Sure, in the infamous Fuhrman tapes. Here’s a link to some excerpts.
I think the Simpson case, as well as Young Earth Creationism and the Moon Landing, are great way for me personally to decide whether or not someone is worth debating.
No. You’re doing exactly what the defense counsels wanted the unthinking masses to do, to rely on insinuations and minor mistakes to dismiss massive amounts of scientific and testimonial evidence and to fabricate a conspiracy on a vast scale to frame an innocent man. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. DNA doesn’t magically change to someone else’s just because it was held in a pocket for too long, or the chain of evidence was perfect. The fact of the matter is that, to believe for one second, that OJ Simpson wasn’t the killer, you have to believe, as fact, that not just one, not just two, but dozens of police officers, lab techs, and expert witnesses, all conspired to frame OJ, and they did so on the spur of the moment.
Look, I’m not going to rehash the entire case with you. It’s been done to death and, to be honest, I hold the opinion of those who think OJ wasn’t proven guilty in so low of regard that it just isn’t worth it to me to waste my time. Sorry.
Of course, Det. Vanatter walking around the crime scene with a vial of Simpson’s blood couldn’t possibly mean anything, especially considering that they later couldn’t explain why there was blood missing from that vial. But let’s ignore that. It might make some of us uncomfortable.
You would think events like the RAMPARTS scandal (which happened in LA, no less) would diabuse people of the notion that framing a suspect is unheard of. I guess it’s easier not to think about it.
Anyone who believes the prosecution proved their case and mindlessly repeats their propaganda about “a mountain of evidence” is likely someone who prefers to have the pundits and mass media do all their thinking for them, and would probably do better not to discuss the trial. So it’s a good thing that you’re stopping.
In order to frame a suspect, the frame has to fit. At the time the glove, the blood in the vehicle, etc., were found the police had no idea where OJ was. For all they knew he was in the middle of a two week golf vacation in Scotland.
IMHO this should have been the prosecution’s closing statement.
Thank you for a great example of what I was talking about when I said: “rely on insinuations and minor mistakes to dismiss massive amounts of scientific and testimonial evidence and to fabricate a conspiracy on a vast scale to frame an innocent man.” You take one item of evidence and, just like the defense counsel wanted you to, pretend that it disproves all the other evidence. Yes, Vanatter delivered the blood to Fung at Simpson’s house. SO THE FUCK WHAT. By the time Vannatter arrived, the blood samples had already been identified and collected AND Simpson himself admits to the fact that his blood was at his house. This kind of bizarre ignorance of the facts and complete abandonment of common sense is what puts the “OJ is not guilty” crowd into the same group as moon hoaxers and young earth creationists.
Nah, you don’t get it. The LAPD were out to get OJ, so they waited until it just so happened that his ex wife was violently murdered and the crack “let’s frame OJ” unit of the LAPD sprung into action to frame the poor guy. Luckily, every detective, every lab tech, and the entire group of 17 or so cops who were at the scenes before Fuhrman ever arrived, were in on it. The cops just got lucky that OJ’s ex wife was murdered in a violent way by a guy wearing OJ’s shoes and gloves and then they sprung into action.
Let me see if I can simplify this enough for you to understand. There is a reason the chain of custody exists. It’s not because the cops want to play fair, it’s not because prosecutors are trying to be nice, it’s not because everyone loves extra paperwork. **It’s because when you break the chain of custody, it calls into question the integrity of the evidence. **
Now, you may think that it’s no big deal that the detective was walking around the crime scene with a vial of the defendant’s blood, and that later there was less blood in the vial than there was orginally. But you know, I have friends who are prosecutors. And if someone came to them and told them “hey, one of the lead detectives was walking around the crime scene with some of the defendant’s blood, and now some of that blood is missing. that’s not a problem, right?,” they would find that detective and string him up by the balls. Because that’s the kind of shit that loses cases.
You do know about the RAMPART scandal, correct? It broke in L.A. just a few years after the Simpson trial. It lead to over 100 criminal convictions being overturned because of falsified evidence and police perjury. Yet you persist in imagining that such a thing could never happen. Tell that to the 100 people who had their convictions overturned. Tell it to Mark Fuhrman, who bragged about doing that sort of thing routinely.
