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What can we talk about here? Maybe: Where were you when the verdict was announced? I was on campus, in a room full of students. Everyone focused on one little TV, and when the verdict came in, many black students leapt out of their chairs and cheered. The rest of the crowd sat in stunned silence. I left the building, and as I was walking down the sidewalk on Bascom Hill, a young man on a bicycle coasted by, chanting "Not guilty! Not guilty! Not guilty!" It was a solo celebration. Or did he fancy himself the town crier?
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121 comments:
"Then he murdered his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman."
FTFY
Yay!
Really the beginning of the lawlessness and decline in of the Rule of Law in America.
My favorite OJ story is that when OJ's murder of his wife was still in the news, USC played Notre Dame at South Bend. A Notre Dame student made a banner, "Our Heisman Trophy winners don't murder their wives."
He moved to FL and the Goldman family never collected a dime. He put all of his money into a home and homes are exempt from creditors' claims. That's why so many crooks and deadbeats live in FL.
Lucifer: "Step right this way, Mr. Simpson; we've been saving this special spot for you."
Meh.
The glove known round the world...
That day did more to confirm that American jurisprudence and American juries were a clown show to other nation's than any other. In many ways, it's been downhill since then.
I was dialed into the trial and sick and horrified at the unjust outcome.
Bye a-hole. good riddance.
I hope the pain was sharp and piercing.
I was in a conference room on the 45th story of a downtown office building. I had a pretty good view of the car procession that hauled the "innocent" O. J. Simpson away from the Criminal Courts building.
It's a shame that the Juice was ever let loose. But that's just my opinion.
"I was on campus, in a room full of students."
I was, too, except one of the students. I'll always remember a professor walking away from the TV, giving the full, arms-extended shrug. "What are you gonna do?"
Cancer fits him like a glove.
I worked in a call center--a giant one-room building with hundreds of people in hundreds of cubicles with hundreds of phones going all the time taking calls from around the country.
Then, about 10 minutes before the verdict was due to come out, phones started going quiet. People started standing up and looking around, waiting. By about 5 minutes before the verdict, not a single phone rang, not one person was on a call.
The reaction to the verdict was mostly subdued, no cheering or yelling or complaining. I hardly remember that part. Just the quiet in a huge crowded room that was never quiet. Then the phones started ringing again.
I didn't care one way or another. The Nation was unaffected. Our justice system is designed that the guilty sometimes go free. Either because the govt failed to prove the facts, or the Jury NEVER trusted the facts presented by the govt. The over the top attentions was never warranted.
Rush Limbaugh was hoping that the verdict would prove that black people can be Americans.
I was totally shocked. I had followed the trial in my office - listening to the radio. I laughed at Cochrane's absurd "If it fits you must aquit" closing speech. WHen they said the jury had come back after only a short deliberation, I thought "of course, its an open and shut case".
After the not guilty verdict, I immediately thought of the Jewish Judge from SoCal that Larry King had on his show. This guy stated that OJ would never be found guilty. The black jurors would NEVER vote to convict him. I dismissed him as kook, but he was right.
Talking to people about the case would later mirror MY experience in the Jury Room. Many people cannot weigh and evaluate evidence. Or understand probabilities. Or understand "beyond a reaonable doubt".
In case, of OJ to have a reasonable doubt you had to believe a string of coincidences that never happen in real life. Namely, OJ had no alibi for the time of murder, the Limo driver saw his Jeep parked on the side road and a figure like OJ enter the house and answer the door. That he cut himself at the same time as the killer, that the killer had the same expensive shoes and gloves, had hair like OJs, had the same shoe size, had the blood type, and knew NIcole would be alone and that her roommate and maid wouldnt be there. And then there's Goldman's blood on OJ's socks and the gloves found on the estate.
Never was there more evidence to find a man guilty. The only defense was that the LAPD decided to plant evidence to convict OJ for absolutely no reason.
Anyway, things simpler now. The SJW jurors and DA's just let killers off or give them a light sentence if they don't like the victim or like the Murderer. And say its to fight racism. No need to talk about guilt or evidence.
A dozen or so years ago I was riding Madison Metro, and overheard a conversation between three teenage boys and one man in his 30's, all black. The subject of OJ came up, and the "old man" corrected the youngsters: "We all know he did it."
I was totally shocked. I had followed the trial in my office - listening to the radio. I laughed at Cochrane's absurd "If it fits you must aquit" closing speech. WHen they said the jury had come back after only a short deliberation, I thought "of course, its an open and shut case".
After the not guilty verdict, I immediately thought of the Jewish Judge from SoCal that Larry King had on his show. This guy stated that OJ would never be found guilty. The black jurors would NEVER vote to convict him. I dismissed him as kook, but he was right.
Talking to people about the case would later mirror MY experience in the Jury Room. Many people cannot weigh and evaluate evidence. Or understand probabilities. Or understand "beyond a reaonable doubt". In case, of OJ to have a reasonable doubt you had to believe a string of coincidences that never happen in real life. Namely, OJ had no alibi for the time of murder, the Limo driver saw his Jeep parked on the side road and a figure like OJ enter the house and answer the door. That he cut himself at the same time as the killer, that the killer had the same expensive shoes and gloves, had hair like OJs, had the same shoe size, had the blood type, and knew NIcole would be alone and that her roommate and maid wouldnt be there. And then there's Goldman's blood on OJ's socks and the gloves found on the estate.
Never was there more evidence to find a man guilty. The only defense was that the LAPD decided to plant evidence to convict OJ for absolutely no reason.
Anyway, things simpler now. The SJW jurors and DA's just let killers off or give them a light sentence if they don't like the victim or like the Murderer. And say its to fight racism. No need to talk about guilt or evidence.
'Ito' was a go-to for Crossword Puzzle-makers for a good long time. Maybe that'll make a comeback.
Good riddance to the guy who got away with double murder and bragged about it.
In my classroom everyone cheered, except the teacher who seemed indifferent.
