Not quite. Goldman’s lawyers dropped the issue. cite (2007)
In that case, no one who is notorious could ever receive a fair trial, and should be free to go? You agree that the evidence was there, it was a valid conviction, and you still feel queasy about it? I don’t get it.
Hamlet, isn’t one of the first things juries do is to take a trial vote, to get a sense of where they are all starting from? If all 12 vote “Not guilty”, what more would you expect from them?
O. J.'s defense was brilliant - probably the best criminal defense I’ve ever followed in my lifetime. Dream Team doesn’t begin to describe it. They adequately cast doubt on the blood trail, which helped them obfuscate the DNA evidence, and impeached Furman so effectively that it (in effect) impeached the entire police department.
You’re requiring the jury to convict simply because they know he did it, not because the prosecution proved it.
All of that said, O. J. is a fucking fool. He got away with a double murder, had a house in Florida that can’t be touched, has a decent pension that can’t be touched, but he couldn’t lay low and live a quiet and peaceful life while thanking heaven every day for his luck. What an idiot he is.
Well, yes. That’s because it can’t be touched. Not that it’ll help Simpson now.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe actually review the evidence and look at it rationally? Is that too much to ask? Every jury I’ve talked with, even if they were 12-0 to convict on the first vote, spent time going over the evidence.
Bullshit. They did what every half way competent defense attorney with a guilty client does. Take advantage of the incompetence of the police and prosecution. The only things the “Dream Team” had that your normal defense team generally doesn’t is nice suits, high profiles, incredibly incompetent prosecutors, and a braindead judge and jury.
Well, no shit, Hamlet. The police and the prosecution were incompetent, yet you want to add blame to the jury. That’s just bullshit.
I repeat, what you are expecting is for the jury to go into the room and say to themselves, “Well, the police and prosecution were incompetent and failed to prove their case to our satisfaction, but - hell - we know he did it so we’ll convict him anyway.” That is, once again, bullshit.
It is the duty of a jury to require the prosecution to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I find it reprehensible to blame their failure to so prove on the jury.
We had a spat on the same subject some years ago, and I feel it safe to say that neither of our views have changed. If you answer this post, I’ll read it, but I doubt I’ll respond. You’ve made your point; I’ve made mine.
Wasn’t quite saying that just because someone is notorious they should be free to go. That’s reading a lot more into my post than was there.
It’s just the notion that no matter what had happened, O.J. wouldn’t have gotten a fair trial. Heck, I even know that a majority of the problems were caused by O.J.'s actions (the book, the publicity seeking, etc.). I suppose it just takes away slightly from the feeling that justice was truly and fairly done here.
We don’t know that it can’t be touched. No legal decision was ever made about it. All we know is the lawyers didn’t feel they could present a good enough argument for a judge to make a ruling that it could be touched. [/nitpick]
Other than that, I agree with your replies to Hamlet. I don’t have to like it, but Mr. Simpson’s defense team in his murder trial did an outstanding job in representing the interests of their client. Juries can only consider the evidence presented at trial, and they did not feel that the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Sucks, but them’s the rules.
Guys, please- does anyone here really still think that justice is blind? Who you are, how much money you have, your education, your lawyer, the jurisdiction and judge… these things matter, and can make the difference between freedom and incarceration.
Horseshit. Complete Horseshit.
In what way?
This is kind of funny. I posted this as soon as I came across the post I qouted. Then I went back and looked at the rest of the blerg.
Do you have a point, then? Or now, as the case may be.
But Biggirl was asking who will keep the courses FREE of machete-wielding maniacs. Not FULL of them.
Did you lose you’re reading glasses? I’ve said, repeatedly, that the jurors aren’t the only ones to blame. It’s not an either/or. The police and prosecution did a really poor job. Yet that doesn’t excuse a jury from simply dismissing the evidence.
Do you have any idea what juries are supposed to do? Go in, do a vote and not even deliberate? Is that what you envision the jury’s role is? Oddly enough the verdict is about the evidence, not whether how good the prosecution was, or if the police are racists or made minor mistakes. It’s not a fucking popularity contest.
Here in reality, the jury is supposed to deliberate and actually look at the evidence rationally. Not simply say “Well, the prosecution was bad and that one cop is a racist, so that means OJ didn’t kill those people”. They are supposed to make their determination on the basis of the evidence. And, given the massive amounts of evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt, that OJ did it, it’s obvious they didn’t rationally consider the evidence.
Reprehensible? Dude, you need to get out more. I’ll stand up for the jury in 95% of cases. But the jury in this one fucked it up. The murderer’s DNA was found AT THE FUCKING MURDER SCENE. A victim’s blood was found ON THE MURDERER’S CLOTHES. The murder’s car had the murderers AND THE VICTIMS blood on or near it. Hair consistent with that of the murder hair was found on a victim. The blood on the glove found at the murder scene had the murderer’s and victim’s on it. The murderer had motive and opportunity. And that’s just the beginning. The evidence is OVERWHELMING, and the jury couldn’t spend more than 3 hours looking at it? They fucked up, pure and simple.
Feel free not to respond. It’s not like it would help.
As someone who actually watched +90% of the trial, and bases his opinion on that, you nailed it (although there’s even more that the defense raised reasonable doubt about than you mention).
Hamlet I’m curious, how much of the trial did you watch?
CMC +fnord!
Hamlet hit the nail on the head. I watched a lot of the trial, BTW. Among other things the defense asked the jury to swallow was the notion that the DNA evidence, which on its surface was EXTREMELY damning, was so poorly handled that the results had to be considered questionable. Put slightly differently, allegedly poorly followed testing protocols produced some false positives. And–damn the bad luck, would you believe it?–out of the 6 billion people in the world these false positives could have wrongly implicated, they inaccurately identified the one guy who happened to be on trial for the murders. Boy, what a streak of bad luck poor OJ seemed to be having!
This is not reasonable doubt. Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to describe it…if the jury “knew he did it,” as Frank suggests, it was because the evidence showed it to be the only reasonable conclusion. The glove they found at OJ’s house tested positive for a match of Goldman’s blood, for Pete’s sake. But of course, I’m sure the jury sifted through all the “conflicting” testimony and mounds of evidence in the three hours of deliberation they so generously dedicated to the task.
The evidence was not overwhelming. First of all, if the prosecutor goes to trial without a witness, a murder weapon, or a confession, then they’re already in trouble.
Then consider that the police broke the chain of evidence with the blood samples, one of the detectives admitted taking a vial of Simpson’s blood with him to the crime scene, and there was confusion over how much of Simpson’s blood was in the sample before and after the detective took it with him, and the general shoddiness of L.A.s DNA labs. That puts the blood evidence in doubt.
Then consider that the lead detective admitted to framing black suspects in the past. And that same detective was alone on Simpson’s property for enough time to plant evidence.
Then consider the most powerful evidence of Simpson’s guilt, the “suicide note” and his attempt to flee were not presented to the jury.
So what do you have left after all that? Motive, opportunity and past abuse. And that’s not nearly enough to get a murder conviction, as it shouldn’t be.
And they worked through all that in 3 hours, eh? Very efficient.
Question-if Simpson DOES choose to appeal, is it possible could get an even more severe sentence?
CITE? I’ve read a lot of this case, and I’ve never read where Fuhrman framed black suspects in the past.