You mean the shoes that the prosecutors never proved belonged to OJ? (Funny, the lawyers in the civil trial had no problem proving those were his shoes. But hey, who needs good lawyers when you have a mountain of evidence, right?)
And oh yes, the glove. Johnnie Cochran goaded dumbass Chris Darden into asking OJ to try on the glove, even though the prosecutors had previously decided to do no such thing, because they knew that it had probably shrunk. But hey, it’s okay to self-sabotage one of your best pieces of evidence if you have a mountain of evidence, right?
First, the person who took the blood was clear that the amount taken was an estimate and not a sure amount, and gave a statement indicating it easily could have been the 6.5. But why bother with actual facts. So, once again, we have a minor fact: that the nurse who took OJ’s blood gave differing estimates on the amount taken, is somehow used to call into question the other 450 pieces of evidence taken. It is exactly what defense counsels want people like you to believe, that if you find one thing, no matter how small, that means the whole case falls apart. Sorry, but that’s not how it works.
Are you ever going to get around to telling me why it mattered. Vannatter was delivering the blood to Fung, who was at Simpson’s residence. And Simpson had ALREADY ADMITTED that he bled all over his place, so there was no reason for Vannatter to spill OJ’s blood. Vannatter didn’t have Nicole’s blood, or Goldman’s blood, or OJ’s hair, shoes, or gloves, to plant at the murder scene. Yet all that other evidence gets dismissed and ignored because it was possible (just possible, because, as you know, there was never any testimony that Vannatter actually did plant blood, but who needs actual evidence right?) that one cop could have, maybe, although we don’t know, plant blood that he knew planting would prove nothing.
I do love it when people like yourself have to resort to making shit up. I never said that police never frame people. But, and here’s the actual fact, I’m saying they couldn’t and didn’t, IN THIS CASE. But, again, you are exactly the kind of person who the defense counsels were counting on being on the jury. Ill informed, conspiracy minded, and able to ignore vast amounts of evidence.
The shoes that left the bloody footprint at the murder scene were size 12, the same size as OJ. It’s called evidence.
And again, you have to resort to making shit up. I’ve repeatedly said the prosecutor’s fucked up and having OJ try on the glove was a huge one. But it did nothing to disprove the other evidence, including the fact that Nicole had bought 2 pairs of the exact same type of gloves (only 240 sold) for OJ and there were photos of him wearing the same type of gloves. But, once again, that’s just evidence. It apparently doesn’t matter to you because Vannatter had a sealed vial of blood in his pocket.
I’m done with you. There is no point rehashing the case with you. Feel free to buy into the grand conspiracy and continue to ignore the evidence. Just don’t expect me to disabuse you of your ignorance.
The Rampart thing is pretty much irrelevant. While it certainly shows a pattern of corruption at that station, using it to assert that there was a set up in OJ’s case seems like a reach.
Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity and incompetence.
BTW, no need to capitalize Rampart- maybe you are thinking of seeing it alongside CRASH, the acronym for the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, an anti-gang program that the corrupt cops were part of. I think 30 cops and at least 3 supervisors were implicated in the end.
If you read the stories about the Rampart CRASH team, they sound a hell of a lot like the Strike Team on The Shield… :rolleyes:
raises hand
I call dibbs on being the out-of-work actor in the guest house while OJ and his lawyer are gutted on the frong door-step…
I think OJ got away the first time because he had the money to get the best defense possible. I understand the verdict. I see the evidence and possible tampering as problematic. I think he did it but was successful at buying his way out. The prosecution was poor.
This one is ugly. I can not imagine anyone else getting 33 years for that crime. The technical definition of kidnapping does not satisfy . I see overkill.
I do feel bad for OJ. How stupid is he? He had a charmed existence and apparently believed he could get away with anything.what a waste.
I thought he was up for parole after 9 years ?!?!
I think it’ll be more like 5 or 6, actually. IIRC, NV only requires you to actually serve 1/3 of your sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
I read in an interview, assuming O. J. was being truthful, that he receives an income of about $300,000 yearly, but only $20,000 of that is his NFL pension. I wonder if the remaining $280,000 is untouchable?