My older cousin saw the Naked Gun 33/3, which oj is in, at a dollar theater — so this would be a long time after the film’s premiere and long enough so that the murders were in the news. He remembered that everyone in the theater cheered when he came out on screen.
many black students leapt out of their chairs and cheered
I've never forgotten the clip played at the time of black Howard University Law Students doing exactly that.
I thought, "These are future officers of the court, maybe judges with the fate of white Americans in their hands."
Thirty years later, those racialized students hold positions of influence.
I have no recollection where I was. It really didn’t matter to me.
OJ’s acquittal was Black Privilege.
Black Privilege blames the police for the reason blacks kill.
I saw essentially the same reaction as you did. I was having lunch in an upscale restaurant in a suburb near NYC. When the verdict was announced all the blacks cheered and all the others sat silent. An obvious miscarriage of justice.
For someone who enjoyed living in the white world and receiving the adulation of whites, he sure did unintentionally(?) immense damage to race relations--damage that has gotten more blacks killed the last 30 years.
I don't recall where I was. Probably at work on campus.
Dana Carvey had the best take on the 'frame-up.'
Rodney King's arrest video was followed by the Mostly Peaceful Destruction of Los Angeles and Koreatown, and then by the OJ Simpson payback verdict.
If OJ had not admitted his guilt to pastor Rosey Grier, and if he was not photographed wearing the rare bloody footprint Bruno Magli shoes he said were "ugly," there may have been a valid reason to acquit. Still, Judge Ito and the LA Public Servants were horrible at their jobs. They were roughly equal in quality to the average government employee today.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-10-mn-7302-story.html
https://people.com/crime/oj-simpsons-reaction-to-photo-of-bruno-magli-shoes-in-deposition-tapes/
If O.J. didn’t kill those two, they’re still alive.
The juice is loose
The juice is loose
Are we still looking for the real killer?
I was on a construction site for a new hotel, sitting in the front seat of a pickup having my lunch when it came on the radio. I was disappointed but not particularly surprised. Johnny Cochrane was brilliant in his closing. "If it doesn't fit you must acquit."
And the prosecution team was sluggish, slow and tedious. They lost the jury with the DNA. Overcomplicated things and bored them to death.
I never watched even a minute of the trial. Maybe I’m the only person in America that can say that.
I remember it well.
Sitting in a room at corporate headquarters, meeting with two other attorneys in our legal department - secretary walked in and gave us the news. The other two guys were fairly liberal/moderate but were shocked and disgusted as well.
I remember it well. I was handling calendar in a 13th floor courtroom for the DA's office in that courthouse. The judge called a recess and attorneys were invited into chambers where a television played the verdict live. As soon as it was read, a roar blasted from the street below. Thousands of people had flooded and completely blocked Temple St. The sound was as deafening as if OJ had slashed through the Bruin defense on the way to the go-ahead touchdown.
I attribute the verdict to a naive Judge Ito who barred any prospective juror who had heard about the murder. This left a jury pool of ignoramuses and liars. The one-year trial estimate also meant that only low-level government employees would serve because they could keep getting their paychecks and not be missed at work.
I think if you ask most people today, they admit he was guilty. The celebration back then was about sticking it to the man.
Do school use case for teaching ? what to learn from it?
Blogger RideSpaceMountain said...
The glove known round the world...
That day did more to confirm that American jurisprudence and American juries were a clown show to other nation's than any other. In many ways, it's been downhill since then.
4/11/24, 10:22 AM
That was the day I came to realize how different black people's view of the world is from mine. I had thought we all saw things pretty much the same. Killing is wrong not matter who's doing it. The cops are neutral in enforcing the law etc. How wrong I was. The long history of the LAPD abusing black people wasn't something I was aware of in 1992. I've only come to know the truth in the last few years. Reading Walter Mosely's novels about life in east LA and Watts in the 1960 was an eye opener. Funny thing is, some of the locations in his novels are just a few blocks from where my grandmother lived - Near Central and E. 85th Street. I visited here there in the 60s and 70s and all of her neighbors were black but I had no idea how different their lives were from mine. Being a tiny elderly white lady, the neighbors looked out for her and treated me kindly. I never saw the seething anger that was just below the surface.
During the trial, I was on a job in LA staying on Sunset. One evening, went up to the rooftop hot pool. Only one person was there: Barry Scheck. Said Hey and nothing else.
He probably did do it. But the jury returned the correct verdict. The incompetent prosecution failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Cancer won its battle with OJ Simpson.
Is that one character in 12 Angry Men about you, RCOCEAN II? You know the one I'm talking about.
Let's not forget Norm MacDonald was canned from SNL because he continually mocked OJ after the murders. OJ had (white) friends in high places at SNL.
The white Bronco just went up in value.
Dershowitz talked about the Simpson trial on his live stream last night.
I’m of the opinion that Simpson was guilty as hell, but I learned something new from Dersh. The trial went south for the prosecution when the defense proved that a cop had tampered with evidence, pouring OJ’s blood sample from a test tube onto one of Simpson’s socks. This was proven in court because the test tube imparts a tiny, but detectable, chemical trace to anything contained within it. That’s what really blew up the prosecution’s case, according to Dersh, not the “If it fits...” speech.
All the lawyers --on both sides-- did pretty well out of that case.
I was in Germany when the verdict came down. When it was announced that a verdict had come back, my German colleagues (I was the only American there) all were certain he would be convicted. I was the only person out of the group who thought he would probably be found not guilty.
I was visiting my maternal grandparents in Newburgh, Indiana, (a few miles from my hometown of Evansville, which we had left many years earlier).
I think it certain that Simpson committed the murders, and the predominantly black jury acquitted him because they wanted to believe him innocent and they wanted to perceive the evidence against him as a faked, part of malicious (and racist) plot to destroy a prominent and wealthy black man, a "positive" role model for the black community.
