Many years ago—pre-blogging—I wrote this about OJ Simpson:
Yes, OJ was guilty and got off. So have lots of white guys. But that's missing the point. Why did the jurors unanimously believe it quite plausible that the LAPD planted evidence and lied on the stand?
That's pretty much still my basic take.
Surely not because cops actually plant evidence and lie in court. That would never happen in a million years (except all the time).
Surely not. My god, what evidence in the thirty years plus since then would suggest that?
...Because the cops basically admitted they were biased and effed up?
The 6(?)-hour ESPN documentary (the documentary, not the docudrama, which I haven't seen) on this case is, in my opinion, the best movie made in the US in the past 30 years. The first episode is mostly a history of the LAPD and it's quite astonishing. It's not saying too much to say you could blame the "injustice" of OJ going free on Darryl Gates.
Darryl Gates was a piker compared to Parker.
James,Davis was chief of police when this happened:
For a few months in 1936, the Los Angeles Police Department launched a foreign excursion of sorts -- a “Bum Blockade” on the state’s borders. The LAPD deployed 136 officers to 16 major points of entry on the Arizona, Nevada and Oregon lines, with orders to turn back migrants with “no visible means of support.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-09-me-then9-story.html
Unfortunately the full story is behind a paywall.
But yeah, Parker was a racist asshole
Yes, the ESPN documentary series is outstandingly good. It's the one to see, not the one with the actors.
And blame the riots on Gates, too
Yup, payback for Darryl Gates. And if any jurors were on the fence about payback, Mark F's testimony knocked them off.
The jury members did not unanimously say that they believed that evidence was planted, they said the evidence was inadequate, which is absurd. OJ's attorney made the claim of a frame-up in his summing-up, but an attorney would not make such a claim unless there was in fact lots of evidence (some of which was actually questionable, namely the glove supposedly found at OJ's place).
This case was probably lost in jury selection, when at least 10 of 12 selected were black. Just as all-white juries tend to vote one way in interracial cases, so too all- or nearly-all-black juries may vote according to racial prejudice. A rational verdict in interracial cases may require several members of both races.
What matters of course is how the people perceive that they are classified by society as belonging to "races", not the actual genetics.
You think the case was lost because of their race rather than their personal experience? We've got a word for that kind of thinking ...
There have been plenty of juries that were comprised of 10-12 white people, sitting in judgment of people of all races. Eventually it was going to happen that a jury would have 10 black people on it. Not sure if the former situation is OK why the latter situation would not be OK, other than (racist) norms of “that’s too many black people to be on a jury.”
Also WaPo at the time reported there were 8 African Americans on the jury. If you’re going to make racist observations, you could at least be honest about the facts. The others were Hispanic (2), white (1) and Native American (1). “The prosecution eliminated eight African American potential jurors and two whites from the 39 people who appeared in court today. The defense excused two African Americans, five whites, one Hispanic and two Native Americans.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/11/04/majority-black-jury-selected-in-oj-simpson-murder-trial/e070bd2c-20b6-43c8-b6b2-e387f42da053/
No complaints I assume about the high number of blacks kicked off the jury before the trial began? Was the judge supposed to say out loud “you need to knock more blacks off” after the random picking of citizens for jury duty that day just happened to have a lot of blacks in it?
If it’s not shady that Trump managed to randomly draw the one judge in south Florida predisposed to fuck up his stolen classified docs trial, then it’s also not shady that occasionally a black defendant will randomly get a jury made up of a majority of black people, especially in a county that is majority non-white.
My guess is that you wouldn't recognize a racist if one was staring you in the face in the mirror every single morning of your worthless life.
It was proven beyond any possible doubt that the police (in particular, Mark Fuhrman), lied on the stand. I would hope an all white jury wouldn't stand for that either.
I'm sure you know that Fuhrman, at one point in his career, applied for a disability retirement package, claiming that his years on the force had made him hate black people so much he couldn't be fair.
All I can say is good riddance, I couldn't care less that he is dead. Of course there are a whole bunch of folks that I would be quite happy if they kicked the bucket. If a house fell on Orange Jesus, I would be celebrating like the Munchkins when that happened to Wicked Witch of the East
i don't wish him dead; a thrombus in broca's area would be sufficient to establish karmic balance
“If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit. “
Seems like a lifetime ago
Why did the jurors unanimously believe it quite plausible that the LAPD planted evidence and lied on the stand.
We don’t know they unanimously believed this, because we’re not mind readers. Seems entirely possible to me that some of the jurors knew perfectly well he was guilty, but wanted him to go free as a chance to strike back at what they regarded as an unjust system.
Perhaps the jurors genuinely thought there was a reasonable doubt about his guilt. I do not dispute jury verdicts unless I sat through the whole trial and heard and saw everything the jury did.
