O.J. Civil Trial.. Why?

Factual Questions
61

Both-- from a quick googling of the questions given to the jury in the two trials, both the questions asked and the standards of proof are different. In the murder trial, the jury needed to find “malice aforethought.”

Civil trial

[QUOTE=Judge Fujisaki]
Do you find by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant Simpson willfully and wrongfully caused the death of Ronald Goldman?
Yes or No
[/QUOTE]

Criminal trial
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cas62.htm

[QUOTE=Judge Ito]
The defendant is accused in courts one and two of having committed the crime of murder, a violation of Penal Code Section 187. Every person who unlawfully kills a human being with malice aforethought is guilty of the
crime of murder, in violation of Section 187 of the California Penal
Code.
**
In order to prove such crime, each of the following elements must
be proved one, a human being was killed, two, the killing was unlawful,
and, three, the killing was done with malice aforethought.**

Express malice is defined as when there is manifested an intention
unlawfully to kill a human being. The mental state excuse me when it is
shown that a killing resulted from the intentional doing of an act with
express malice, no other mental state need be shown to establish the
mental state of malice aforethought. The mental state constituting
malice aforethought does not necessarily require any ill will or hatred
of the person killed. The word, ``aforethought’’ does not imply
deliberation of the lapse of considerable time. It only means that the
required mental state must precede rather than follow the act.

[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Judge Ito]

Reasonable doubt is defined as follows. It is not a mere possible doubt,
because everything relating to human affairs is open to some possible or
imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case which, after the entire
comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of the
jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding
conviction of the truth of the charge.

[/QUOTE]

62

Civil trial instructions on burden:

63

This exact case may not be possible in France but France still has the basic distinction between civil and criminal cases and different levels of proof required. That is pretty much basic to any western-style country. If I go to France and sue you and prove with a preponderance of the evidence that you owe me money the court will rule in my favor. And if I am accused of a crime in France the state still has to prove with overwhelming evidence that I am guilty. Not much different.
[/QUOTE]

Do you have a cite for this, sailor? while I agree that France and other civil law jurisdiction distinguish between civil and criminal proceedings, it’s my understanding that in the French court system, when a person is accused of a crime, the victim of the crime can apply to participate in the criminal proceedings and is entitled to compensation in those proceedings if the accused is found guilty. I think that’s what clairobscur is referring to? So you wouldn’t have separate proceedings; the family of the victim, like the Goldmans, would have their rights adjudicated in the same proceedings as the state.

Also, it’s my recollection that the common law system of distinguishing burdens of proof isn’t as significant in the civil systems, which use an inquiry court model rather than an adversarial court model. I’ll see if I can dig up anything on that.

64

Yes - the Bruno Magli shoe issue.

From a TIME article comparing the civil proceedings to the criminal ones:

So the denial by Simpson that he had ever owned such a pair of shoes, rebutted by photos showing him wearing that type of shoes, both damaged his credibility and helped to tie him to the scene for the civil trial.

The same article also mentions that the civil plaintiffs called a leather expert to testify that the glove in question had shrunk from the blood, and that was why Simpson couldn’t put it on in the criminal trial - weakening the effect of that bit of evidence that the defence had relied on in the criminal trial (“If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.”)

65

Actually, you’re not. You say:

Which is not an answer to the question of why that should be.

By analogy: “Why is the sky blue?”

Answer: Because it is. Millions of people, including millions of experts, not only understand it but believe it is pretty much the best color for a sky so if you want to refuse to accept it or refuse to understand it you are on your own.

Not really an answer, is it?

I think that if I cannot prove to a level significantly higher than 51%, then I probably don’t have enough of a case to warrant getting the money.

66

One thing to consider here is suppose the trials had happened in the opposite order (I know there is generally a long civil backlog making this unlikely).

OJ is found in a civil trial to have caused a wrongful death and ordered to pay damages. Do those of you who think the actual civil trial should not have been allowed to find for the plaintiff and award damages now think in this altered scenario that the criminal trial would have to have a guilty finding?

67

But, as you said earlier in that post, a criminal penalty might be a fine. So why shouldn’t the standard of proof in a criminal case that will result in a fine be the same as the standard of proof in a civil case that results in a monetary penalty? Most people would probably agree that being put to death is worse than serving time in prison. So why isn’t the standard of proof higher for a death penalty case than for a case that will “only” result in prison time?

You guys keep repeating the point that the standard of proof is different because the penalties are different. I’m pointing out that if that’s really true, there’s a huge inconsistency because that same reasoning is not applied in all cases where the penalties are different.