Describing it so many years later highlights how similar is the belief in Simpson's innocence by the black jurors and their certainty he was being railroaded by the racist power structure to the deeply held conviction held today by Trump's ardent supporters that he really won the 2020 election and that every civil and criminal case that has been or will be lodged against him is a fabricated, malicious persecution by evil enemies intended to destroy a "good (or great) man" who is trying to help everyday citizens.
I was at a Rotary lunch meeting in a restaurant filled with all white people. When the verdict came on the tv, all conversation stopped, and we all watched. When the verdict was announced, there was shocked silence and disbelief.
I was in a race/ethnicity class when the verdict was announced. A classmate was listening to a radio (w/head phones) and announced it.
My instructor (a hispanic lady) was shocked.
My first impression was that police needed to establish trust in the way which evidence was gathered.
"I never watched even a minute of the trial. Maybe I’m the only person in America that can say that"
Nope. There's at least you and me. I was busy breeding in the 90s.
Does it really matter that I only heard of this tangentially and after the fact? What have I lost by not being part of the OJ swirl?
It's interesting; we have a full year or so of such verdicts -- and verdict reactions -- coming up.
I recall being a bit surpised at the by the divided public reaction to the OJ criminal verdict (which Althouse accurately characterized). There won't be any surprise about the divided public reactions to Trump verdicts. The OJ verdict might seem like the good old days of domestic tranquility.
Like a number of other commenters, I recall the verdict but no idea where I was. Probably at work, in Iowa, so I don't recall any celebrations.
I don't recall being shocked at the verdict (yeah, could be 20/20 hindsight). But between the Glove, the LAPD and prosecution missteps, and what I suspected the racial environment in LA was like following the 1992 Rodney King riots it seemed that jury nullification was more likely than not. I honestly think I would have been more shocked if they had found OJ guilty.
Who knew- cancer ain't all bad!
EDTA is in laundry detergent so of course it would be picked up by blood on socks.
The gloves never fit. You small men might not realize it, but they don't make gloves big enough for those of us who can palm a basketball. Part of the reason the murders were so brutal was OJ still being pissed that Nicole made him wear those tight ass gloves.
Mark Furmin was a great cop.
Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark were full of hubris.
After Rodney King, this verdict was payback.
Saw online:
“If I Did It” - by Cancer.
I was in my car listening on the radio when the verdict was read. My jaw just about hit the floor. But I wasn’t anywhere to observe other people’s reactions. Later of course I saw the videos of white people reacting in shock, and black people celebrating. Made me furious.
I can’t remember the name of it, but later I watched a documentary about the actual trial. It went through the details methodically, and analyzed the prosecution and defense strategies. After watching that, I could see why jurors would acquit, even apart from the racial aspects. Clark and Darden were horrible at their jobs, and in way over their heads. I actually came away with more respect for the defense than I anticipated.
I hate that OJ got away with it. But I’m glad I live in a country where your innocence is presumed, and it’s up to the state to prove your guilt. An imperfect but necessary system.
Saw online:
“If I Did It” - by Cancer.
I was in my car listening on the radio when the verdict was read. My jaw just about hit the floor. But I wasn’t anywhere to observe other people’s reactions. Later of course I saw the videos of white people reacting in shock, and black people celebrating. Made me furious.
I can’t remember the name of it, but later I watched a documentary about the actual trial. It went through the details methodically, and analyzed the prosecution and defense strategies. After watching that, I could see why jurors would acquit, even apart from the racial aspects. Clark and Darden were horrible at their jobs, and in way over their heads. I actually came away with more respect for the defense than I anticipated.
I hate that OJ got away with it. But I’m glad I live in a country where your innocence is presumed, and it’s up to the state to prove your guilt. An imperfect but necessary system.
The OJ jury would have convicted Trump of these murders in less than 60 seconds.
I watched the low-speed chase, but I didn’t watch any of the trial. I remember my mom said she would have acquitted. I can’t remember why - knowing her, she probably just took a dislike to one of the prosecutors. I do remember the verdict. People in my office walked across the street to a restaurant that had both sit down and carry out. But they had a TV. Bunch of people standing around looking up.
cf said...
Meh.
x2
Physical evidence aside, the extreme ferocity of the murders convinced me it was a crime motivated by an anger that only OJ possessed.
I was nearing the end of my tenure at the Brooklyn DA's office while the trial was going on. Interestingly, I was trying a rape case involving DNA evidence at the same time, and I remember, in my summation, saying something like "this isn't like that other case we've all been hearing about, where stuff was left out in the sun, on lawns, chain of custody problems..."
Another tidbit that comes to mind, a data point about how that case enveloped the culture:
I remember an episode of Roseanne where some discussion is going on in the living room of the Conners' home, and the Johnny Galecki character walks in, glances at the TV and says "oh, sidebar."
I was driving.
Black folk take care of their own.
Robert Cook notes the similarity of OJ's trial with Trump's. The similarity is that in both cases the Establishment throws a show trial and tampers with the evidence to get the defendant.
I remember this from the trial:
“Detective Phillip Vannatter left the police station with a vial of O.J.'s blood in his back pocket, then he drove to the Bundy house and walked around the crime scene still holding the blood sample, until he finally handed it off to a criminalist for testing.”
Especially in a high profile crime, but really any crime, the detectives shouldn’t be so cavalier with the evidence.
Without Mark Fuhrman connecting O.J. to the crime, O.J. maybe would not even have been indicted.
“An important bloody fingerprint located on the gateway at Nicole Brown’s house was not properly collected and entered into the chain of custody when it was first located. Although it was documented in his notes by Detective Mark Fuhrman, one of the first to arrive on the scene, no further action was taken to secure it.
The detectives who took over Fuhrman’s shift apparently were never aware of the print and eventually, it was lost or destroyed without ever being collected. Other items of evidence were also never logged or entered into the chain of custody, which gave the impression that sloppy forensic collection had been carried out at the scene.
