IIRC OJ was not broke from the lawyers, but from the lawsuits and damages to the victim’s (Goldman’s) family. He ended up in Florida, where even a multi-million dollar house is exempt from seizure in bankrupctcy as the “primary residence”. He also ended up in jail, because if he had gone through legal channels to recover his “stuff” the Goldmans would have had it seized to pay them.
that’s the big risk to your typical, not-a-rich-crime-lord rich types.
Well it’s not very nice of the article to throw that out there and then leave us hanging on the details.
Any idea what it’s referring to?
I seem to recall that, against the advice of his attorney, Wallace took the stand to give his side of the story. It came off that although <wink, wink> <nudge, nudge> he may have, thru tragic circumstances, killed Wilson Turner, Turner didn’t actually die in Coweta County (he politely waited until he was transported back to Meriwether County) <wink, wink> <nudge, nudge>, you can let me go now because I have money & Sheriff Potts doesn’t have jurisdiction <wink, wink> <nudge><nudge>.
This strikes me as a subject in which we just don’t have enough data to make an accurate judgment.
How many millionaires are ever accused of (let alone tried for) murder?
So few as to make any debate close to futile, as far as I’m concerned.
It’d be interesting to see the percentage of rich people (however you want to define it) arrested who eventually got executed, versus everyone else.
In other words, if you’re rich and arrested for a capital crime, you have an X% chance of being executed.
If you’re everyone else and arrested for a capital crime, you have a Y% chance of eventually being executed.
That question eliminates one issue - do rich people kill as often as everyone else? - which the original question did not. If many violent crimes are committed because of money, there’s every reason to think the percentage of rich people who commit them is different than the rest of us.
Of course, it does not deal with another problem - how often does money prevent an arrest from happening in the first place?
I can’t believe no one posted that yet.
Did anybody else think from the title this was going to be about Obama’s tax plan, btw? 
It’s not the question I was asking in the OP, but yes that would be interesting to see.
I totally misinterpreted the OP.
I don’t have scientific data, but I’ve studied notorious Texas murders over the years. Generally, the rich folks don’t even get convicted.
There’s the recent case of multi-millionaire Robert Durst, who was arrested after an elderly neighbor’s body washed up on the beach at Galveston. His lawyer explained that, since the police had been called concerning altercations between the two, Durst was justly frightened when the old guy died during a friendly visit. So, instead of calling 911, he dismembered the dead guy & tossed the parts into Galveston Bay. Insufficient bits were recovered to determine the cause of death, so he was acquitted.
Law & Order used the case as a story inspiration. In their version, the rich guy got off but was later convicted because of the mysterious disappearance, years earlier, of a wife who’d threatened divorce. Durst did, indeed, “lose” a wife mysteriously. But he’s still free…
Durst’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, defended Tom DeLay from assorted corruption charges. DeLay lost but has been out on bail, appealing the case, for years…
It seems as if you’re suggesting that there is not systematic discrimination against poor people in the legal system, a fairly outre position to hold given the enormous wealth of evidence to support that idea. Begin with all the successful challenges to the death penalty alone, many of which are based on that fact alone. Look at conviction and incarceration figures for those arrested for the same crimes - rich v poor. There isn’t any question about the disparity in treatment in the legal system between rich and poor.