Althouse: For $3.5 million, would you confess to murders for which you were certain you could not be prosecuted?

November 17, 2006

For $3.5 million, would you confess to murders for which you were certain you could not be prosecuted?

Ignore O.J. Simpson and his lurid, meaningless book. If you can.

45 comments:

Mark Daniels said...: For me the key issue isn't Simpson writing a book. I long ago gave up on his ethics and would expect him to do something like this.

What bothers me is Fox News paying the guy for his garbage. I never watch Fox as it is. This gives me all the more reason to surf past the channel in the future.

Mark; 11/17/06, 5:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Mark, did you read the article? I realize I'm splitting hairs but the O.J. special will be on Fox stations, not Fox News Network; the two aren't quite the same thing. In fact, Bill O'Reilly, from Fox News Network, denounces the O.J. and the show.

So come on over to the dark side of Fox News. You might find you like it!; 11/17/06, 6:07 AM
Anonymous said...: OJ Simpson is disgusting and there is no way I would buy his book. What's just as disgusting are all the media outlets that are still giving this thug face time trying and trying milk a twelve year old tragedy for all its worth. Shame.

Actually the new book I am the most excited about is From Small Farm to Big Business the autobiography of agribusiness giant Dwayne Andreas. It comes out at the end of this month. Another one I would recommend to anyone is The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald, a must read, especially if you live/work in beautiful (not!) Decatur Illinois

John @ Holstein Grove; 11/17/06, 6:15 AM
LoafingOaf said...: I can't say for sure I'd flip the channel if I happen to be home when the special is on. But no one will know! It might be bloggable though...ya know.....

I would never ever buy or even browse the book, but isn't it odd that all these bookstores won't carry it even though it's getting a lot of preorders on Amazon? I'm sure they're all carrying plenty of other books that are hard to defend or are written by evil people.; 11/17/06, 6:31 AM
goesh said...: -next he will be tossing dwarves to sell some fitness product...; 11/17/06, 6:51 AM
Meade said...: For $3.5 million? Sure I would... if I was a self-aggrandizing psychopathic murderer.; 11/17/06, 7:32 AM
Ron said...: For that money...I'd confess to Teapot Dome!; 11/17/06, 7:53 AM
knox said...: Wonder how those jurors feel now.... or should we just assume they have no shame either?; 11/17/06, 7:53 AM
MadisonMan said...: To answer the question, I guess it would depend on if I committed the murders. If I had committed the murders, confession might be good for my soul. Perhaps this might help OJ's soul -- it certainly needs it.; 11/17/06, 8:10 AM
amba said...: You already haven't.; 11/17/06, 8:16 AM
The Drill SGT said...: I take issue with calling what happened a tragedy. It was a hideous crime of murder and then a crime in the courtroom.

And now I wish that they could lock OJ up for continuing to abuse his (their) kids. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your friends/enemies recite passages to a teenager whose father killed your mother that way.; 11/17/06, 8:18 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: On the other hand, I was also disgusted by Mark Furhman, who was apparenty disgusted by all involved. This is the same Furhman who was so discredited during the trial, and had apparently gone over the wall into O.J.'s compound w/o a warrant and then lied to the judge about the exigent circumstances. Just as bad, the judge didn't suppress, "believing" the cops in their obviously invented and pretextual story. I still think that that ruling had a decent chance of getting a guilty verdict reversed, as it was clearly not harmless, allowing in critical evidence.

If Simpson is guilty, we can blame L.A.'s finest, from the judge, down through the prosecutors, finally to the cops involved, for letting him get away with it.

One note - I sat next to an attorney on a plane flight a year or so after the trial, and he claimed to be good friends with the D.A. of the time. His explanation for the selection of prosecutors was that they had initially been going to try O.J. in the local, primarily White, court. But a group of Black clergy came into the D.A.'s office and told him that if O.J. was convicted in a White court, L.A. would burn. So, they switched it downtown, with a significant minority jury pool. And with that, they knew that if they tried it with their top prosecutors, who tended to be White males, they would likely lose on racial grounds. So, they threw in one female prosecutor for the abuse angle, and one Black one for the racial angle, and hoped for the best. This could be BS, but it did have a ring of truth.; 11/17/06, 8:44 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: One thing that I haven't seen spelled out yet is how Simpson is supposed to keep this money away from the Goldmans. I saw something last night about the proceeds going to his kids. Anyone know the details?; 11/17/06, 8:45 AM
The Drill SGT said...: Bruce Hayden said...
One thing that I haven't seen spelled out yet is how Simpson is supposed to keep this money away from the Goldmans. I saw something last night about the proceeds going to his kids. Anyone know the details?