The prosecution had expert witnesses who testified that the evidence was often mishandled. Photos were taken of critical evidence without scales in them to aid in measurement taking. Items were photographed without being labeled and logged, making it difficult, if not impossible, to link the photos to any specific area of the scene. Separate pieces of evidence were bagged together instead of separately, causing cross-contamination. Wet items were also packaged before allowing them to dry, causing critical changes in evidence. Police even used a blanket that came from inside the house to cover Nicole Brown’s body, contaminating the body and anything surrounding it. Beyond poor evidence collection techniques, sloppy maneuvering at the scene caused more bloody shoe prints to be left behind by LAPD than by the perpetrator.”
I also remember O.J.’s first lawyer Robert Kardashian giving O.J. bad advice.
Yes, O.J. was probably guilty, but what a lot of errors.
Is that one character in 12 Angry Men about you, RCOCEAN II? You know the one I'm talking about.
Actually, I'm closest to the EG Marshall character. However, even though I like the movie the more times I see it, the more I'm convinced that Lee J. Cobb was actually right, and Henry Fonda was the villian - not the hero.
You had two people swear under oath that the kid knifed his father. The Kid bought a knife that was just like the murder weapon, and "lost it" the same day he had it. He had NO alibi for the time of the klling. He couldn't remember the movies he saw nor did anyone see him at the movies. The kid had a track record of violence and fights with his equally violent father.
The kid was either guilty or the unluckiest guy on the Planet. No innocent person has that kind of cummulative evidence against them. And some of stuff the jurors come up with is absurd. I mean, she had "marks on her nose" and that means she was near-sighted and lied under oath? Give me a Break!
As I wrote above, we've moved on and now the leftwing juries and DA don't even pretend to care about justice or guilt. Some guy got let free in SC after trying to carjack someone. He murdered some ol'boomer because he was afraid the boomer would shoot him. Result? Not Guilty.
Another guy in Chicago was let off, after stabbing someone on the ground after knocking him down. Reason? It was "Mutual combat".
3 Guys beat someone to death in Ohio because he'd shot them with a water pistol. Result: A couple years in Jail.
The list goes on and on. But hey, its Biden's America. And it doesn't affect me, so who cares?
For those who were too young, Dave Chappelle reenacts the jury selection:
DAVE CHAPPELLE: O.J SIMPSON TRIAL
The Real Andrew said...I hate that OJ got away with it. But I’m glad I live in a country where your innocence is presumed, and it’s up to the state to prove your guilt. An imperfect but necessary system.
I feel the same way. I always believed he was guilty, but I also believed the jury made the right decision. The prosecution screwed the pooch and failed to prove their case. The judge was a clown, but the fact remains the glove didn't fit.
"But I’m glad I live in a country where your innocence is presumed, and it’s up to the state to prove your guilt."
Not anymore.
“After the not guilty verdict, I immediately thought of the Jewish Judge from SoCal that Larry King had on his show. This guy stated that OJ would never be found guilty. The black jurors would NEVER vote to convict him. I dismissed him as kook, but he was right.
“Talking to people about the case would later mirror MY experience in the Jury Room. Many people cannot weigh and evaluate evidence. Or understand probabilities. Or understand "beyond a reaonable doubt".”
“In case, of OJ to have a reasonable doubt you had to believe a string of coincidences that never happen in real life. Namely, OJ had no alibi for the time of murder, the Limo driver saw his Jeep parked on the side road and a figure like OJ enter the house and answer the door. That he cut himself at the same time as the killer, that the killer had the same expensive shoes and gloves, had hair like OJs, had the same shoe size, had the blood type, and knew NIcole would be alone and that her roommate and maid wouldnt be there. And then there's Goldman's blood on OJ's socks and the gloves found on the estate.”
“Never was there more evidence to find a man guilty. The only defense was that the LAPD decided to plant evidence to convict OJ for absolutely no reason.”
I think that is a gross overstatement. The entirety of the evidence is circumstantial.
I was flying somewhere, and the guy next to me said that he was a good friend of the LA DA at the time. His story was that the case was lost when a group of Black clergy met with the DA, and essentially told him that if the case was heard in ultra white Brentwood, and Simpson was convicted by a White jury, LA would burn. So, the case was moved where they could get blacks on the jury. The choices for prosecutors was a Hail Mary - 2nd stringers picked for their gender and race. The DA had much more experienced prosecutors for capital cases - but they were all white males.
Sound like exaggeration? My boss at the time was a black female attorney. Most whites at the time were watching talking heads describe the days’ actions in courts. A lot of blacks were watching the case gavel to gavel every day. She, and many others, were videotaping the case while at work, and watching it at home that night.
One thing that was pivotal was Mark Furhman going over the wall into OJ’s yard, on what to many looked like very weak pretext. In an abundance of caution, the judge should have banned everything they found there as forbidden fruits of the poisonous tree. He didn’t. That plus badly labeled blood and questionably done lab tests killed the case for some of the jurors.
First episode of the TV show The Closer, set in LA a decade or so later, had a woman brought in from outside as a Deputy Commissioner to run a Priority Murder squad, because they were losing too many high profile cases. She arrived at the scene of a murder, and eventually kicked all the cops out of the garage because they didn’t have a warrant, and the garage was detached from the house, which was the crime scene. They could easily have just staked it out, and waited for a warrant, but hadn’t. Her statement was that since OJ, LAPD brass was requiring that all the i’s be dotted and t’s crossed in high profile cases. And that was exactly what Furhman and the other 3 detectives should have done that day - staked out the house and gotten a warrant. They didn’t. Furhman did leave the LAPD shortly thereafter, and ended up in N ID, then skinhead capital of the country.
The prosecution didn't prove guilt beyond any conceivable doubt. That's the bar in some cases, and the prosecution failed to meet it.....I suppose down South and at other times and other places there have been jurors who voted with their prejudices rather than their reason, but that doesn't make it right....I think the Democrats learned a useful lesson from the OJ trial. You don't need all that much evidence. You just need the right jury. It's better for Trump to be convicted of ten fabricated crimes rather than he get away with one.
Ilearned two things.
