Other countries allow for prosecution appeals, post-verdict. In Canada, for instance, the Crown can appeal acquittals based on alleged errors of law by the trial judge (eg - erroneous exclusion of evidence; error of law in the charge to the jury). The system works well and doesn’t produce any longer appeal times than the system of defence appeals.
Let’s face it, LA DA’s Office was outgunned. OJ had a dozen of the best criminal attorneys in the U.S. on his side. The 2 DA’s had limited experience and were outgunned. The people vs. OJ was unfair. The people of CA were outgunned. Should we require that both the criminal and the people have equally competent counsel.
You mean that if the city doesn’t care if the people they hire incompetent boobs, the accused must also hire incompetent boobs? In what way does this serve justice?
Interesting, I might have to read some more about that. Thanks for the information.
You are far too charitable to Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, as well as their superiors and subordinates. This was not a case of being “outgunned”, it was a (thankfully) rare perfect storm of incompetence, to the point that I’ve long wondered about bribery. I’m serious when I say that any two DAs chosen at random from any jurisdiction in the U.S. would probably have a 99% probability of a conviction.
That claim, that the Dream Team saved Simpson, is debunked in Outrage, by the way. If you’re interested in the case, I highly recommend it.
The LA DA made a major mistake. Unless they knew for sure the glove would fit, they shouldn’t have introduced it in Court. Basically, they helped the defense.
And I recommend pot holders or welder’s gloves when you read it. Bugliosi’s rage is absolutely incandescent in later chapters.
But the prosecution would have to disclose the existence of the glove to the defence, even if they didn’t plan to introduce it, wouldn’t they?
Yes they would have to disclose, but they didn’t have to introduce the evidence. The glove would have had far less impact if the defense introduced because they would think that the defense already knew that the glove wouldn’t fit.
Let me say first that the prosecution in the OJ Simpson case was absolutely pathetic. The prosecutors bought their own hype, their decisionmaking during the trial was horrid, and they seemed more intent on building their own hype than building a case. Judge Ito certainly deserves mocking also, he suffered from many of the same problems, and his inability to run the trial with any modicum of timeliness was a huge problem.
But, despite the piss poor job the prosecution did, there was more than enough evidence to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that OJ Simpson murdered Nicole and Ron. Absolving the jury of any blame in letting a clearly guilty man go free is ignoring the mountain of evidence against the guy.
Blame the prosecution. Blame the judge. But don’t leave out the jury that ignored the evidence in favor of acquitting a famous, well liked man.
Well, I think you are ignoring something important that people have corrected you on; there is no percentage or guideline for conviction. The reality is that a juror can vote based on whatever level of certainty they want. The practical issue such ambiguity presents is less about letting (probable) murderers like OJ off the hook, but rather that biased jurors routinely convict people who are factually innocent.
To your second point about OJ hypothetically being a mass murderer. In most cases, someone accused of a really heinous crime, who is likely guilty, will be convicted damn near every time. It happens with such certainty, the acquittals are almost a rounding error. Just look at the conviction rates for terrorism cases after 9/11. Despite many of them being based on REALLY shoddy evidence, juries are far less likely to give some Arab guy the benefit of the doubt, or to stick to the “95% certainty standard” you suggested. That means that the prosecution is held to a far lower standard when the accused is less empathetic or likeable, or is accused of doing something truly unconscionable.
I think you are being a bit too hard on them. The fact is they had a pretty shitty hand. First, the fact that Furhman perjured himself, and took the 5th when asked if he’d ever planted evidence is not really their fault. They also needed to rely on DNA and other scientific evidence when the public didn’t really understand such things. Not to mention they were trying a very likeable, good-looking famous person. Just look at the conviction for celebrities and rich vs. normal folks. The fact that people like Robert Blake, R Kelly, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Puffy Daddy, Kobe Bryant, etc. get off, or are not even tried, is not a coincidence. Even when a normal person gets famous as a result of accusal, the case becomes much harder to win (see: Casey Anthony, Amy Fisher, Joran Vandersloot). Even though Clarke and Darden did a poor job, I am not sure most lawyers could have secured a conviction given the evidence.
The case against Blake was weak. The acquittal was just.
R Kelly’s alleged victim did not wish to pursue charges and refused to testify.
Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson’s alleged crimes were rapes, which are very difficult to prove and thus carry a low conviction rate. There’s actually a GD thread on this topic at the moment.
I’m not up to speed on Snoop Dogg or Puff Daddy, you’ll have to fill me in.
The prosecutors had been informed by TWO sources of Fuhrman’s racial animus and use of racial epithets before the trial began. They chose to disbelieve the sources (Kathleen Bell and Andrea Terry), neither of whom had any motive to lie.
The prosecutors were aware that in 1981 Fuhrman had revealed in interviews with a psychiatrist (pursuant to a stress-related disability pension claim) that he held minorities in contempt, and used racial slurs in the sessions.
Instead of revealing this information through direct examination, the prosecution allowed the defense to reveal and trumpet it, while the prosecution issued denials, until tape recordings of Fuhrman were discovered. After this, the prosecution effectively dropped Fuhrman as a witness, making no effort to place his words in context, or defend his police work (which was easily defended, both in this case and throughout his career), while the defense made him the key to their insane conspiracy theories.
