The real factor was that OJ’s defense team wasted incredible amounts of time on trivial issues…that way, the ignorant jurors were kept in a state of boredom and confusion. Mark Fuhrman’s alleged racism should have been stricken from the record by Judge Ito-in no way was any of this relevant. OJ himself used the word “nigger”-does that mean he would be an unreliable witness? Second, Ito allowed the defense to shift the whole trial to the LAPD-again confusing and boring the jurors. Since most of the jurors were reading at grade school levels, I was not at all surprised by the verdict.
Of course, the whole thing was decided in OJ’s civil trial, where he was "found responsible "for Fred Goldman’s son’s death…i.e., he killed him.
But Johnny Cochran was splendid, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” That of course isn’t the law. The law is you need to find beyond a reasonable doubt that O.J. was guilty.
But the prosecution couldn’t object to the statement because it was merely argument. And if they did object, the jury would have paid even more attention to the gloves. This was Johnny Cochran’s checkmate move.
The evidence was not any better or worse than the OJ evidence. That was my point. Guy clearly kills his wife, but reasonable doubt is introduced by competent defense attorneys who question everything.
She couldn’t consent, so how she views herself is irrelevant.
All that does is mitigate damage. You can’t gild a turd. Yes, they should have attempted to introduce some of that, but no prosecutor foresees someone perjuring themselves in such a fantastic and easily falsifiable way.
It is if that person is trusting that person is central to the prosecution’s case.
Of course he could have theoretically.
But the fact is VERY few of these cases are won. Period. Marcia Clarke had a fairly decent reputation before all this, so all of this ex post facto scapegoating is a little unfair. Was she great? OF course not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of lawyers would have failed to secure a conviction.
This is LA, where blacks have always suspected the police to be racist because of Watts and Rodney King. Of course, Furman’s possible racism was relevant.
They had his DNA at the crime scene, the victim’s DNA on his car, in his house, on his clothing. He had motive and opportunity, had beaten the victim before, and certainly acted guilty after the fact. And there was absolutely no evidence of a mysterious “real murderer” who could have committed these acts. It should have been a slam dunk case.
But the prosecution fucked up big time. From the stupidity of moving the case, to the decisions to exclude damning evidence like the note, his interview, or the items found in the Bronco, to the lack of pre-trial motions and hearings that would have saved the jury the huge amount of downtime, to the trying on of the glove, the prosecution was absolutely horrible. I could go out right now and find you 2000 prosecutors who would have had absolutely no problem attaining a conviction.
Disagree, there was nothing particularly brilliant about seizing upon one of the worst of the prosecution’s blunders. What else would he have said? “The glove doesn’t appear to have fit, but that doesn’t matter”?
What??? This is just factually wrong. Here, I’ll list all the direct physical evidence implicating Blake:
It’s irrelevant to whether a crime was committed, but not to a jury.
This might be our fundamental disagreement. I’ll phrase it as a question: Does one of the detectives on a case lying about his use of racial slurs, and refusing to answer a question about planting evidence, on its own constitute reasonable doubt? I say no.
Care to take a stab at a theory? The more detail, the better, mind you. How could it have happened, hypothetically?
Do you mean cases involving celebrities, or sex crimes? As to the former, off the top of my head…Phil Spector, Mike Tyson, Martha Stewart, Wesley Snipes, Marion Jones, OJ Simpson (the second time), Muhammad Ali, Michael Vick, Plaxico Burris…
How is it ex post facto (“from a thing done afterward”)? I haven’t argued that her performance on the Simpson case means she must have been incompetent throughout her pre-Simpson career, but that she (and the rest of her team) was incompetent in that particular trial, to a shocking degree.
You can only claim that evidence was planted if there is evidence of the claim. Ito was generous to a fault to both sides in admitting evidence, and this is one example.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Yes, but we have the firm support of multiple U.S. Presidents.
Well, then I hope you never serve on a jury.
The problem is that you are assuming that the evidence presented was really taken from the crime scene. IOW you are assuming that “planted evidence” literally means evidence planted at the crime scene. But it doesn’t have to work that way
The problem for the prosecution is that the police don’t need to plant evidence, they just need to create it. Once the jury accepts that police have been planting evidence, the whole chain of custody becomes suspect.