With enough money you can buy your way out of anything.
Johnny Cochran was a damn good lawyer.
Let's get to the real issue:
How is the NFL going to honor this Hall of Fame player, who was acquitted of this heinous crime?
Moments of silence?
Commemorative Jerseys?
His number on helmets?
To not honor him is to prove the league is run by racist white dudes.
Wince said...
"Physical evidence aside, the extreme ferocity of the murders convinced me it was a crime motivated by an anger that only OJ possessed."
Anger and cocain.
Did OJ win or did Marcia Clark lose?
Who cares? Fuck OJ, anyway. Another sport legend died today. Akebono, Sumo Yokozuna (Grand Champion). A Japanese citizen as an adult, he was the first non-Japanese born athlete to win Sumo's top rank.
Akebono was born in Hawaii, and known there as Chad Rowan. He was recruited to Sumo by another Hawaiian, "Jesse", later known as Takamiyama, one of the winningest and longest-competing memembers of Sumo's top division.
Akebono also had the honor of leading 37 Sumo wrestlers in a ceremony on a Sumo ring stage at the opening of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Each of those giant athletes then took the hand of a small child and led the parade of competitors from all nations.
I feel a personal connection to Akebono, though I never met him. When I arrived in Japan for a wonderful four-year life chapter, I swore there were two things I would NOT do: Eat raw fish or watch nearly naked fat men wrestle! No way. No how.
Within weeks, I was addicted to both. That was a bit before Akebono arrived on the scene but one of my closest friends was Don Kalina, a Hawaii native and Giudance Counselor at Yokota High School. No finer drinking companion and story-teller ever existed.
Kalina, a few years later, became Akebono's father-in-law. The great stories kept coming and the two men apparently enjoyed each other's company greatly. By all accounts, Akebono liked escaping the limelight associated being seen in public in Tokyo, and often got away to have a few(?) beers with his fellow Hawaiian and Don's pals at Yokota. The surviving member our group, still in Japan, describes Akebono as a simple, gentle man who was subject to being exploited by others who used his celebrity to benefit only themselves.
God speed, Big Guy...
Footnote: Akebono tipped the scales north 500 lbs. His wife, Christina, was, maybe 100 (after eating all the Thanksgiving leftovers). Three kids. Don's wife (Japanese) was our family's Agent - my son and daughter were both active in modeling and I did a movie or two.
I questioned the case from the first. My Crim Law prof was an adjunct who was a top criminal defense attorney in the city, and had a number of capital cases under his belt by then. Used to see him a lot as a talking head about any big cases in town. His view was that murders were mostly either crimes of passion, or premeditated. The former very often had blood everywhere, while the latter very often had almost no blood - almost surgical. And that is one of the problems with using a knife for a premeditated murder - the blood goes everywhere. OJ would have had to shower and change, gotten rid of his bloody clothes (and knife), and still make his flight to Chicago. Maybe also change before driving home, then after showering. The timing required suggested a lot of premeditation, but the use of a knife, and all the blood, suggested a crime or passion (etc).
Question for other lawyers. Couldn't the Brown and Goldman families file a claim against OJ's estate to collect their judgments? His exempt asset (his residence) will now be sold and turned into cash which is NOT exempt.
I recall the verdict but not where I was. I have no recollection of the moment, other than that I know I was not in any public mixed-race setting. I do recall feeling a bit surprised by the deep societal divisions exposed by the differing reactions to the verdict. (Mostly, the cheering among Blacks surprised me; White audiences didn't seem to react as noticeably.)
Now, we appear to be heading for a year of criminal trial verdicts that I expect will be more divisive than the OJ criminal trial. I expect that we all may look back to the OJ criminal trial verdict as the good old days of a more civil society.
'Who cares? Fuck OJ, anyway. Another sport legend died today. Akebono, Sumo Yokozuna (Grand Champion). A Japanese citizen as an adult, he was the first non-Japanese born athlete to win Sumo's top rank.'
Sumo was one of our favorite things to watch (live and on TV) when living in Tokyo in 2014-15.
Unfortunately, he had long retired by then.
I also remember when the verdict was read thousands of white people went on a three-day rampage in Van Nuys and Beverly Hills looting stores and burning buildings.
I watched most of the trial on CourtTV.
Had I been on the jury, I would have voted to acquit. Not 100% sure of his innocence but I did have reasonable doubt.
Never thought he seemed like a particularly admirable person, even before the trial. Just another rich athlete.
RIP
John Henry
"If it does not fit, you must acquit" was Johnie Cochran's rhyming statement in the Simpson trial, and indeed the bloodstained glove did not fit OJ's hand which was first covered by a sanitary glove - so the jury acquitted him in the double murder trial of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
The argument is now referred to as the Chewbacca defense first used in the "Chef Aid" episode of South Park in 1998.
OJ would have had to shower and change, gotten rid of his bloody clothes (and knife), and still make his flight to Chicago. Maybe also change before driving home, then after showering. The timing required suggested a lot of premeditation, but the use of a knife, and all the blood, suggested a crime or passion (etc).
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almost like reading the field and adjusting run with ball
Apparently very few blacks thought OJ was guilty right after the sentence, but twenty years later it was more like 50-50. Marcia Clark as prosecutor (later a best-selling author of thrillers) was interesting: did she think she failed to understand a black jury, including black women? No, she had won cases with such juries, she was in her element. What was different this time? Perhaps black women thought/felt? OJ made it in the white world as few blacks did--possibly Cosby who is never to be spoken of, briefly Flip Wilson (who retired very young). Jurors didn't want this black man of all black men to be convicted. If they think the system is rigged/racist, they may think: at least this one black man should get the kind of benefit of the doubt that (we believe) white men get all the time.
I guess Norm MacDonald can finally rest in peace.