Despite the way that sailor summarily dismisses me, I’m actually asking questions here. If you read my posts, I’m asking questions. I’m saying, “I don’t understand why this should be” in response to some saying that “it’s obvious”. If those trained in the law, or who have greater than average knowledge of the legal system, cannot answer such questions with other than “The experts agree” and “it’s been that way for a long time”, then one might be inclined to conclude that there actually isn’t an answer beyond those.

68

Look, the basic reasons have been repeated by me and others several times already. The burden of proof is higher in criminal trials because we, as a society, feel we need a certain protection from the huge power of the state. Just like the Constitution limits the power of the state against the individual. That is what people think and that is why it is the way it is. We have said it several times. You can accept it or not, you can understand it or not, but there is not point in just repeating it over and over.

And that is the way it is. In a civil case you need a preponderance of the evidence. What’s the problem?

69

Ok, let’s jump in the wayback machine here for a minute. I can see how a criminal fine and civil damages both appear to be the same penalty, because they both involve money, but they aren’t.

  1. Criminal court - why does it exist and what powers does it have?
    It exists for the punishment for crimes against the lawful order set by the state. You are punished for breaking a law, specified in advance, and the state’s entire interest is maintaining the order by setting you straight. The punishments meted out by the criminal court are explicitly punitive - meant to punish. But the punishments are also not unlimited - they are set by the same statutes that make your actions a crime. They cannot be in excess of the maximum set by the law, regardless of the actual monetary harm that ocurred. Any money you pay in a fine goes primarily to the state, for going through the trouble to discipline your sorry ass.

You have acted against the state, so you compensate the state by paying it, or removing yourself from society for the specified time. Although the state is annoyed you acted against another one of it’s citizens, it does not care about the harmed citizen in meting out its punishment. There is no idea that the punishment set by the state should, by definition, undo the harm done.

  1. The Civil court - why does it exist and what powers does it have?
    It is exists to right damages done by one citizen, on another citizen. It’s goal is normally to make the plaintiff “whole” from the damage that was done - to put them back in the same place they were before the harm occured. Penalties are NOT normally punitive but are called “compensatory” or “actual” damages because they are in compensation for a specific loss. Even punitive damages, when they are allowed, can be no more than 9x the compensatory damages, because civil penalties grossly in excess of actual damages are unconstitutional.

  2. What’s it mean in practice?
    So, a man steals your horse. So you call the police, they arrest him, he is duly tried for his crime and convicted of horse-theivery. He pays a punitive fine, of $100, to the state, the maximum allowed under the statute. That’s nice and all, you’re glad he got punished and get a warm feeling in your heart about the rule of law… but you still have no horse.

So you head to civil court and sue him… cause you had a horse and now you don’t (your damages). You can sue for compensatory damages (here’s $1000 for your horse) or in equity (here’s your horse back) but either way the goal is to compensate you for what was taken, not punish the offender.

I hope that this example shows that the monetary punishments meted out by the criminal and civil courts have different natures. Although both involve money, the reason for the exchange of funds is different, the way of measuring the penalty is different, and the recipient of the money is different. They are each limited, each in its own sphere.

70

One key point here: in a criminal trial, not only can’t you be compelled to incriminate yourself by testifying, but the jury can’t use that fact against you. The prosecution can’t mention anything about the failure to testify.

In a civil trial, while you can decline to testify about any matter that might criminally incriminate you, the jury can consider your failure to testify and the other side can argue to the jury that your failure to testify means you have something to hide and indicates guilt.

71

True. And if a private citizen loudly proclaims that O.J. is a murderer, O.J. can sue him or her in a civil court for libel (and probably win).

72

sailor, there was a time not long ago when many societies, Western or otherwise, thought that slavery was an acceptable mode of behavior. Slavery was finally abolished when enough people decided that they weren’t going to accept that “the rest of the world has come to a different conclusion” on slavery. Just because “the world” sees a thing one way doesn’t mean that another way of looking at the same thing is wrong.

History has shown us over and over again that “the world” can be incredibly wrong and stupid. And the world has been changed by those who are brave enough, or just creative enough, to say that there just might be a better way of doing things, regardless of the crush of society or the momentum of history.

Try looking inward and seeing if you can temper some of the arrogance that’s present in your words that I have quoted above, and adopt a little humility when you are debating your side so vigorously. In other words, try thinking outside the box, if only for the sake of argument.

73

I doubt that O.J. would win a libel suit.

He’s a public figure. He would have to show that the defendant made a false statement with malicious intent or with reckless disregard for the truth. I don’t think he could prove any of these things.