So:
The glove: a cop takes a glove form OJs house, goes to the evidence locker, takes away the glove collected at the crime scene, and puts OJs glove into the evidence bag.
The shoe prints: a cop takes a pair of shoes from OJ’s house, uses them to make shoe prints on a surface similar to that of the crime scene. He photographs those shoe prints, develops the photos, takes away the photos taken at the crime scene, and puts the new photos into the evidence bag.
And the blood: OJ admitted that he had blood all over his house from a cut finger. The cop takes samples from these, takes away the blood smaples taken at the crime scene, and puts the OJs blood into the evidence bag.
There is almost no evidence that can’t be planted in this way. It’s all fine to say that a detective isn’t the one who is supposed to collecting those samples, but once he is shown to have a history of faking evidence, what is supposed to happen goes straight out the window. There is at least a reasonable suspicion that the detective changed the samples/photographs in the evidence bags for sample she collected elsewhere.
As a member of the jury, an officer pleading the fifth is telling me that he fears prosecution for crimes if he tells the truth about planting evidence. At that stage the prosecution would need to show that swapping samples was not possible this was not reasonably possible before I would accept any physical samples from any incident that detective worked on.
Fine. Make all the evidence in the case “suspect” because Fuhrman lied about using a racist term if you must.
But you’re doing what Condescending Robot, and what the defense team wanted the jury to do: not only “suspect” but completely discount. “Suspect” does not equal unreliable. That’s kinda why there were 149 other witnesses in the case not named Marc Fuhrman, who, during trial, established the veracity and reliability of all the other evidence against OJ Simpson, including all the DNA evidence in the case.
In order to create this fantasy world where the police framed OJ Simpson, it would have required not just Fuhrman, but numerous other police officers, lab workers, evidence technicians, and other witnesses. And they would have to wait until Nicole and Ron just happened to be murdered, OJ just happened to be in town and without a credible alibi, OJ just happened to cut his finger, and numerous other things that make this idea of a doubt because of a frame job to be completely unreasonable.
You’re continuing to confuse “the jury had reasonable doubt on convicting Simpson in the trial that took place” with “Simpson didn’t commit the murders.” Of course Simpson committed the murders. We know that now, and no one’s denying it. And if Mark Fuhrman had not been an LAPD officer for years and years after his long and barely concealed history of racially motivated violence against suspects, crusades against co-existing with black people per se (not just, as you are framing it, occasionally using an impolite word), and boastful admission to fabricating evidence against defendants, then, even with all the other circuses at the trial, OJ Simpson would currently be in his eighteenth year of a life-without-parole sentence for murder. Don’t tear down the trial-by-jury system when you what you should be asking is why this guy was so welcome on the police force. His involvement with the case and the prosecution’s towering idiocy in calling him as a witness was what sunk it. If you think that it’s unreasonable for a juror to doubt the guilt of a defendant when one of the investigating cops has an established history of manufacturing evidence due to racism, then you’re not really on board with the whole idea of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” as any English speaker would interpret that phrase, now are you?
Hamlet made my points for me, quite well. Firstly, a juror is free to weigh Fuhrman’s credibility as a witness, in light of his use of slurs and such. But this does not discredit the whole case!
Secondly, unless you’re claiming a massive conspiracy by the LAPD and the witnesses for the prosecution, hundreds of people in total, AND a superhuman ability to predict events before the fact, what Blake proposes is not plausible.
Thirdly, even if there was an Illuminati-esque cabal at work, how to do you square that with Simpson’s own actions? The man left a suicide note, put together cash, a passport, and a disguise kit, and tried to flee! What innocent person would ever do that?
Just to be thorough…
On what basis would they accept that?
Fuhrman had no history of faking evidence.
You are misinterpreting the Fifth Amendment.
No one is proposing that the entire LAPD did frame Simpson, we are proposing that it would be reasonable for a jury to doubt that they did not, given that it was established that at least one member was trying to. You seem to be unable to get past a very elementary-school level distinction between “did it” and “proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court that he did it,” and especially unwilling to consider what protections for defendants exist in a jury trial system and why they are necessary.