no details either.
1. I do know that he recently won a battle on assets with the Goldman judgement and
2. he moved to Florida, which I understand has a large homestead loophole that protects homes/assets from creditors.; 11/17/06, 9:02 AM
NSC said...: How the jurors feel? The jurors are told to determine whether there is reasonable doubt; they did find such. That is not their fault but rather the fault of the prosecution, the police, and the judge, all of whom, together, provided many opportunities for OJ's defense team to innoculate him. The only thing the jury should be feeling is anger that their tax money was wasted by Marcia Clark and Lance Ito and Mark Fuhrman. (Of course, it is also true that had OJ been convicted, even more tax money would have been wasted incarcerating him. Perhaps Californians are better off having released him to Florida.)

This waste of human flesh got off mostly because of an incompetent media-whore judge and incompetent prosecutors, but if you think for a moment that this jury actually gave the evidence an objective and honest look, however poorly obtained and presented, I have some great swamp land to sell you.

No way he was going to be convicted absent a video showing him murdering them - and even then I am not sure that jury would have voted to convict.; 11/17/06, 9:06 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Considering his children, I can't believe he's doing this.; 11/17/06, 9:07 AM
Franz Kraus said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 11/17/06, 9:14 AM
rcocean said...: Sorry, but the 12 idiots on the jury set OJ free and they did so because of his skin color.

Attempts to blame Ito, MF, or the prosecutors, is just passing the buck.

Every piece of evidence pointed to OJ's guilt. The hat, the hair, the shoes, the gloves, the timeline, the cut on the hand, the bloody socks, the DNA evidence, the limo driver, Kato, motive, opportunity.

The Jury ignored all that because they didn't care about the evidence.; 11/17/06, 9:45 AM
Paddy O said...: OJ already has reached bottom. That he's doing this is no surprise. It's sad that after this many years he still doesn't have a conscience or any any remorse, but I'm not really shocked by it.

I'm more disgusted by the publisher and Fox who would give him a context. They have put themselves down to his level. That surprises and disgusts me.

At this point the only people who can be blamed for the OJ phenomenon are those who create a market for him.

To answer the question, of course I would confess to it. Why not? Especially, if like OJ, most everyone thinks I did it anyhow and I am living as a pariah in society.

What would a person have to lose? With nothing else to offer the world, this makes perfect sense as a way to both bring in cash and continue to thumb a nose at detractors.

Plus, those who agreed with his acquittal are already extremely practiced at rationalizing what happened, so this won't change their minds either. I mean he's not really confessing is he? It's a hypothetical conversation because he's spent so much time looking for and getting into the head of whoever did commit the murders.

If I were a publisher or a network, however, I wouldn't pay OJ a dime no matter what the possible profits to me or my company.; 11/17/06, 10:28 AM
kentuckyliz said...: He wasn't found innocent, he was found not guilty. Big difference.

I watched the View yesterday...home on medical, not a usual thing for me. Barbara Walters was offered the interview and she declined it. I think it was an interview with the Goldmans!

The View chixx were encouraging everyone NOT to buy the book, read the book, or watch the TV interview. Ignore it and maybe it will go away. Do not feed the trolls.

OJ got off by race, and only because he killed a white bitch who stole a fine black man who should have been with a fine black Nubian queen...and Ron Goldman, well, he's a Jew, and we know how blacks feel about Jews. Things might have turned out differently if there weren't these unspoken racial hatreds underlying the whole thing.

For the record, I don't want to hear from Scott Peterson either!

I feel very sorry for OJ's children. They are teens now, I would guess; I hope their peers don't taunt them with this crap. But then I suppose they can retort with an escalated version of "my dad can beat up your dad."; 11/17/06, 10:33 AM
Jeremy said...: dklittl -
It's possible that he didn't do it in the same way that that it's technically possible that Michael Jackson didn't diddle little kids at Neverpants Ranch.; 11/17/06, 10:40 AM
knox said...: Hate to be the contrarian, but are you really sure that OJ committed the murders. I mean he was found innocent by a jury of his peers.

Maybe you're right! Maybe this whole "If I did it..." thing is just OJ's attempt at fiction.

5.4.3.2.1..(Countdown to ensuing Caucasian anger about the unfairness of the justice system)

Oh, if I'd only known that it's because I'm a racist that I think OJ's guilty! Why didn't someone tell me this sooner??; 11/17/06, 10:42 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: "If Simpson is guilty, we can blame L.A.'s finest, from the judge, down through the prosecutors, finally to the cops involved, for letting him get away with it."---Bruce Hayden

But not the Black jurors?

