There wasn’t a poll option for my answer: I’m a white male, and I honestly can’t wrap my head around whether he’s guilty or not.
I mean, I know the evidence all points to him being guilty, but for the life of me I’ll never get how a 50-year-old man with arthritis killed two people half his age, one of whom was a fit ski instructor.
Well, he had a knife.
A quick search shows that she has mentioned it at least nine different times.
It does. The two trials had different standards of proof. A criminal trial requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a civil trial only requires a preponerance of the evidence, i.e. the jury only has to believe it’s more likely than not that the defendant did what he’s accused of. It doesn’t have to be beyond a reasonable doubt. “he probably did it” is sufficient to find civil liability, but not to find criminal guilt. It’s not irrational at all to sometimes conclude that you think somone probably did something, but that you’re not completely certain. You don’t need certainty to find civil liability, just “probably.”
I’m a white guy who thinks it’s 99.99999% probable that OJ did it.
I also think it’s possible, though, that the cops may have tampered with evidence to bolster their case against a guy they felt dead sure was guilty.
I think the jury voted the way it did at least partially because black people in LA just didn’t trust the cops at that time.
I also have no doubt that a lot of black Americans were pro-defense during the case not because they really thought OJ was innocent, but out of a desire for payback for all the times the system had let white guys walk for doing things to black people, or that they at least were going to be extremely hardcore about the level of proof and extremely reluctant to want to convict without it.
I also remember a tendancy towards an extreme self-righteousness about the case from a lot of white people at the time which borderd on racist hostility and obnoxiousness. There was an unwillingness to admit that the cops could possibly do anything wrong, tamper with evidence, lie on the stand or harbor racist feelings, for instance. I could understand why some people would want to push back against that, and not just let their opinions about (and personal experiences with) the cops, the justice system, etc. be steamrolled aside like that.
I do agree that most black people were pro-defense for racial motivations, rather than the sincere belief that he was innocent, but do you really think it was about revenge, or payback, or it being “their turn?” I ask because while I agree it is ostensibly fucked up for people to want a man to get away with murder, I do find their motivations to be cynical, but not quite that vindictive. For some it may have been, but for many, I got the feeling that it was, in some crazy way, a step toward equality. “Sweet, now even black people can do (to white people!!!) whatever they want too, as long as they’re rich and/or powerful enough.”
When I read this, I heard the voice of Kelton the Cop.
Ditto on all that.
I would have, and still would vote Not Guilty, because the prosecution and the police lied, and committed perjury. If the prosecution and their witnesses do not tell the truth about anything, then I dont believe them about anything. I would never convict anyone if I found out that the prosecutors or the police or the witnesses for the prosecution were lying.
That said, OJ killed them both. OJ had the time, the opportunity, the history, and the motive.
Who else would have done it?
Apparently, accordingly to O.J.'s sphere of inquiry, an avid golfer.
The thing that stood out to me when he was informed Nicole had been killed in the same house where his children were, was that he didn’t immediately freak out and start screaming ‘OMG are my kids OK?’
It was fairly obvious he knew they were OK because he didn’t kill them.
Any parent in that situation would have been insane with worry, but the person who committed the crime? Not so much.
I don’t think, for the most part, that people were that self-aware or had that much clarity about their motivations. They weren’t thinking “ha ha, we want him to get away with it,” so much as “fuck you, prove it,” with a lot of extreme skepticism (and no shortage of open hostility) towards the police. I think people found ways to convince themselves there was reasonable doubt and they had a tremendous reluctance to see the LA cops and prosecutors get the satisfaction of a conviction.
I think subconsciously there was also a desire, not really for malicious, cynical revenge, but to show white people how it feels – that maybe it would inspire some empathy.
ETA, I was pro-defense, by the way, largely for the same reasons I just described.
I was sure OJ was guilty but I am not sure the prosecution did a decent job. The chain of command for the evidence was poor. The cops showed a tendency to bend the evidence. The cops and Crime Investigators were their own worst enemies.
White male
Fair enough, and agreed.
Conservative white male here and I think Simpson probably did it, but I was far less persuaded of that at the time. I felt that there was just too much that didn’t add up if he did it and at the same time too much that didn’t add up if he was innocent.
On the guilty side we have the Bronco chase, Simpson’s under-his-breath statement to Nicole at the funeral about how it was all her fault, and then the wan grimace/smile he made when the verdict was read, as though he was pleased not to have to spend the rest of his life in prison but also knowing he guilty and deserve the acquittal. And then there was the revelation of his explosive temper - which most people had no idea of at the time - and the missing bag that Simpson turned over to Al Cowlings (or whoever it was), and the fact that Howard Weitzman bailed immediately after meeting with Simpson the next day.
