (the glove, the blood drops at Rockingham, the socks in OJ's bedroom, the blood on the back gate at Bundy), that still leaves the blood drops at Bundy that were left next to the bloody Bruno Magli shoe prints and the fact that the limo driver saw OJ walk up the driveway (or at least a six foot tall, 200 pound African American man) and into his home at around 11 pm the night of the murders.  That right there would have been more than enough to convict him.  Defedants have been convicted of just one drop of their blood at the crime scene.

OJ's blood at Bundy and the limo driver's testimony are the 2 pieces of evidence that the defense team did not dispute.  They never even tried.  Does  the defense want people to believe that since Mark Fuhrman said some terrible things on tape to a screen writer, that People should now believe that the lab personnel running the tests on all the evidence collected in this murder are now willing to falsify their lab results so they cannot be a part of his vast conspiracy to frame OJ?

The defense team did what all defense teams do .  You poke at the evidence and create holes in it.  If the defense created enough reasonable doubt in OJ's case to acquit him, then every single conviction that used the same collection techniques should have been thrown out.  Every conviction that had Fuhrman or Vannatter on it should have been thrown out.  The very first thing Johnnie Cochran should have done immediately after OJ's acquittal was go file a civil lawsuit on his behalf suing the LAPD for violating his civil rights.  Johnnie Cochrsn was one of the best, most successful civil rights attorneys of his time.  He made his living off of suing the LAPD for civil rights violations.  Why did he drop the ball and not pursue anything in this case?  He sure put enough pressure on the jury to do the right thing, but then he drops the ball and does pursue a civil suit for the great " legal injustice" done to OJ.  Let's face it, he didn't do anything because he knew the defense team got lucky by bamboozling the jury with their smoke and mirrors and underhanded tactics.  I will never, ever agree with this verdict.

This is an impressive summary.  And the quote from Toobin's book, upthread (the lack of notes taken by jurors on the people's graphic re undisputed evidence), the 'deliberations,' all of it - honestly impossible for me to conclude anything other than the tenor in the jury room indicated to the two jurors initially voting guilty that there was no point in trying.

Nicole Brown's family may have liked OJ's money too much.  I guess that 'background' and the amusing sotto voce references to Fred Goldman's wife having once been married to a notorious Chicago scumbag meant all that commingled blood, the lack of alibi, OJ's proven ownership of rare gloves with all that blood and of rare shoes leaving prints in all that blood, all of it falls in the face of the slaughtered victim's parent's background and makes it somewhat understandable for OJ to slaughter her and a friend.  I think background means I'm supposed to put friend in quotes because Nicole was sleeping with every man in L.A. besides O.J. Simpson.  And background also means that Nicole was responsible as an 18-year old for OJ's first marriage ending, when he pursued her publicly, and he and Marguerite had separated on multiple occasions in the decade before he met Nicole.  It's like she bewitched him!  I bet the ol' off with her head treatment is kind of a suitable punishment for a really bad person who doesn't do exactly what you want.  The Red Queen thought so too.

I very much liked Yolanda Crawford in this series and understand and believe that she took the process seriously.  I also think she seemed very sad and somber, and wonder if she was reflecting back on things like her opinion about the 1997 civil judgment and wishing she knew then what she knew now.  I think two decades of 'If I Did It' and the rather troubled life of currently somehow alive OJ girlfriends like Christie Prodie show that at least to most, there's background and there's background.  Unless one is Carrie Bess of course.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Midnight Cheese

[DangerousMinds]

Perfectly said.