Funny I thought the B-L-A-C-K jurors were responsible.

I guess Blacks are never to blame for anything.

Always someone else's fault.

Love, Maxine; 11/17/06, 11:27 AM
John Stodder said...: How the jurors feel? The jurors are told to determine whether there is reasonable doubt; they did find such.

In the Simpson case, it really wasn't "reasonable doubt" that saved Simpson. In most cases, the strong bias is toward the prosecution. This was a case of jury nullification. This jury liked Simpson. They didn't like the prosecutors. They really didn't like the LAPD. They evidently didn't like the victims, particularly not Nicole. The attempt to make this abused woman look sympathetic apparently backfired, the jury evidently concluding she deserved Simpson's beatings. The DNA evidence was too hard for them to follow, so they disregarded it.

It might be interesting for a reporter to follow up with the jurors to see if they feel like Simpson has made chumps out of them, but I'd wager they'll say "no." In their heart of hearts, I think they just decided Simpson should be given a pass. So the show won't surprise or embarrass them at all.; 11/17/06, 12:06 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 11/17/06, 12:26 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Sorry, Jack. I just don't want that idea planted in anyone's head.; 11/17/06, 12:31 PM
John Kindley said...: What really sickens me about this is that O.J., by giving the rights to the proceeds of the book to a third party, with whom Regan has contracted, has obviously set things up to avoid having to pay any of the proceeds of the book to satisfy the judgment against him. (Surely he has a side contract with that third party that will never see the light of day or public scrutiny.) Regan has the audacity to say that she was "told the proceeds would go to O.J.'s children." She doesn't believe that the proceeds will go to the kids, and is an arch-hypocrite for implying that she does. If that was the case, that third party could have simply been some kind of trust that explicitly gave the proceeds to the kids. She has set up a situation where a murderer is going to profit from his murders. I would feel better about the whole project if she had had the integrity to ensure that the proceeds would not go to the murderer but to the kids. Even then, a lot would depend on the nature of the book itself. If it is truly confessional in nature, that is one thing, but it sounds to me (and more consistent with O.J.'s sociopathic character) like it will be more in the way of self-justification, and perhaps worse, salacious description of how in fact a bloody and horrific crime was actually committed.; 11/17/06, 1:45 PM
Anonymous said...: OJ went to Galileo High in San Francisco. For what it's worth, I always say OJ had a pair of those Bruno Maglis. If he didn't do it then the real killer wore nice shoes just like OJ.; 11/17/06, 1:47 PM
Revenant said...: 5.4.3.2.1..(Countdown to ensuing Caucasian anger about the unfairness of the justice system)

Maybe I'm just too much of a sunny optimist, but I like to think that there are a lot of non-white people who get angry when murderers go free, too. Certainly I'd expect the ones who want my sympathy for the mistreatment of nonwhites by the justice system to do so.; 11/17/06, 2:09 PM
John Kindley said...: Just to underscore the point, the headline on Drudge, and an obvious point of emphasis and justification by Regan herself, was "I didn't pay him," when in reality, if she had paid him directly rather than some mysterious third party, the victims and O.J.'s kids would be MORE likely to eventually receive the proceeds. By not paying O.J. directly, she has in fact made it more likely that the murderer will profit from his "confession," and she knows it. What bald-faced hypocrisy!; 11/17/06, 2:34 PM
John Kindley said...: My guess is that Smilin Jack wondered aloud whether and when some vigilante might execute the justice that O.J. has thus far avoided.; 11/17/06, 2:42 PM
Mortimer Brezny said...: Wow. I wouldn't blame the jurors because they were B-L-A-C-K.

I have spoken to a number of people -- white and black -- who could not connect the dots in the O.J. trial because they were distracted by all the ancillary issues. They didn't think this witness was credible. They didn't think the gloves fit. They did think the blood on the driveway was old and dated improperly. They didn't get how Simpson could have bumped his head on the A/C unit without Kaelin hearing it. They did buy that someone with bad knees from playing football couldn't commit such a vicious crime (against two people) so quickly, without any cries for help or without Goldman fighting Simpson off. They didn't understand why Goldman's wounds plausibly seemed to have been made by a different implement than Brown's. In other words, I know plenty of people who thought there was reasonable doubt to the point they didn't even understand the government's case against Simspon.

The fact is, the prosecutors screwed up that case. Evidence indicated more than one person at the scene, that the crime took place very quickly, and that the kinds of cuts were not something a sober, out-of-shape person could do, each piece of evidence was poorly collected, one of the cops was "racist", and there were other holes in some of the inferences the crime scene people made.