On the innocent side, IMO there was far too little blood inside the Bronco for it to have been driven by someone who had just mutilated the hell out of two people, one of whom was young, fit and by all accounts fought strenuously for his life. IIRC from photos leaked at the time, there was just a little blood on the ceiling behind the driver’s seat and a little blood on the upper back of both seats. The stains looked like fairly faint smears made by the fingertips of someone feeling around the car’s interior in the dark. I thought that the blood looked more like something left behind by detectives feeling around in the car in the middle of the night while still wearing rubber or vinyl gloves that had picked up a little blood at the murder scene. And then there was the was the fact that Simpson was seen entering his house from the front drive, supposedly dripping blood and being spotted by his limo driver at the same time that he was allegedly jumping over the back fence, dropping one of the gloves and banging into Kato Kaelin’s air conditioner. Also, blood was showing up on Nicole Simpson’s gate and the interior of the Bronco weeks after the murders.
(And, as a sidebar consideration which I never heard brought up at all, whenever I’ve seen footage of Simpson walking, the toes of his shoes appear to point straight ahead - a quality that I would expect to find in most athletes who have to run as part of their sport, as toes pointing out would cause some lateral movement with each step, thus slowing them down and making them less competitive. But images I’ve seen of the murder site showed bloody footsteps exiting the scene in which the toes point outward somewhat. My father, who I’d mentioned this to, suggested that I call the 1-800 number that Shapiro had set up and mention this apparent discrepancy, but I never got around to it, figuring that surely Cochran, et al. would have caught it if that had really been the case. Still, I find myself wondering sometimes what might have been the result had I made that call. :p)
And there were other aspects of the case that left me unconvinced one way or the other too, and also that at the very least a few actors in the police department and perhaps even the D.A.'s office tried to fabricate evidence in order to try to make sure that this time a celebrity wouldn’t be able to get away with murder.
So, all in all I have to confess that had I been on the Simpson jury at the time I would have voted not guilty too.
ETA: I didn’t vote because I’m still not absolutely convinced one way or the other, although like I said above I do think he probably did it.
Let’s see, over 20K posts and I’ve mentioned it nine times. Hardly an impressive statistic.
Yes, I do not like OJ Simpson and Woody Allen. They have both committed acts I find despicable. What of it? I am entitled to my own opinion, not my own facts. And the facts judging hem to be despicable are there.
There’s no doubt in my mind that he did it. That being said, the prosecution bungled the case. They could have come up with the photos of him wearing those rare and expensive shoes that left the bloody footprint. I don’t believe they surfaced until well after the trial. I can’t believe they didn’t try to find such photos before the trial, which would have made a very strong case. They should have never allowed the glove demonstration as it was done. I’ve never tried to slip a leather glove over a latex glove, but I rather suspect the friction is significant. Add to all that, the fact that one of the detectives lied under oath about not using racial epithets I’m sure didn’t help the case any. So it’s possible to be as guilty as sin yet have such an inept prosecution that you get away with murder, which I believe is what happened. BTW, white male.
I, quite clearly, never claimed that most of your posts are about the Seinfeld episode or even about OJ. I said that most of the OJ OPs posts about the Seinfeld episode were by you. This was in response to someone who thought that this board was OJ obsessed. The board isn’t OJ obsessed, you are.
I agree that the glove demonstration was bad, but from what I recall–and it’s been quite a while:
A) The prosecution had one of the detectives with really big hands try on the gloves beforehand, and he got them on, so they felt safe to go with OJ.
and
B) I seem to recall when OJ was putting on the glove, he was not keeping his thumb pulled tight as he was inserting it into the glove, so of course it “got caught” and he couldn’t put them on. He then gave this hammy surprised look as his hands got caught.
I’m sure there’s video out there of this, but I can’t access it here.
ETA: Oh, yeah, WM, and he did it, and the prosecution was doomed from the get-go.
Is it just me, or does it seem like our resident conservatives are less convinced of his guilt than the liberals?
White male, ex-cop.
100% guilty. Anyone who is honest with themself and looks at the mountain of evidence would agree.
At the time, I worked in a call center with about 500 employees. About 50 of us were white.
All around the office sat pockets of people listening to radios, watching a TV…waiting.
When the verdict was announced, there was an overwhelming cry of celebration and happiness throughout the building. The yelling, the cheering - it was as though the US Hockey team had beaten the Russians again.
Us white guys just sat and shook our heads. I’ve never been so disappointed in a group of people in my life.
In discussing the case later with black friends, it was clear they didn’t care about his guilt - just that he got away with it. Screw The Man!
I’m still disappointed to this day.