“Question for other lawyers. Couldn't the Brown and Goldman families file a claim against OJ's estate to collect their judgments? His exempt asset (his residence) will now be sold and turned into cash which is NOT exempt”
Judgements don’t last forever. My memory is that they lasted 10 years in CO, 25 years ago, but you could get them renewed. Don’t know if you can do it indefinitely. Something like that. I would expect that their lawyers went through the work to keep the judgement alive, if they could. I would have. I had one for maybe $50k. The debtor lived too large to ever have that much. Renewed it once, hoping he would inherit it, but let it lapse later. The amount involved with OJ would probably make keeping the judgement active, as long as possible, good business.
Describing it so many years later highlights how similar is the belief in Simpson's innocence by the black jurors and their certainty he was being railroaded by the racist power structure to the deeply held conviction held today by Trump's ardent supporters that he really won the 2020 election and that every civil and criminal case that has been or will be lodged against him is a fabricated, malicious persecution by evil enemies intended to destroy a "good (or great) man" who is trying to help everyday citizens.
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what happens if black and hispanic view Trump as OJ - accused of defeating FJB in 2020
In a really odd coincidence, the ‘real killer’ also died of cancer today.
@Mason G,
Well, yeah. Point taken. I’m not naive. But it could still be worse.
I heard about the verdict at work. I wasn’t surprised he was acquitted. The prosecution was outgunned big time.
I hope Simpson’s heirs donate his brain so it can be tested for CTE. A diagnosis would not excuse what he almost certainly did, but it would provide more information that would be useful.
I never watched even a minute of the trial. Maybe I’m the only person in America that can say that.
Nope.
Little Nicky Time
Another sport legend died today. Akebono, Sumo Yokozuna.
Aw, man. That sucks. His matches with Takanohana were legendary.
Before his murder spree didn’t he train in knife fighting techniques for a movie about frogmen he was suppose to star in?
OJ Simpson can now rest, knowing that his wife's killer is dead.
'I hope Simpson’s heirs donate his brain so it can be tested for CTE. A diagnosis would not excuse what he almost certainly did, but it would provide more information that would be useful.'
Not sure that's a thing anymore.
Besides, he was famous because he was tackled less than almost any other running back...
Yeah, the evidence was cicumstancial (Sic) LOL. Yeah, they didnt get it on video tape.
I mean anyone could have done it. Why pick on OJ, other than his blood being at the scene of the murder, Goldman and Nicole's blood being in OJ's Bronco and on gloves and socks found at this house.
I mean that could mean anything. LOL.
And given the way Nicole (almost decapitated) and Goldman (a strong young guy) were killed it means the killer was a relatively big strong guy too. Oh and had 12 size shoe, like OJ. Every Goddamn piece of evidence pointed to OJ, but yeah it could have been the fairy fucking Godmother.
In real life if you're innocent, you may have one piece of evidence that shows you guilty, maybe two, but when all pieces point to you - you're guilty. Because bad luck only gets you so far. One thing that struck me was that OJ was this gregarious, likable guy with a ton of friends, girlfriends, aquatiences and business partners. He had a live-in maid, a couple relatives, and kato Kalin living on the estate.
He wasn't a loner or a "reader". When he wasn't talking to somebody in person or on the phone, he going to a meeting. Literally, the only time he was alone and not with someone was when the murder happened. How unlucky for poor Innocent OJ. And he cut his hand (which he told conflicting stories about) at almost exactly the same hour as the murder. Unlucky, no?
I'm amazed that Clark didn't make more of the cut hand. His hand was OK when he went to dinner with Kalin, but when the limo driver got him to answer the door, he was bleeding all over the place. He first told the police he cut it at the Hotel when he was told of the murder, then changed his story to "I was foolin' around with the car radio, fixing it". But it wasn't a nick, it was a cut. And when you get to be an adult you don't bleed all over the place. And forget how you got it.
And finally, they found one glove at the crime scene with OJ's blood, and the 2nd at the estate with Everone's blood. How can explain that? Either the police planted it (how did they get Goldman's blood?) or it was OJ. There is no other explaination.
But anyway. Glad he's dead. Knowing California, even if convicted he would have been freed in 2000s. Probably would've served 10-15 years.
Yeah, the evidence was cicumstancial (Sic) LOL. Yeah, they didnt get it on video tape.
I mean anyone could have done it. Why pick on OJ, other than his blood being at the scene of the murder, Goldman and Nicole's blood being in OJ's Bronco and on gloves and socks found at this house.
I mean that could mean anything. LOL.
And given the way Nicole (almost decapitated) and Goldman (a strong young guy) were killed it means the killer was a relatively big strong guy too. Oh and had 12 size shoe, like OJ. Every Goddamn piece of evidence pointed to OJ, but yeah it could have been the fairy fucking Godmother.
In real life if you're innocent, you may have one piece of evidence that shows you guilty, maybe two, but when all pieces point to you - you're guilty. Because bad luck only gets you so far. One thing that struck me was that OJ was this gregarious, likable guy with a ton of friends, girlfriends, aquatiences and business partners. He had a live-in maid, a couple relatives, and kato Kalin living on the estate.
He wasn't a loner or a "reader". When he wasn't talking to somebody in person or on the phone, he going to a meeting. Literally, the only time he was alone and not with someone was when the murder happened. How unlucky for poor Innocent OJ. And he cut his hand (which he told conflicting stories about) at almost exactly the same hour as the murder. Unlucky, no?
I'm amazed that Clark didn't make more of the cut hand. His hand was OK when he went to dinner with Kalin, but when the limo driver got him to answer the door, he was bleeding all over the place. He first told the police he cut it at the Hotel when he was told of the murder, then changed his story to "I was foolin' around with the car radio, fixing it". But it wasn't a nick, it was a cut. And when you get to be an adult you don't bleed all over the place. And forget how you got it.
And finally, they found one glove at the crime scene with OJ's blood, and the 2nd at the estate with Everone's blood. How can explain that? Either the police planted it (how did they get Goldman's blood?) or it was OJ. There is no other explaination.
But anyway. Glad he's dead. Knowing California, even if convicted he would have been freed in 2000s. Probably would've served 10-15 years.