And if Fuhrman takes the Fifth about planting evidence, all the prosecution needs to do is establish the timeline of events, which makes Fuhrman planting evidence effectively impossible. They did not do this.
The ineptitude of the prosecution can generally be divided into two parts: the evidence they did not introduce, and the evidence they used poorly. If you wish to break down what the prosecution did right or wrong, I’m willing, after a bit more research time.
I was out of country and without cable or Internet at the time, so am one of the few Americans to miss the Trial of the Century. 
I did try to play catch-up by reading 4 or 5 books. I shared the outrage of Outrage and thought Marcia’s speech to the jury (paraphrasing: “of course no one wants to convict this wonderful man” :smack: ) was bizarrely misguided.
But something struck me when I read the jurors’ book. I thought there were two independent proofs of his guilt (call them A–>B–>C and D–>E–>F since I don’t remember details) either of which, if valid, would establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Jury found reasonable doubt (lying racist cop?) for B, so felt that reasonable doubt meant they should acquit. But I disagreed: that doubt did not effect alternate proof D–>E–>F. (Sorry not to specify what facts A,B,…F represent. My point is just the oversight of logic.)
I’m sure there was plenty of guilt to go around in explaining Simpson’s acquittal. The fact that rich can afford a “dream team” of lawyers seems unfair. That the composition of the jury was affected by logistics is unfair. The prosecution team was so incompetent, it should be charged with crimes! … But plenty of crimes go unpunished anyway, so … so what?
Forget OJ - I think the Casey Anthony case is probably a better example of a jury deciding that the state had not proven the specific charges against Casey, even though I can’t imagine any rational person thinking that Casey didn’t kill her little girl.
They put Furhman on the stand, not the defense. It’s on the prosecution for calling the lying, racist cop. And once the issue of evidence-planting gets in, it doesn’t matter how well they explain the workings of DNA, because it’s entirely reasonable to ask if that blood was really there in the first place.
It seems pretty obvious that when the defense can demonstrate a member of the police/prosecutor apparatus was in fact out to get the defendant and had no compunctions about fabricating evidence to do it, you cannot, as a juror, vote to convict. If you don’t want guilty people like OJ going free, don’t let people like Mark Furhman be cops. The system seemed to function just fine in this case, as far as the jury part was concerned.
Couple things: there is no evidence that Fuhrman or anyone else planted evidence in the Simpson case. Taking the Fifth is not an admission of guilt.
The blood was really there. Ask OJ, in his tape-recorded interview with Detectives Vannatter and Lange, June 13, 1994:
Lange: We’ve got, of course, the cut on your finger that you aren’t real clear on. Do you recall having that cut on your finger the last time you were at Nicole’s house?
Simpson: A week ago?
Lange: Yeah.
Simpson: No. It was last night [the night of the murders].
Lange: Okay, so last night you cut it.
Vannatter: Somewhere after the dance recital?
Simpson: Somewhere when I was rushing to get out of my house.
Vannatter: Okay, after the recital? [several hours before the murders]
Simpson: Yeah.
Vannatter: What do you think happened? Do you have any ideas?
Simpson: I have no idea, man.
[Snip]
Lange: Well, there’s blood at your house and in the driveway, and we’ve got a search warrant, and we’re going to get the blood. We found some in your house. Is that your blood that’s there?
Simpson: If it’s dripped, it’s what I dripped running around trying to leave.
Lange: Last night? [the night of the murders]
Simpson: Yeah.
The jury never heard this interview.
Ok, but that in no way is what happened.
Fourteen uniformed officers arrived at the murder scene before Mark Fuhrman, and all 14 reported seeing one glove. One. How does it follow that Fuhrman plants a glove at Rockingham? Futhermore, at that time, none of the police knew where Simpson was. What if he had an airtight alibi? Then Fuhrman faces the death penalty himself, under California law of the time, for planting evidence in a death-penalty case.
What evidence was fabricated? How was Fuhrman “out to get” Simpson?
The Anthony case was a bit different. The evidence there was somewhat tainted by dint of the fact that the body wasn’t found for so long, which created yawning gaps in the prosecution’s theory. That wasn’t their fault; they were basically being forced to reconstruct months of time years after the fact.
No, but the jury is entitled to infer whatever it wants when a witness other than a criminal defendant invokes it. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say the logical inference here is that Fuhrman had planted evidence.
I honestly believe that if anybody should have been put to death it should have been OJ, but as a general rule. I’m against the death penalty.
Agreed, it was a difficult case to prove, much of the evidence was either unreliable or indirect. I didn’t find the verdict surprising.
But the inference should be reasonable. What evidence could Fuhrman have planted? As noted, the glove is impossible. Simpson admitted that the blood was his, and that he’d bled all over his property from an unexplained cut, which matched blood drips at the scene. He certainly couldn’t have planted Bruno Magli shoe prints at the scene, since, again, he was the 15th person there, and had no way of knowing what kind of shoes or size Simpson wore!
That evidence alone is enough for a conviction.
I agree that Simpson should have been convicted and executed.
He’s a wife beater and a murderer, but he’s no worse than many other people in that category. If he’s your one exception, why him?
Why on earth would you honestly believe that? Obviously, murder is a heinous crime, but this particular murder was no more heinous than most. Do you really think OJ is more deserving of death than, say, a child killer?