The location of the OJ Simpson murder trial

Factual Questions
1

I’ve often heard that OJ Simpson was tried in downtown Los Angeles rather than Santa Monica because the district attorney didn’t want to have a mostly white jury from West Los Angeles. Since the crimes did occur in West LA, why wasn’t he tried in that area?

2

IIRC, this was right on the heels of the Rodney King case where an all-white jury acquitted white cops causing riots. The DA feared that if an all-whiite (or mostly white) jury CONVICTED O.J. Simpson then we would have another situation like that.

The defense sure didn’t want an all-white jury either, so the parties agreed to a change of venue. I’m sure they couched it under some kind of “unable to pick a fair and impartial jury in the neighborhood where the crime occurred” argument, but it was obviously about race…

3

I was just listening to Alan Dershowitz talking about this earlier this evening. (Not to me personally; it was a recording.) He said that the prosecutor was running for re-election and he wanted to maximize media attention of the case so he moved it to Los Angeles. Also the prosecutor supposedly thought the case was such a slamdunk that he wanted to show that even a mostly non-white jury would convict.

4

The reason I remember being given was because they expected a big audience with lots of media in attendance. They said they moved to downtown because the courtroom was much larger and the location was more convenient.

Clearly, the DA’s office wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t think they had a slam-dunk.

5

That would be District Attorney Gil Garcetti. Garcetti’s predecessor Ira Reiner and his staff had severely bungled the McMartin preschool sexual abuse trial (7 years and several million dollars). Reiner “retired,” despite the fact he could have ran for a third term, but the McMartin case ended any chance of that. Thus, Garcetti wanted a win on a major case to boost his chances.

He did win re-election but the squabbling between him and LAPD Chief Bernard Parks over the Rampart CRASH scandal lead to his defeat to Steve Cooley when he attempted a third term.