I didn’t follow the trial at all. Everything I’ve picked up has been through secondary sources, mainly opinions expressed in the media and through the average shmoe on the street.
A brief info search reveals the same zealous, incongruent opinions as the JFK shooting, hence this strikes me as a great debate.
Was the OJ trial really a tragedy of justice? (If it becomes pertinent, let this statement include the civil trial where he was found responsible for the victim’s deaths.)
My take on the OJ criminal trial.
The evidence against him was overwhelming, far worse than most people had imagined before the trial began. He would have fried if Johnny C wasn’t brought in to play the race-card. The prosecution (mainly Marcia Clark and Chris Dardin) looked like bumbling idiots by the end of the trial. Johnny C did his dance and the prosecution watched, speechless, in awe.
Johnny Cochrane did a brilliant job at turning the entire focus of the trial so it was no longer about whether or not OJ had murdered 2 people, but if the LA police department had framed OJ and was a racist organization.
Do I agree with what Cochrane did?
Yes and no.
A defense lawyer is supposed to do whatever they can, within reasonable boundaries to get their client acquitted.
I recall reading one of the books about the whole case, it may have been Jeffrey Toobin’s The Run of His Life: The People Vs OJ Simpson and there is a scene soon after OJ has been arrested where Cochrane gathers all of the lawyers for Simpson together and says, “OK, let’s assume OJ did this. How can we get him out of it?”
I don’t think there is anything wrong with what the defense did, other than the fact that the concept of equal justice for all under the law is nonsense when some defendants get Cochrane, and some get a drunk sleeping off last nights binge in court.
The prosecution witnesses lost a lot of credibility as the trial went along. A relatively inexperienced forensics guy was on the physical evidence and he was a poor witness. The DNA expert was caught making a silly arithmetic mistake in his presentation which had to be corrected while he was on the stand. A detective kept the blood sample swatches for DNA testing in his car overnight. And, of course, grandstanding Mark Furman almost vaulted over a wall so he could be first on the scene. The prosecution introduced some gloves without knowing whether or not Simpson could get them on. And so on.
The trial also had some farcical aspects. Quite a bit of time was spent on the testimony of a “glove expert” whatever the hell that is.
It was a perfect example of a Great Debate: Lots of noise and quibbling over insignificant details, the wrong conclusion was reached, and the wrong people made a lot of money over it.
Okay, so it’s not EXACTLY like a GD… 
I disagree that the prosecution’s case was a slam-dunk. While there was suspicious behavior on OJ’s part, there was also suspicious behavior on the LAPD’s part, as well. Like, when a vial of Simpson’s blood had to be transported across the street downtown, why did the officer carrying it head out to Nicole’s house, then came back an hour later with several CC’s missing?
My own suspicion is that, while OJ did commit the murder, there were folks on the LAPD who wanted to “make sure” he’d get convicted, and tampered with the crime scene and evidence to try and assure a win. That tampering got picked up and planted reasonable doubt in the jury, which led to the “not guilty” verdict.
An interesting book on the topic is The Simpson Trial In Black and White, where two Los Angeles newspaper reporters – one white, one black – covered the entire trial but came to different conclusions. They end up debating over each other’s interpretations of the facts, and explain why they believed the way they did.
I would consider the fact that a man who brutally killed two people and got away with it qualifies as a “travesty of justice.”
I lived in L.A. while this was happenning. I have a friend who was a county prosecutor who worked in Marcia Clark’s office. Her opinion was that the Kos Angeles Police was so incompetant that they couldn’t even frame a guilty man.
Other than that I think ccwaterback and TarPops nailed it.
It’s a wonder how OJ can sleep at night.
Cochran did what he was allowed to do by Judge Ito, in his duty to get his client off. Yes, it was a farce, but a judge is supposed to maintain control of his courtroom and his trial. Ito let his desire to become a TV star take precedence over his public duty, and the spectacle is his fault entirely.
Since OJ was found guilty in the civil trial I would hardly say that he got away with anything.
It always amazes me how many people are all for the right to a fair trial as long as the accused is found guilty. If the accused is not found guilty, the trial is automatically assumed to be a travesty. It also amazes me how people assume that defense counsel is supposed to somehow ensure that his/her client is convicted. That’s not how it is supposed to work.
Cochrane did exactly what defense lawyers are supposed to do in this situation - attack the credibility of the evidence. The burden of making the case is, as it should be, on the prosecution. The prosecution has to present the credible evidence to justify a conviction. Cochrane was able to attack that evidence. rjung identifies, without citation, some issues relating to the chain of custody of the evidence that could affect its credibility. I’m not really in a position to comment on that, since I’m not intimately familiar with the trial record. But two incidents stand out in my mind - Fuhrman and the glove.
The glove thing was a stupid, stupid move on the part of the prosecution. While there were many ways to explain why the glove didn’t fit so many months after the fact, the prosecution gambled on a grandstanding stunt, and it backfired. Explanations after the fact had the odor of covering their ass.
Second, Fuhrman was a bad witness. He lied on the stand. The jury probably wouldn’t have loved him if he admitted making racist statements in the past, but Cochran was able to paint Fuhrman as both a racist AND a liar. I don’t think there’s any realistic way his credibility could have survived both UNLESS there was iron-clad physical evidence. By introducing doubts about both the physical evidence and the credibility of the investigators, Cochran did what he is supposed to do in defending his client.
My experience has been that very few things are done purely “by the book”. Most people and agencies function with a certain amount of sloppiness and shortcuts. If you have a good enough lawyer there’s almost definitely an opportunity to find things that weren’t done “correctly”, or assorted “inconsistencies”.