74

Funny, I missed those suits-but I have seen a large number of people, including Fred Goldman, who OJ owes a 33 million civil judgment to, calling OJ a murderer (or specifically, saying “that Simpson got away with murder”-which makes no sense if he wasn’t calling OJ a murderer)

http://www.timespublications.com/mar07-feature1.asp

Others have addressed the legal reasons OJ can’t win such a suit. I’m just a practical guy (IANAL), and don’t know how to evaluate defamation cases–but I do think that OJ would have sued if he had any chance of winning-as winning would let him get back at the person who’s chasing everything he owns and earn a bunch of money in the process.

75

Well, first of all, in at least some jurisdictions, “violations” like speeding tickets or code violations, which can only be punished by relatively low fines, are treated under a lower standard of proof. Example: http://www.moline.il.us/departments/legal/cityordianceviolations.asp

Second, I would agree that the standard of proof ought to be higher in death penalty cases.

Third, my understanding is that it’s common for all but the most minor of crimes to at least have the possibility of jail time. Example: http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/PE/content/htm/pe.003.00.000012.00.htm#12.22.00

This means that in many cases, I don’t know how you would tell if someone was going to be fined or sent to prison until after trial. Hence, to have a system where the burden of proof varies depending on what the sentence is, you’d either need a system where any crime that could possibly have prison time got the higher burden, or some way of telling which was which beforehand-and imagine how that would complicate the criminal justice system.

To use the death penalty example-I assume you’ve heard the terms “guilt phase” and “penalty phase”-in death penalty cases, the current law is that courts have to hold separate proceedings for the determination of guilt and the determination of whether the death penalty is appropriate. The problem, of course, is that you don’t know if the death penalty will be imposed until after the determination of guilt-but if we applied a more stringent standard of proof, we’d want to apply it in the guilt phase.

You’d need a whole separate process to figure out what kind of trial someone would get, and then would have a disaster when the system got it wrong.

We also have a constitution with a strong presumption of innocence in criminal proceedings. You can argue that that’s just redescription-and we should ask “why should we have that rule”–and that’s a valid point beyond the scope of this point at least-but within that framework, if a trial is “criminal”, our system errs in the direction of more protection against wrongful convictions.

Finally, again, if we get it wrong in a civil suit and let someone off, that means that the person who was hurt doesn’t get to be made whole. I view that as justifying a burden of proof that takes account of the harm of that kind of error.

If we get it wrong in a criminal suit, and let someone off, nobody is hurt in the same way. OTOH, as noted, much more harm is possible to result from a wrongful criminal conviction.

IANAL, and nothing here is an opinion or legal advice of any kind whatsoever.

76

Well, libel is defamation in writing; for a loud verbal statement that he’s a murderer, O.J. would have to sue for slander.

And he almost certainly wouldn’t win. He would bear the burden of proving that he didn’t kill the two victims. The fact that he was found not guilty in his criminal trial would be of very limited use.

If the slander instead were “O.J. is a convicted murderer!” that would make his case easier, as it would not be difficult to prove that this is false.

77

Not just that–as a public figure, O.J. would almost certainly have to prove that whoever called him a murderer **knew **that his statement was untrue, or recklessly disregarded whether it was true or false.

78

The distinction between libel and slander is so technical that it is rarely even meaningful in a purely lawyers-only context. Libel is published defamation and slander is private defamation. Slander is rarely really at issue, and the distinction between the two is so negligible that it usually makes sense just to talk about both under the heading of defamation.

Additionally, a statement like “O.J. is a murderer,” because of the circumstances of the Simpson case and its cultural and societal standing as a public event, functionally operates as an opinion, which can be neither true nor false and thus is not actionable as defamation.

79

I took a few classes in college that compared civil and criminal proceedings.

From what I got out of those classes, I got the idea that in order to convict someone of a criminal charge, there must be no doubt whatsoever that the defendant committed the crime. The scales of justice must be 100% against the defendant, NOT 99.9%, but exactly 100%

In civil court, its a bit different. In order for the defendant to lose, the plaintiff only needs the majority of the favor of the judge/each juror. So the scales of justice only need to slightly lean away from the defendant for him to have to pay up (>50% is enough).

I’t may not always work like that in practice, but that is why OJ was acquitted for the murders (the jury wasn’t 100% sure he did it). But he was found liable for the deaths of those same people in civil court.

80

That’s correct except that the adjudication of damages is a technically different proceeding immediately following the criminal trial (If the accused has been found guilty. If he has been acquitted, he can’t be sued for damages, at least not for the specific crime he was accused of, so there’s no such proceeding).

The victim (or his family) still is represented (or at least can be represented) during the criminal trial itself, but AFAIK, this is not because he has an interest in the civil aspect of the case, but because French law recognizes the victim has an interest in the criminal trial itself.