He did, we know he did because he bragged about it on tape, and the tapes were introduced at the trial to establish this fact. Like your misinterpretation of who is protected by jury instructions forbidding the inference of guilt from the invocation of a Fifth Amendment right (hint: it’s the person on trial, not a witness who is not charged in the case) this demonstrates a lot of shoot-from-the-hip outrage based on a Rush Limbaugh-style misunderstanding of events and not a lot of real investigation into the facts of the Simpson case or the Constitutional principles at work.
No I’m not, that’s your talking point, but here in reality, I’ve repeatedly discussed the trial and the evidence presented rather than simply saying he murdered two people.
Again, I’m not tearing down the trial by jury system. That is, once again, another talking point that has no basis in anything I’ve said. It seems you have these things you simply repeat and don’t even bother with what I’m actually saying.
And again with a talking point.
You don’t even need a reply do you? You have your litany of things to post about the case, including insults about disrespecting the judicial system and not understanding beyond a reasonable doubt, and you’ll say them, no matter what I type or any points I make. Good luck with that.
Not sure who you’re addressing, but I am saying that the jury’s doubts were not, in fact, reasonable.
There were 14 hours of Fuhrman tapes. Of the various incidents and anecdotes Fuhrman relates, ONE has been found to have a basis in fact (a 1978 incident in which Fuhrman and other officers responded to two officers being shot). And this singular incident was wildly exaggerated by Fuhrman, in keeping with the manner he’s trying to convey on the tapes: ultra-macho and cool.
We can at least agree that the prosecution’s towering idiocy led to the acquittal, then.
On the contrary, I am aware that the phrase refers to the totality of the case, which easily meets the standard.
Living up to your user name, there. If you had a stronger basis to argue from, you might not have to resort to such childishness.
The fact that such a frame is implausible and unsupported by evidence is why a jury using it as the basis of reasonable doubt is not, in fact, reasonable.
What protections am I not considering, exactly?
See my previous post.
The Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination applies to witnesses as well.
Attack the arguer, not the arguement, a classic strategy when one’s position cannot be defended rationally.
Fuhrman had a right to assert the Fifth Amendment. Nobody had a right to tell the jury not to draw conclusions from that fact. The jury is prohibited from drawing conclusions about the DEFENDANT’S guilt from the fact that the DEFENDANT takes the Fifth; no analogous prohibition regarding the credibility of witnesses exists. Why don’t you get this?
I do; that’s not what I’ve said. Here’s the exchange:
I made no reference to jury instruction, or a legal prohibition on the jury drawing conclusions as to a witness’ guilt. As I said, the jury is free to make reasonable inferences when a witness takes the 5th. They should not use this freedom to assume the worst possible scenario that discredits the witness, without other evidence.
Cute, but we don’t convict people solely on direct physical evidence. I think given the unreliability of the LAPD, the cases were both comparable in terms of difficulty to prosecute.
Actually, it wouldn’t matter to a properly instructed jury as it is a strict liability offense.
I disagree. At least in most cases.
This has already been answered, but once you cast doubt on the chain of custody, and the reliability of those who processed and collected evidence, the whole thing collapses.
First, anyone can claim whatever they want. The plausibility of those claims is based on the strength of the evidence for the claim. The fact that a police officer involved in the case has likely planted evidence before is more than enough reasonable doubt in a case that serious.
I agree wholeheartedly.
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The problem with that is that every time a team loses a big game people can - and do - trot out long lists of incorrect decisions by the losing coaching staff. And every losing political campaign has a post-mortem of criticism of assorted decisions by the losing campaign staff.
That doesn’t mean that all these games and elections are actually being won and lost by the coaches and campaign staff. It just means that nobody is perfect and it’s easy to focus on mistakes by the losing side, and that sometimes even reasonable bets lose and then look foolish in retrospect.
My recollection is that Marcia Clark believed that black females would empathize with the victim’s history as a victim of spousal abuse. That would not be my own expectation in that situation, but it had some rational basis.