You seem to be operating under the misconception that all the prosecution has to do is offer a reasonable explanation for their evidence to be acceptable. That’s only half the job. You also have to render any alternate explanations as highly unlikely or impossible.
So if they misestimate how much blood they took, that’s reasonable, that makes sense. And if the detective hadn’t shown up at the scene with Simpson’s blood, the defense would have had a problem explaining why Simpson’s blood is everywhere. But when the detective is wandering around with the blood, and there is confusion about how much blood should be there, all of the sudden you have an alternative theory as to why Simpson’s blood is everywhere. That’s why police generally place so much importance on how evidence is handled.
When you say the shoeprint was a size 12 and the defendant wears a size 12, that’s suggestive, but plenty of men wear size 12. It’s not unreasonable to think it’s a coincidence that someone else wearing a size 12 was at the scene. But when you show pictures of the defendant wearing the same brand of shoe in the same size, like they did in the civil trial, then it becomes completely unreasonable to think someone else made that footprint.
When you say the victim bought the defendant that brand of glove, and that there weren’t many of that brand sold, that’s powerful evidence, and the defense has a problem, because it’s not reasonable to believe that’s not his glove. But then when you stupidly have him try on that glove in the middle of the courtroom, and that glove doesn’t fit, you’ve just made that alternative a lot less unreasonable.
When your lead detective testifies about all the evidence he found that implicates the defendant, that’s powerful evidence. But when that same detective gets busted perjuring himself during the trial, that reasonably calls into question everything he’s said. And when you have that same detective on tape bragging about lying on the stand and framing suspects, it suddenly makes the unreasonable idea of a police frame job a lot less unreasonable.
When your DNA analyst testifies about the near impossible odds that those blood samples would point to someone else, that’s solid evidence. When the defense spends the next week showing that analyst is the biggest bumbler west of the Mississippi, his testimony is a lot less authoritative.
But when it comes down to it, there’s no need for us to argue. You have this idea of how juries should act when faced with this type of shoddy police work and prosecution, but we already know how a real jury will react to such a case. They’ll vote to acquit. And I hope that if you are ever involved in a court case, that your legal team provides a better standard of performance than what you deem sufficient, because you will likely end up disappointed in the verdict if they do not.
Thanks for the correction on the Rampart spelling. I was confusing it with CRASH. And it’s not particularly relevant to the OJ case, except to show that the framing of suspects by LA police is not unheard of.
Hey, whadda know, we agree on something.
We know how one jury acted in once case, yes. Thank you for stating the obvious. What I’m saying is that a jury verdict should be based on the EVIDENCE and not on popularity or sending a message to police or prosecutors to do better at their job. And, once again, when you have the murderers blood, fibers, and hairs at the murder scene; the victims blood on the murderers clothes, in his car, and on the evidence seized from his house, it’s pretty fucking obvious who the murderer is. And the fact that some of the police did a less than stellar job, or that the prosecution were pathetic idiots, doesn’t mean the evidence didn’t show OJ was the murderer beyond a reasonable doubt.
You see the trial not is as it should be, a determination of whether the EVIDENCE proves the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather as a popularity contest on whether the cops or prosecutors did a good job. So, you focus on the mistakes the authorities made and completely ignore the massive amounts of evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt, OJ murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. It is exactly what the defense counsel wanted; they wanted the jury to ignore the evidence and decide they like OJ better than they liked Fuhrman. But, here, in reality, the determination should be about the evidence.
Still murder can be 20 years with getting out in less than 10. Was this a worse crime?
They also framed him before they knew if he had an airtight alibi (he could have been giving a speech in front of thousands of people at the time) or if there were any eyewitnesses (what if someone had come forward and said “I saw a white guy about 5’6”, 160 pounds, red hair & freckles running away from the scene with a machette and his clothes covered with blood).
Sorry, Hamlett, I have to agree with davidw.
The jury didn’t ignore the EVIDENCE (as you characterize it, presumably to emphasize its volume). To do that would indeed require them to be blind and deaf. Instead they discounted it. The difference is the difference between conviction and acquittal. They discounted it because they found it to be incredible. Not credible, not completely believable, or not trustworthy. And they found it incredible because the cops and the prosecutors screwed the pooch. And the defense attorneys were shrewd enough to make issue of it.