The important question is to what extent the answer is compromised. And here’s where ignorance and race come in. Suppose some expert testifies that the way the blood tests were done was not correct and gave the opportunity for an incorrect answer. OK, but does that mean that the certainty is merely reduced from 99.9999% to 99% or even 95%, or does it really mean that the test is completely worthless and tells absolutely nothing? ISTM that in cases like this, the defense is obviously trying to imply the latter, and even the prosecution can get hung up on defending the correctness of the procedure and not in defending the fact that the test still has meaning even if you grant the defense’s points. And the jury, who understand little about technical matters, is incapable of deciding this on their own.
In the case of the OJ trial, the jury was motivated to find him innocent to begin with, for racial reasons. All they needed was something to hang their hats on, and the defense more than provided it to them, as above.
I don’t think it is fair to say that people “automatically” assume anything. A lot of people followed the trial rather closely, and formed their own opinion, which is strongly at odds with the verdict.
What amazes me is that someone could make such ridiculous statements as this with a straight face. I don’t believe that you really believe that “people assume that defense counsel is supposed to somehow ensure that his/her client is convicted”. Obviously people are aware that the defense is supposed to work in the interests of their client. Nonetheless, a lot of people are deeply disturbed by the possibility that someone so obviously guilty can beat the rap by having a good lawyer. To the extent that people do criticize the legal defense team, it is because they are perceived as having “played the race card” - getting their preferred verdict by inflaming the racial passions of the jury (and much of the rest of the country along with it) in order to get a wrong verdict that they wanted. Maybe you think this is a good thing - I don’t know - but in any event, it’s not that people think the defense should help convict their client.
You’re not alone in that assessment. I’ve always thought that was the only scenario that explained all of the evidence. Someone on the LAPD just couldn’t resist sweetening the pot, and screwed up.
He was not found “guilty” (can’t happen in a civil trial), he was found responsible for paying financial damages to the families of his victims.
He “got away with it” because he’s out free, playing golf whenever he feels like it, and not sharing a bunk bed with a sweaty 300-pounder with bad teeth and Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.
A very good guide on it. Bugliosi was a top-flight lawyer and the whole trial sickened him. He is probably one of the more sane voices concerning Cochrane, as his opinion was that Cochrane made boneheaded mistakes, and that the whole Dream Team was all hype. But he reserves more venom for the mistakes of Marcia Clark. He also gives a good review of the evidence and some practical considerations that pretty much blow the whole “conspiracy” angle out of the water.
I really doubt it. Never explain by malice when incompetance is sufficient.
I always wonder about the idea that the LAPD wanted to frame OJ. Didn’t they look the other way repeatedly when he beat up Nicole during the marriage? The idea that they planted evidence isn’t explained by the evidence itself, and the timing. Fuhrman, for example, is supposed to have planted the glove, but he arrived after the uniforms, and they’d already observed the glove. They’d have to have gotten a blood sample from OJ at a point when he was either still in Chicago, or on his way. It doesn’t make sense. All this, to frame a guy they’d always been buddies with before.
There was more than enough racism to go around on both sides. For some reason, the thing that always annoyed me most about the defense tactics was the way Cochran went through the house and removed all pictures of OJ’s all-white circle of friends and replaced them with stuff that made OJ look like a member of a community he’d long since left behind. All this to en able him to get away with killing two people.
The main travesty was judge Lance Ito. His conduct of the trial was inexcusable, as he allowed Cochrane and company to turn the trial into a trial of the LAPD (and its detectives). Ito allowed the most nonsensical accusations to be made, and could have stopped the whole thing cold. As for the case against OJ:
-OJ’s blood was everywhere
-he had NO believable alibi for his whereabouts before and after the murders
-his abuse and mistreatment of his ex-wife were well known
-his attempt to flee was pretty good evidence of his guilt
The only question I had: it seems to me that OJ could not have committed the murders and cleaned up afterwards without some help-perhaps one of hismsons participated?
Oh, and now that Kardashian is dead…is there any evidence about the contents of the bag (that OJ gave to Kardashian at the airport, before his (OJ’s) departure for chicago?
By the way, have the Goldman family ever collected a nickel from OJ (in the civil suit)?
It is always a shame when murder victims are denied justice. The LAPD and the prosecution blew this one six ways from Sunday. Why couldn’t they have done some research and produced the photos of OJ wearing the extremely rare shoes of the killer? How in God’s name do you not realize that putting a leather glove over a latex glove is not going to work, no matter if it fits or not? How do you not have the proper chain of possesion of evidence? The LAPD blew it. The prosecution blew it. Judge Ito blew it. But I will always believe that jury could have had a video tape of OJ doing the deed, and would still have found him not guilty. My only hope is that OJ marries one of the juror’s daughters.
Well I thought there was really one big travesty, at least from what I remember of the time period. Basically how so much affirmitive action stuff got ridiculed, blunted, or removed because of this case. I mean that it seemed that alot of conservatives (Btw I am conservative) used this as a spring board to paint pro-minority legislation as rediculous and just an attempt to shirk responsiblity. Of course seeing black college students cheer OJ getting off like they’d won something made alot of us think they were out of their minds. (Since OJ always seemed like he didn’t want to be around black people) After the case it seemed like us conservatives had plenty of ammo against affirmative action. (Not that I’m for or against it, just I don’t like the fact the OJ case seemed to be used to determine if we should have it, not it’s own merits.) I only remember stuff like prop 187 getting real steam after this.