Mr. Cochran: And when you enter a not guilty plea, since the beginning of the time of this country, since the time of the Magna Carta, which sets the forces in motion and you have a trial.
This is what this is about. That is why we love what we do, an opportunity to come before people from the community, and the consciences of the community. You are the conscience of the community.
You set the standards. You tell us what is right and wrong. You set the standards. You use your common sense to do that.
Who then polices the Police? You, the jury, police the Police. You police them by your verdict. You are the ones to send the message. Nobody else is going to do it in this society. They don't have the courage. Nobody has the courage. They have a bunch of people running around with no courage to do what is right, except individual citizens. You, the jury, are the ones in war, you are the ones who are on the front line.
These people set policies, these people talk all this stuff, you implement it. You are the people. You are what makes America great, and don't you forget it.
Ms. Clark: I have never had a defense attorney make an argument like Mr. Cochran made, nor have I ever seen a defense attorney get up and ask for jury nullification in this way.
Judge Ito: It was very artfully phrased.
Cochrane was correct about the power of the jury, but because of the double jeopardy effect of not-guilty criminal verdicts, courts do not permit attorneys to ask for deliberate nullification outside the law. Ito was asleep at the switch.
OJ was lucky in that his victims families never killed him.
If that was my son or daughter he killed, OJ wouldn’t have made it to trial.
gadfly said...
"If it does not fit, you must acquit" was Johnie Cochran's rhyming statement in the Simpson trial, and indeed the bloodstained glove did not fit OJ's hand which was first covered by a sanitary glove - so the jury acquitted him in the double murder trial of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
The argument is now referred to as the Chewbacca defense first used in the "Chef Aid" episode of South Park in 1998.
4/11/24, 1:24 PM
When a leather glove gets wet it shrinks. He tried on a shrunken glove with a rubber glove under it. There is NO WAY it would fit. He should have tried on a pair of the same size that never got wet with blood from his murders.
In keeping with "modern" democratical/LLR-democratical practices, where will the lefties/LLR-lefties put the statue for this "austere athletic "cleric"'?
Capricorn One was pretty good, though Simpson doesn't have much to do in the film. He was much better in the Naked Gun films.
Dave Begley said...
Question for other lawyers. Couldn't the Brown and Goldman families file a claim against OJ's estate to collect their judgments? His exempt asset (his residence) will now be sold and turned into cash which is NOT exempt.
You are the lawyer here, but I know that estate administrators collect lists of assets and liabilities to present to a local judge to resolve claims and distribute assets. The judge works from assets available to collectors but no exempt assets are made available to these debtors. But unless OJ had declared bankruptcy, his house would not likely be exempted upon death.
The Brown and Goldman families were awarded $33.5 million by the civil court but as far as anyone knows, OJ's Heisman Trophy brought $230K plus another $880K from the advance on OJ's manuscript "If I Did It."
'He was much better in the Naked Gun films.'
He was also great in 'To Kill a Mockingbird and then a Waiter and then your Wife.'
The LA Times made quite the typo in their Simpson obituary. TDS is real!
https://dailycaller.com/2024/04/11/los-angeles-la-times-typo-oj-simpson-obituary-donald-trump/
"The former very often had blood everywhere, while the latter very often had almost no blood - almost surgical. And that is one of the problems with using a knife for a premeditated murder - the blood goes everywhere."
If Simpson was the killer, and I believe he was, then this was completely premeditated- he intended to use his trip as his alibi well ahead of time. Where I think it went pear-shaped was that Goldman wasn't expected to be there, but who will ever know now, unless Simpson wrote a confession before he died.
Jersey Fled,
I never watched even a minute of the trial. Maybe I’m the only person in America that can say that.
Nope. You already have another upthread, and then there's me. Unless you count excerpts on the nightly news, which were difficult to avoid altogether. But gavel-to-gavel coverage? Nyet.
"And some of stuff the jurors come up with is absurd. I mean, she had 'marks on her nose' and that means she was near-sighted and lied under oath? Give me a Break!"
It means what is stated in the movie. Those impressions on either side of her nose indicated she wore glasses. (I believe it was established she needed the glasses to see long distances, but I haven't seen it in a few years.) In short, she couldn't have recognized the identify of the killer if she was not wearing her glasses. It doesn't mean she "lied," per se, in that she may have been convinced by the police that he was the guilty party (or she might have convinced herself he was the person she saw, knowing that he was the suspect), so she was just offering the testimony necessary to put a killer in prison. Most witness wrongful identifications are not intentional or malicious, but simply error. (Eyewitness testimony is considered the weakest and most fallible evidence that can be offered in court, especially lacking other corroborating evidence.) However, her testimony was impeached, and whether or not he was the killer, it could not be established by her evidence, thus producing reasonable doubt about his guilt. The acquittal was proper.
"OJ was lucky in that his victims families never killed him.
"If that was my son or daughter he killed, OJ wouldn’t have made it to trial."
This is why we have court trials, to prevent emotional citizens from carrying out their own lynch "justice."
I also listened to the verdict in a college classroom, but on an AM radio.
I, too, was in a large law school class glued to a tiny TV in San Francisco. There were only a few blacks and nobody cheered. The women were all crestfallen. They seemed to need counseling. I remember thinking, "who doesn't know race trumps gender?" I left the classroom with a guy who discovered his bicycle had been stolen while the verdict was being read.
"This is why we have court trials, to prevent emotional citizens from carrying out their own lynch "justice.""
No this is why we have police to protect criminals from democracy
I had moved to LA and had an appointment at DMV next to his Alma mater. The authorities decided not to release verdict night before but set time in morning to give LAPD enough daylight hours to deal with a guilty verdict. Remember Jeffrey Toobin on CNN confidently predicting guilty verdict. The DMV was empty, everyone cancelled their appointments. The verdict was on a monitor. No one there to react.
I’m glad he’s dead and I hope he suffered. But I’ll save such celebrations for the death of George Soros.
