I will admit that was one of the people who thought OJ was 100% guilty. I doubted the jury, I thought they were racist morons who were willing to let a murderer go free to just “screw the man.”
I don’t know how everybody around here judged OJ, (the football star, not the recent troll) but I think OJ needs to be given a second chance.
Is it possible that OJ’s outrageous claims that he was being framed were real?
Here is a couple of lines from a recent article on the LA police scandal.
Is it possible that OJ was framed? Is it at least a little easier to understand why he Jury aquitted him?
I was jumping with joy when he lost the civil case. I was outraged that he wanted custody of his children. Even though he got off, I was so happy that he is looked at as a pariah by the public.
Now I am not so sure.
Does OJ deserve to be “cleared” in the media? Does his case make more sense now then it did 5 years ago?
I believe OJ is 100% guilty. I also think there is a good chance the LAPD is guilty in this case. Hell, they may well have framed him. They didn’t do it because they were racist (though many of them undoubtedly are), they did it because they knew he was their man, and they were so stupid they thought they could actually help by tampering with evidence.
I saw the chase on the freeway. I sat there and listened while they told me about him holding a gun to his head. The jury didn’t see this. I saw all the testimony about the blood at the scene, the window of the bronco, the glove… I listend to the jurors in the civil trial who just expressed shock that he was not convicted in the criminal case, that the evidence was so overwhelming…
Bottom line, the LAPD in general and Mark Furhman in particular screwed this up big time. Cochran is a damn fine lawyer and a damn fine liar, but he needed a good opening to score and the LAPD obliged.
Is it true, as was widely reported, that OJ had had several previous run-ins with LA’s finest over his violent behavior toward Nicole, and that they had always let the matter because of who he was? 'Cause I find it hard to believe that they would frame for murder a man they wouldn’t jail for assault.
OJ’s guilty and the LAPD is in some cases as bad as the criminals.
But why should OJ’s case be revisited? He was aquitted! Due to a virtual comedy of errors by the LAPD and prosecutor’s office. However, only the cases of those convicted will be re-examined.
And why on earth would the cops frame the hero who was OJ anyway? Not likely. And his crime, the murders of Nicole and Ron, was a crime of passion and rage, such as no other person is likely to have committed against Nicole.
I do not believe the LAPD screwed up in the OJ case. IMO, OJ was acquitted based on one strategic blunder by the DA - the willingness to move the trial from the white and affluent west-side where the crime occurred to downtown where the citizenry is generally non-white.
Think about it Cooper, would the playing of the race card worked in West LA? I seriously doubt it even if the Rampart scandal was known back then.
I can certainly understand why a mostly black jury would acquit OJ but I still believe he is 100% guilty.
The sad thing is OJ will use the Rampart scandal to claim vindication. However, I don’t think the public-at-large will buy it. Hopefully, he will remain a pariah as he should be.
If anyone is interested, Vincet Bugliosi wrote an interesting book on the trial. I believe it was called Outrage: The Five Reasons OJ Simpson Got Away With Murder.
It wasn’t just a race card, it was a race/LAPD-framed-him card - and I think people in West LA would have been as offended by the Furhman tape as I was. Probably though, they would have been rational (and lets face it, if not objective, prejudiced against blacks, even rich blacks that drive Broncos) enough to find him guilty. I don’t know…but I don’t think you can point to any one thing. There were lots of mistakes made in this trial.
I agree. OJ should be inducted into the NFL hall of fame. Just because he committed a few blunders in the public’s eye is no reason not to admire his performance as a Running B–
I would like nothing better than to walk away from this thread with my OJ hate intact. Unfortunately, my hate stemmed from my conviction that he was guilty.
I agree. But…
Knowing that the police were in the habit of manufacturing evidence makes me wonder about the overwhelming evidence. What was real evidence, and what was planted? (if any)
This line of reasoning is killing me. No offense to the police out there reading this, but cops don’t happen to be the brain trust of this world. I am not comfortable with the cops “Knowing” they have their man and then making up the rest to get him.
I know when I cop finds something during a search he had no right to make, the evidence is thrown out. At what point do we have to let even a guilty man out if the cops are lying and making up evidence? How can we expect a jury to evaluate a man’s guilt or innocence when the government is fabricating the evidence against him?
Well, I can understand being upset at two dead bodies all slashed up. This is nothing like letting a domestic assualt charge slide. There are two people lying on the ground with their throats cut and blood everywhere.
I used to think that the black jury let him go knowing he was 100% guilty also. I also used to think you could trust the cops. (I’m not saying all cops are bad) But now that I know these people knew about all the police coruption, I can understand why they were not convinced he was guilty.
Those jurors KNEW abot the police problems back then. How did they know you ask? Becasue it was people in their communities that were getting thrown in jail. It was people they knew that were getting screwed by the cops.
I was bitter about this case for a long time. In light of what I am seeing in LA right now, there is now doubt in my mind that all the evidence was real.
How do you know this? There has been a signifigant loss of credibility on the part of the police.
During the trial I dismissed all the accusations of being set-up out of hand. It was ridiculous to even consider them.
I think I am in the same position of the average white guy on this. We saw a trial with a TON of evidence against somebody. We say a black guy playing the race card. We saw a black guy trying to make the cops in to the bad guys. We dismissed all the crap and just saw some guilty as hell jerk who was trying to get away with murder.
Now, the it has been proven that alot of those cops WERE the bad guys. They WERE planting evidence.
When the cops have a widespread problem where they are fabricating evidence, how can you say that the evidence was real?
You have to admit that the whole thing needs to be looked at in a different light then it was during the trial.