Like most, I believe that OJ was the killer. But I watched much of the trial, and I would have been fearful for our criminal justice system if he had been convicted. I don’t think a wholesale conspiracy was required. Rather I think that the cops drew their own immediate conclusion then, fearing the uncertainty of trial, decided to just help the evidence out a bit.
Start at the beginning, with a cop who hates blacks (as demonstrated by his own taped testimony) and who (by the same testimony) is not above creating evidence. This same cop happens to have been the officer who responded to the earlier “domestic abuse” call. The call where the beautiful white woman was savaged by OJ without punishment. This is the cop now in charge of the crime scene where the very same beautiful white woman was murdered.
The first thing he and his partner do, even while the crime scene is still being developed, is to speed to Simpson’s house. Why? They testified that he wasn’t a suspect yet. They went there, by their testimony, to see if he might be an additional victim. They got no answer to their ringing at the front gate, so they went to the rear gate. Still no answer. But they did not have legal cause to actually enter the property, if they were merely there to see if OJ was an additional victim.
But then they looked at the car, which was parked in a “highly unusual” and “suspicious” manner, being “askew as if hurriedly parked”. And, on close examination, they found a blood mark on the exterior of the car. This gave them sufficient “cause” to scale the wall and begin banging on doors. It also allowed Furman to find the much discussed glove, a match to the one at the crime scene, which he finds while crawling on his belly down a dead-end walkway.
Now let us stop here and examine this much of the evidence. Photos showed the car parked alongside the curb. The pictures showed one set of wheels (I frankly can’t remember which) less than the width of a tire farther from the curb than the other set. So it was “askew” by perhaps 3 inches. Suspicious? Meh.
The car was, by Furman’s testimony, locked, so he could not examine the items within. But there was that blood smear. That led him to believe that OJ might be hurt, inside his compound, and that made it OK to scale the wall and wake the residents. Otherwise, his entry would have been illegal, and the fruit of that illegal entry, the glove, would have been disallowed.
However, on cross examination at trial, the crime scene tech who actually collected the blood smear from the car testifies that it was on the door sill, INSIDE the car and not visible from the outside when the door is closed. Does this matter? It matters regarding the admissability of the glove. And perhaps it matters for Furhman’s credibility. I mean, come on. Did they really drive all the way out there from a fresh and mostly unprocessed crime scene just to look for an additional victim? Only to be frustrated when no one answered the doorbell?
And what about that damning glove, found on the walkway, and why do I say he crawled to find it? He must have crawled, because the crime scene technician who later that morning “processed” the walkway testified that the numerous spider webs across it were still intact.
Stop here and let us contemplate how I, a potential juror, might view just this much of the EVIDENCE. A cop who hates niggers is called to the crime scene where the beautiful white victim of previous abuse is found brutally murdered. So he and his partner, after a cursory look around, speed across town to OJ’s house looking for another victim. Nobody answers their calls, so they hop the fence, after rationalizing a dodge (the askew car and the blood stain) to allow them to do so. And guess what? Even though they discover that OJ is out of town, they still find a twin to the glove from the crime scene! Incredible police work, and damning evidence.
But if I can find a reasonable alternate explanation that benefits the defendant, I am required to discount the evidence. So what if these same two goons actually found both gloves at the crime scene, and picked one up in a plastic evidence bag? Then, when they visited the house of the nigger who everybody must know did the deed, they might have touched the glove to a few places inside the car before jumping the wall and “finding” it on an apparently untraveled (per the spiders) walkway.
We could do a similar job for much of the other evidence. Take, for example, the blood found (several days after the initial crime scene processing) on the back gate, which DNA matched to OJ. What difference does it make that it contained the preservative EDTA in parts per million? Well, while living, breathing humans might have traces of EDTA in their blood of a few parts per billion, they would be neither living nor breathing if they contained EDTA in parts per million. OJ could not have left that blood there from his cut hand. And there’s more of this for virtually all the so called EVIDENCE.
Bottom line is the cops tried to enhance the evidence, the crime scene technicians demonstrated vast incompetence, and the prosecutors made innumerable bad decisions. The jury did the only thing it could do with the mess put before them.