The investigation team didn't close up all the holes and the prosecution didn't anticipate how diligent the defense team would be. They didn't even research their witnesses' backhistory enough to know that one of their star witnesses once had a race problem. That's just bad lawyering. It's bad witness prep.

I think O.J. killed her and Goldman (while accompanied by Kato Kaelin) because he was particularly outraged and humiliated that she had taken a lover and was doing him with the shades open in a house that O.J. was paying for. And plenty of evidence showed O.J. with motive, with the kind of personality to get enraged, at the scene, leaving the vehicle that the murderer used, bumping his head on the air conditioner unit as he was walking back into his house, and collapsing on the couch.

So it's pretty easy to explain away those problems -- if Kato Kaelin were the other person, that explains the extra footprints and why Kato "didn't hear" O.J. bump his head on the A/C unit -- "I was asleep in the house. I heard nothing." Yeah, great alibi, Kato; I was at home asleep. -- it explains how the murders were committed so quickly (one killed Brown, the other killed Goldman), and if they both were on crystal meth, that explains why an arthritic with bad knees could do this without feeling pain and why the cuts were so nasty and ragged. (How hard is it to hack someone's head off if you're high on some crazy-maker drug?)

But the prosecution didn't do so.

I will note, however, that Simpson's "If I Did It" has a hypothetical accomplice named "Charlie".; 11/17/06, 3:23 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: ...what John Kindley said above, and that O.J. only makes this more likely by the dumb move of writing this book and plugging it on TV.

I guess it's OK when someone else says it (snif!)....; 11/17/06, 4:07 PM
hdhouse said...: its sweeps time at the networks. helllllooooo?

ad rates depend on OJ...OHMY; 11/17/06, 4:14 PM
LoafingOaf said...: mhThe View chixx were encouraging everyone NOT to buy the book, read the book, or watch the TV interview. Ignore it and maybe it will go away. Do not feed the trolls.

They'll talk about it all morning long but then tell us we should ignore. LOL!

And Judith Regan is Satanic even though the entire rest of the media at every level rode the OJ gravy train and made everyone interested in it.

Well, it was an interesting trial. Some of the things I took away were that the LAPD, crime labs, and prosecutors had so much incompetance and sloppiness, were so unprofessional, had such a reputation for corruption, perjury, even planting evidence - and yes a problem with racism - that a Dream Team could make them look silly, and a guilty man went free in an abnormal trial. I'm more concerned about the routine cases when people are caught up in that justice system without a Dream Team on their side.

I saw it when I served on a jury and a police officer walked into court and lied his ass off and the prosecutor was perfectly okay with that.

The OJ jury selection may have been key (and isn't that Marcia Clark's fault?), but that jury saw a lot of stuff they could point to in order to say: Yeah he probably did it but I'm not gonna convict when it looks like evidence wasn't handled properly and the police are liars. I'm not defending what that jury did, but it seems to me they did have a basis to not trust the system and we should be upset about that too.

Had more defendents had access to good lawyers with resources, the LAPD on up through the justice system probably would've cleaned up their act long before OJ and things might've gone differently.

Re: Lance Ito

If there weren't judges selected through political elections maybe there would've been in control of the courtroom. I don't think any elected judge could've handled the OJ trial well.; 11/17/06, 4:36 PM
LoafingOaf said...: the racist stupidity was accompanied by MSM handwringing about how blacks have reason to mistrust the criminal justice system

I'm not black and I don't trust the criminal justice system. Mostly because I think a huge number of prosecutors are out of control and unethical, and it's scary.

As for the OJ case, I'm not studied up on the facts but there did seem to be at least some basis for the jury to wonder if some of the evidence had been planted, which had been a rather rampant problem with the LAPD in general. I recall expert testimony claiming that a substance was found in the blood on a sock which suggested it came from the lab. If that theory's been disproven, forgive me. But it's an interesting issue as to how a jury should react if they honestly think a guilty person was framed.

Of course the OJ jury may have been of the mind that they knew what they were gonna do no matter what.; 11/17/06, 5:32 PM
Mortimer Brezny said...: http://www.courttv.com/trials/ojsimpson/weekly/27.html

Tainted blood on sock theory.; 11/17/06, 5:47 PM
Mark Daniels said...: John and Pete: I realize that the Simpson book and special aren't coming from the news division. But I think this may be a distinction with no difference. The same Murdoch/Fox tabloidism is at play here, I think. That isn't to say that there aren't some solid folks at Fox; there are. But solid isn't the News Corporation's bread-and-butter, whether on the entertainment or the news sides.