Even if we ignore the fabrication of evidence , the CSU (crime scene unit) really botched the job. Holy crap, one of the detectives took a BLANKET from the house and COVERED Nicole Simpson’s body! How very thoughtful, but not something you do at a crime scene. They failed to lock down the crime scene. Too many unaccounted for people entered and left the crime scene. The failed in terms of “Custody of Evidence” (hope I am remembering that term right). Pieces of evidence were not carefully handled, and there were periods of time that it could not be determined who had custody of the evidence (specifically, a sample of blood from the scene). Usually they would take the evidence directly in, instead of immediately taking it to the evidence room they brought it with them to OJ’s house. They scaled OJ’s fence and then claimed he wasn’t a suspect at the time! Those cops looked like absolute fools on the stand!
If they did fabricate any evidence, and I don’t think they necessarily did, they might have done it because they knew they had really blown it already and needed to plant some evidence.
With racist attitudes like this, you wonder why OJ would run if he was innocent? :eek:
As to blood evidence, the police have yet to explain where a significant quantity of OJs blood sample acquired by the police, disappeared to. It’s not inconceivable that this missing blood is the very same blood that was used as evidence against OJ.
Me, I think there’s a reasonable probability that he commited the crime… however, I think there’s a reasonable possibility that he didn’t. If I were in his Bruno Maglis, I’d want to be given the benefit of the doubt.
PeeQueue asks:
Flight cannot be used as evidence of a crime, except in the case where the crime is resisting arrest. OJ wasn’t being arrested when he ran, he had just been asked to come in for questioning. Also, the argument was that OJ wasn’t running at all, at first - he was just going to visit his mother before he went to the police. Then the police, suspect flight, gave chase. I doubt the validity of this since, OJ wasn’t driving himself, had a large sum of cash, and apparently a disguise… But nevertheless, it was deemed irrelevant to the murder case.
It’s my understanding that in most jurisdictions in this country, the police have no choice BUT to let domestic violence matters “drop” if the victim refuses to press charges. Yes, Nicole apparently called 911 on several occasions, and even had her injuries photographed at least once. But if Nicole refused to take the matter further (maybe she was afraid worse things would happen, or maybe she wanted to try getting back together with him), I don’t think there’s a damned thing the LA cops could have done.
Nicole’s family apparently knew all about OJ’s jealous rages. It’s not clear to me that they ever encouraged her to push ahead with legal action, though. In fact, IIRC, OJ’s money was supporting all of them at some point or another. Perhaps that was part of why Nicole was reluctant to press charges.
The police did a horrible job of protecting the integrity of the crime scene and the chain of evidence. Maybe, MAYBE, some of the police tried to stage evidence in the aftermath to try to “make up” for what they screwed up. I’d be willing to concede that that’s possible. But if things had been done correctly… yes, I think OJ would have been found guilty, even with half the evidence that was ultimately presented at trial. (Of course, a competent prosecution team would have helped immensely.)
I highly doubt that an organization (LAPD) that was so inept handling the criminal investigation would have the skills to concoct a conspiracy theory against OJ Simpson and carry it through. Conspiracies require time and smarts.
Secondly, why would the police want to convict an innocent man, let alone a publicly adored sports figure? Sorry, but these officers live in the same communities they serve and I doubt they’d want a psycho, knife-wielding maniac running around – especially one attacking white middle-to upper-class citizens.
Thirdly, the DNA evidence was sufficient in my mind to convict him. Hell, the shoes alone were enough for me. Only 500 shoes (or something like that) were sold in the country in that size, and OJ happens to own a pair. Combined with a violent past and given the events of that night, that’s pretty damn convincing.
Finally, where has OJ’s efforts been to find the real killers. If he is truly innocent, then someone killed the mother of his children, with seemingly no motive. Wouldn’t you be scared for your children? For yourself? I mean, Jackie Kennedy moved out of the freaking country when she thought someone was out to get Kennedy’s…OJ is on a golf course.
Unfortunately, that’s the best argument I’ve heard yet as to why he may be guilty… except they weren’t that smart, now were they?
They were quite sure they had the right man. The ex-husband always did it… unless, of course, there’s a butler.
The DNA evidence didn’t prove that OJ was at the crime scene. Only that his DNA was there, but the point is that this could have been easily planted and all of the steps that police are trained to use to prevent questions of this sort were summarily ignored.
Again, the shoes could have been there even though the man was not. In fact, this is one of the damning bits of evidence against the police possibly manufacturing evidence. One of the forensic scientists claimed that the shoe print was made after the blood had started to coagulate, possibly 30 to 90 minutes after the crime had been commited.
We don’t know anything about their private lives. I’m not saying that Nicole deserved any abuse she may have gotten from OJ, but she may not be completely innocent in these events. Regardless, you can’t convict a man based on past performance… well, maybe you can, but the law won’t allow it.
Gimme a break. OJ doesn’t have enough money to search for the killers now, even if he wanted to, but why would he want to? There’s no motivation for it. He’s not going to jail and even if he proved that someone else was the killer, he ain’t gettin’ his money back! He’s cuttin’ his losses.
You lost me on the bit about the shoes. Were the cops in possesion of OJ’s shoes within 90 minutes of the murder so that they could fake the footprint? Did someone else steal OJ’s shoes prior to the murder, take them with to the scene, and then leave his footprint? I recall that OJ initially denied he owned the shoes, but photos showing him wearing them proved otherwise. I suppose if they were not in his possesion at the time of the murder, someone else could have made the shoe print, but this seems incredibly unlikely.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
All the other issues aside, I doubt very much that any of these officers live in the same area as OJ.
Another way of looking at it, is that they really did think it was OJ. Maybe some cop saw the death, realized the connection and remembered the domestic abuse calls. Then they got upset and decided that it had to be OJ, so they may as well go ahead and frame him for it.