Robert Cook wrote...This is why we have court trials, to prevent emotional citizens from carrying out their own lynch "justice."
And your standards with respect to justice are why lawfare against Trump keeps failing to snare its target. Whenever lower-court rulings re Trump are elevated up the jurisprudence chain, they are rejected: This is because the legal hacks beneath are behaving like lynch mobs.
8+ years of reading your comments tells me that you are a member of the lynch mob out to get Trump. I suspect that this is because of your former residence in Manhattan. Thank our lucky stars that you are no longer eligible to be seated there as a juror (tho you are a threat to justice in FLA).
PS: I used to think that you were evenhanded and fair-minded but your TDS tells me otherwise.
We need constant reminders that our system of government administered justice routinely produces unjust outcomes. OJ was one of those reminders.
Try not to put yourself in a position where you have to rely on the government to get you justice. Justice is elusive and precarious.
That last sentence ought to be the one engraved over the entryway to the Supreme Court.
I was in grad schol, studying the way race has affected crime, popular culture, and criminal justice reform.
So, front row seat.
The black bitches in my required women's studies course were high-fiving each other gleefully. The white lesbians and fake white lesbians sat in dismayed silence. I thought to myself: this is a lynch mob, but interestingly, these new black klanswomen are being even more overt than the original klan. I also thought:if they could get to the bodies, they'd gleefully rip them to shreds and keep the fingers and toes as souvenirs.
Of course I did not dare say that out loud. But the look on my face was enough to make one burly black klanlady confronted me in the hallway and shove me hard while screaming she knew she had no right to do it but she was gonna do it anyway.
This was in a crowded graduate school hallway, and the professor witnessed it. I think she thought it was funny. She'd brag that she wasn't white because she was Jewish. She cuddled with certain women on the couch during class. Nobody came to my defense, and I knew I couldn't touch my assailant. There were no consequences for her assault on me, the second hands-on I'd had from this woman. Dumb as a rock and tenured now, of course. The very elderly, chivalrous, black, James Baldwin scholar (and I think companion) brought me into his office and silently made us tea.
That dissertation wrote itself.
Luckily, I was still doing construction and carpet nights and on weekends at the Georgia World Congress Center. Both male and female employees (I was one of a few whites), were mostly pissed as hell at OJ and solitious towards white coworkers. Nobody thought he was innocent. There was shame and embarassment. Thank God I still had a sane place to go. A lot lies in people's class. Academia was pure evil and cowardice, even that far back.
I was on the MARTA train when the verdict made the news. That was the underclass, gangbangers and their whores. The car erupted with cheering, and black people began prying posters off the walls and trying to pull out the seats. More interesting parallels to the original klan, though they were mostly upper-class. I got off at the next stop and walked miles home.
Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote an amazing chapter on the murder in her book, _Bitch_. Nicole wanted to flee OJ much earlier, but he showered her parents with gifts and money, and they pressured her to stay with him. Kris Jenner, Nicole's best friend for decades, however, blamed OJ and sat with the victims' families throughout the trial.
Where was I when the O.J. verdict was handed down? I was a juror on a murder trial in Burlington Vermont.
My first semester as a night-school MBA student was very hectic. Normally, I would walk from where I worked, on one end of campus at the Dept. of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, to the business school at the opposite side of the university grounds. The MBA classes were all at night since, like me, most of the students had day-jobs and were taking classes part time.
In October I was selected to be on a jury. The location was only a mile from school but the problem was that since we lived walking distance from campus, I walked to the lab every day and saw no need for the expense of a parking permit. I could have walked from our apartment to the trial in the morning, but there was no way to get from court to classes on time without driving--I think court got out 10-15 minutes before classes and from downtown to campus, it was about a mile, all uphill. Three weeks and lots of UVM parking tickets later, it was over, but I've since wondered what became of the guy we convicted? Once we pronounced him guilty, we were done. I don't recall hearing about the sentence. Presumably a long term: First degree murder and all.
I found an appeal, which he lost.
"Castleton, Vermont. While investigating the area, the body of John Kenworthy was discovered about twenty-five feet from the house, with his arms bound behind him and an oil-soaked shirt wrapped around one arm. He had been stabbed approximately sixty to seventy times, his left hand had been fractured, and he had been hit in the head with a blunt instrument like a hammer or baseball bat.
Police investigating the homicide learned that Kenworthy had been married to Sandra Crannell from 1980 to 1982. Sandra had recently been divorced from defendant, Charles Crannell. Defendant lived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and had been attempting to reconcile with Sandra. He drove a 1985 two-tone Corvette that several witnesses reported seeing in Castleton during the hours immediately before and after the murder. One witness saw the car as well as defendant and described defendant as wearing a “watch cap.” Such a cap was discovered near the crime scene. Police learned from Sandra that she had obtained a restraining order to keep defendant away from her house and that he had threatened to beat up anyone she was dating. Sandra also told police that defendant refused to acknowledge the divorce and was depressed. Based on this and additional information, the Vermont State Police coordinated their investigation with Pennsylvania State Police, and arrested defendant at his home in Johnstown on October 21, 1992.
After lengthy pretrial proceedings, a jury trial was held in October 1995. Defendant was convicted of the first-degree murder of John Kenworthy."
To the best of my knowledge, the defendant is still in prison, though his term has been reduced from life without parole to 35-life.
Now that I think back, I don't think I was on the jury yet, the selection process was still on-going. The area for the jury pool was still very crowded.
The Vermonters were mostly pretty angry about the verdict. Up on campus, the lab was directed by a Vermonter but most of us were from elsewhere. Their views were similar to mine, O.J. was probably guilty but guilty people get let-off all the time. As for myself, with a mostly black jury and some police misconduct, I would have been amazed, happy but still amazed, had O.J. been convicted.
Yesterday I saw a post verdict photo of Simpson, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnny Cochrane laughing and congratulating each other. So nice to think of all three now, shrieking in the flames.
The guy went from one of the fastest in the NFL to the slowest car chase ever.
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