Perhaps the jurors genuinely thought there was a reasonable doubt about his guilt.
I think that's probably the case. Hence my use of the modifier "some." Or maybe just one juror. Or maybe none at all. But Kevin's wording is too sweeping. Again, we're not mind-readers.
But you don't "dispute" the validity of that verdict? Really? You think they got it right—there was reasonable doubt about who butchered those two victims? Please. I don't think it was greatest injustice in US history. Not by a long shot. Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted, etc.
But, c'mon. Simpson got away with a double homicide. We all know that.
I plan to watch the ESPN doc that has been recommended above, it was along time ago. At that time, I was not persuaded of his guilt and have since always been a bit bemused at the near unanimous opinion that he was guilty but never reviewed the whole debacle.
I have no illusions of my fuzzy intuitions being infallible....
I didn't sit through the whole trial, so I have no opinion on whether the jury got it right or wrong. If you didn't sit through the whole trial, your opinion is as valueless as mine would be if I had one.
I didn't sit through the whole trial, so I have no opinion on whether the jury got it right or wrong
This wasn't some obscure case in a small town in Maine. There was non-strop, saturation coverage of the trial and the associated crime—for nearly a year and a half. And then the whole thing was revisited in civil court. And there have been numerous books and documentaries made about the affair. The murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman is probably among the three most exhaustively covered crimes in US history, along with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Watergate break-in.
Your comment implies you believe it's not possible for people not physically present in the court room to be able to accurately assess the facts. This seems wrong an a number of levels: the aforementioned, huge quantities of publicly available information about the case, and, of course, the ability of ordinary citizens to watch the trial itself on TV, as if they were present in that LA court room.
OJ was hardly the first person to get away with murder. And he won't be last.
Sorry, but I think lawnorder has it right on this one. IMHO of course.
You are correct. "it's not possible for people not physically present in the court room to be able to accurately assess the facts."
Jury nullification, it happens.
After all, an all-white jury in Mississippi let Emmett Till's killers go free so, as I said, it happens.
It's just sad that a lot of good people, especially Fred Goldman, Marica Clark and Chris Darden got caught up in this or were burned by the LAPD
"In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed." - Abraham Lincoln
Apologies for getting all philosophic-like.
LAPD Hollywood Division has been "safe pointed" by Scientology. Cameras have made testalying more difficult.
It was the kind of case where run of the mill defendants get convicted all the time, but Simpson was no run of the mill defendant.
The bits of "dramatic but irrelevant" evidence - the slow speed chase and the prior evidence of stalking/domestic abuse don't look good, but when you look it over the prosecution did not have what they usually have, which is: why?
Rich ex husbands (emphasis on "rich") don't usually James Bond-it over to their ex's house with the kids sleeping upstairs and cut her head off in a frenzy, then get home to hop on a plan to Chicago and successfully, like in a movie, dispose of virtually all the evidence.
So as to the evidence, I will point out that the defense had two arguments and only used one. The one they used was that Furman planted the glove and the cops were either sloppy or worse with DNA evidence. I just re read Cochran's closing and that was it, plus, Cochran leaned heavily into the timeline.
What the defense did not even bother to do was that all of the evidence was completely consistent with OJ heading over to Brown's house to, who knows, drop off some homework for the kids? Get in a quick stalk before a flight? And then stumbles into a bloody murder scene, panics, and leaves. That would account for all of the potential physical evidence , it would explain it.
The prosecution had no direct evidence, it was all circumstantial. The jury instruction on circumstantial evidence is "you may convict on circumstantial evidence alone, only if there is no other possible explanation of the evidence."
I was a young lawyer then, and I thought, "if they actually apply that rule, its not guilty."
Well, since there is no other possible killer, he probably is guilty, and this could have been a good discussion of what we as a society actually want -- do we want "beyond a reasonable doubt?" or do we just want "eh, I'm sure he's guilty, who else would have done it."
Looking back at it, he's a world class athlete, a successful actor, and absolutely fantastic at disposing of evidence, if that is what happened at LAX. Many of us have been to LAX, thousands of people and OJ Simpson is stuffing bloody clothing into a trash can and no one witnesses that.
Ok, you kind of stumbled on to my personal theory of what I think happened. He saw Nicole at the restaurant and it re-ignited a fever in him. He went to her house to stalk her, something I think he had done many times before without incident. He put on his SEAL costume including a knife which he had from a movie he had acted in (he reportedly befriended SEAL team members) He saw that she had laid out candles, something she did before romance. So he waited to see who it was. Then he saw him, the waiter. THE WAITER, THE FUCKING WAITER! He lost it and killed them.
I’ve been to LAX many times and I don’t think getting rid of the evidence would be a problem.