Mark; 11/17/06, 8:18 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: "My guess is that Smilin Jack wondered aloud whether and when some vigilante might execute the justice that O.J. has thus far avoided."

Ann was scared of this?

Peace, Maxine; 11/17/06, 8:48 PM
LoafingOaf said...: That isn't to say that there aren't some solid folks at Fox; there are. But solid isn't the News Corporation's bread-and-butter, whether on the entertainment or the news sides.

Fox broadcasting helped loosen network TV up with some fun shows over the years!

As for Fox News, I'm not huge on any of the cable news channels unless there's breaking news. But this obsession people have with attacking FNC gets a bit silly.

I'm watching Bill Maher interview Dan Rather on HBO right now (because I'm a masochist) and the whole interview is Maher kissing Rather's ass rather profusely, telling him it was outrageous he was let go by CBS, and then they both go on to slamming Fox News, yap yap yap-yap-yap. Fox News isn't the best, but they didn't inject fake documents into a presidential campaign.....

So, I laugh at some of the people who wonder why so many fled to Fox when they are perfectly okay with the extreme Democrat biases of the rest of TV news. Bill Maher just made a complete fool of himself, but I guess that's becoming a weekly occurance for him.

Having served on a jury - too many didn't care, were morons, came with their own agenda, figured out that the whole gig was a huge waste of their time because the jury was just a tool and would be plea bargained into irrelevance before any verdict was given as happens in 50% of cases.
When it actually went to deliberations, the most common observation? "I dunno. Whole thing be complicated."

Your description is what I thought jury duty would be like when I got my notice in the mail. But the two panels I served on were excellent experiences with really good mix of people who took it pretty seriously. There was an Air Force pilot, a really smart lawyer from a top firm, some old timers who were totally on the ball....

I felt good about juries after having served. (Less good about other aspects of the justice system.) My conclusion was that the OJ jury was not anything at all like the norm.; 11/17/06, 11:01 PM
Mortimer Brezny said...: Just by way of comparison, suppose that in the mid 60s, overwhelming numbers of white Americans would have cheered the equally ludicrous exonerations of racial criminals in Missisippi.

But that's not really comparable. Think of why you have to use a trial in the 60s instead of a trial much earlier on in history and you'll see why it isn't comparable. And I would note there's no need or opportunity to cheer if the case purposely doesn't get brought until decades later.; 11/17/06, 11:51 PM
Mortimer Brezny said...: Far wider than the disgust blacks dared make decades later against the "party line" that OJ was either innocent or a vehicle for a little payback to whitey.

Whoever wrote this, I suspect, has no black friends, in part because s/he doesn't treat them as individuals.; 11/17/06, 11:53 PM
Mortimer Brezny said...: Do they still think it was right to cheer at a murder[er] getting off?

Well, there's nothing wrong with rejoicing over equality. Rich guys can pay for slick lawyers to get them off. A black rich guy got the same treatment that white rich guys get. That's equality. It's a reason to cheer. It means the American dream is obtainable by all.

No one who cheered when O.J. got off was cheering because O.J. had killed a white woman and they believed that killing white women is good. That's just a sad distortion.; 11/17/06, 11:58 PM
KCFleming said...: The OJ trial was a Rashomon event; it had everything.

Some saw it as a purely failed criminal trial, some saw it as purely political. Some saw race, others were color-blind. It was about Hollywood, rich defendants, celebrity wannabes, beach bum hangers-on, and Las Vegas. It had screaming fans cheering the escape. It had a jeering gallery that watched balefully. It launched careers and killed them. It was about families destroyed and some forgotten. It was about payback and police racism and pretty lifestyles gone wrong. It was about feminism amidst ancient male punishment for disobedience. It was skewed by Martin Luther King, Rodney King, Atticus Finch, George Wallace, Barney Fife, Bull Connor, KKK lynchings, Watts, Leo Frank, Fatty Arbuckle, and the wages of strange fruit. People were thrilled by the verdict, and others horrified. OJ won and lost. He was free, but everywhere shunned. He plays golf, perhaps alone. He is radioactive, even to supporters. He writes a tell-all (again), but stores refuse to stock it. People mutter when he's in the news.

And now my son's friend wears a t-shirt with a picture of a white Bronco and the sentence "Drink apple juice because OJ will kill you". So the tragedy is now farce, and history is complete.; 11/18/06, 8:08 AM
KCFleming said...: Re: "I don't think it's so simple if you are someone who personally experienced the tragedy..."

Tragedy never becomes farce for those involved, but at a distance. History is quite cruel this way.; 11/18/06, 8:31 AM