O J had a history of violence with regard to Nicole. He saw himself as a “man of action” and his arrest for trying to steal his memorabilia confirmed that in my thinking. Of course, only a theory, but I think it explains the “why”.
"There is no other possible killer" is not correct. There are millions of other possible killers. There is nobody else KNOWN to have a motive, but that by no means excludes a killer with an unknown motive.
There is no other possible killer" is not correct
Yes it is. OJ killed them. I'm glad we have a system characterized by the presumption of innocence. I'm glad we enough constitutional protections that sometimes even people who commit murder can't be convicted. This is a small price to pay for minimizing the chances of wrongful conviction of the innocent. But make no mistake, Simpson got away with murder.
If we don't abide by the judgements of our dispute resolution mechanisms, we have no society at all.
DNA evidence was also very new at the time of the trial and it wasn't commonly understood what a match meant.
I’ll never forgive Barry Sheck for his role in discrediting that evidence.
Sheck was just doing his job. If only people you and I deem wrongly accused were able to mount a strong defense, where would we be?
The whole idea of the Innocence Project, as I understand it, is to use DNA evidence to show that a person was wrongly convicted. I fully support this. It is a fine and nobel undertaking. But in the OJ case Sheck turned this on its head and used his expertise to discredit the evidence to help allow a guilty man to go free. I’m sure if the DNA evidence didn’t implicate Simpson he would have used it to show OJ was innocent and wouldn’t have questioned its collection. So, to me, he was just another hack with an agenda, not a person using science to get to the truth.
If LA County would like juries to trust that cops aren’t lying or planting evidence, perhaps they could do something about the cops credibly accused of lying or planting evidence in the past. Independent investigations of claims, as well as mandatory body cam usage, would aid a lot in rehabilitating their reputation in the general public.
I blame mostly Ito who allowed the trail become a circus and the jury who were not interested in the DNA evidence according to the Wiki page, and were more interested in pursuing retribution against the racist LAPD.
Revisionist take on Judge Ito: At the time I agreed, he let it become a circus. Now, what could have he done to avoid this? Kicked the cameras out of the courtroom? We made it a circus, the public did, not Judge Ito. He had to deal with all that shit and did the best he could
"... Why did the jurors unanimously believe it quite plausible that the LAPD planted evidence and lied on the stand? ..."
I doubt that is why they let him off.
I've always thought there was room for both hypotheses. O. J. Simpson was guilty as homemade sin, AND the LAPD is so incompetent and stupid that it was incapable of successfully framing a guilty man.
A random collection of people typically has difficulty in absorbing facts and collectively reaching logical conclusions from them in a complex, contested case. And their own prejudices come into play. As most trial lawyers know, this often results in the verdict being essentially a coin flip. This was probably a factor in the Simpson case.
The same characteristics are shown by many commenters to this post.
My take was that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty man.
Now that Orenthal is worm-food, the 90s are truly over.
As many of us remember, the Rodney King verdict preceded OJ's trial. In that same period on the silver screen, we had Colors, Boyz n the Hood, and Menace II Society. Straight Outta Compton from 2015 retrospectively covers this period. Wasn't the best of times, that's for sure.
Wasn't the best of times, that's for sure.
I'd say the 90s are in the running for the best times I've lived through. Crime was rapidly declining. We got this cool new thing called the internet. The stock market was booming. The job market was booming. We actually managed to make a bit of progress on median wages. Taxes went up on the rich. Our biggest national crisis was oral sex in the White House. And we were even naive enough to think the Cold War was over.
Your mileage apparently varies.
The Cold War was over, it's just that Weimar Russia only lasted until 1999.
Juries like celebrities.
Half of all murderers in the U.S. get away with it. Half. And it's not because the murderers have gotten smarter, or because they're celebrities. (Ask Phil Spector. Or on second thought, never mind...)
That's pretty much still my basic take.
Mine too. Bottom line is the LAPD decided just being guilty by the available evidence wasn't enough they had to make sure he was "DOUBLE EXTRA GUILTY!!" and screwed up the whole case.
Yes I remember the Bronco chase, watched it from my college apartment. Initially thought he was trying to make it Mexico.
Point of personal connection: My father stayed at the same hotel OJ was at while he was in Chicago that week.
Did your dad keep that cool knife OJ gave him? (jk)
Didn't exactly pass exactly pass each other in the hallway or the lobby.
Didn't even know he was there until he was charged.
...Because OJ could afford the best lawyers in the city, and the prosecution were a bunch of bumblers, and also it was 1994-1995.
And then in 1997 a different judge giving different instructions to a different (whiter) jury, with better lawyers on the Goldman/Brown side and poorer lawyers on Simpson's side, resulted in a very different outcome.
I'm surprised Kevin Drum hasn't worked in some reference to lead poisoning re: this case.