O.J. Simpson died yesterday after a brief battle with prostate cancer. He was 76 years old, and despite his numerous athletic accomplishments he will be most remembered for being found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman after being found not guilty of double murder in an infamous criminal trial. As a result of the civil liability finding, Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million to the victims' families, but because his NFL pension and his expensive home were legally exempt from that court decision he managed to live the high life while avoiding paying most of that damage award.
Simpson's double murder trial--the so-called "Trial of the Century"--provided fame and wealth to a cast of characters who lacked discernible talent but who became famous for being famous--a phenomenon that has now become all too common in our social media saturated era.
The divergent reactions--largely along racial lines--to Simpson's acquittal in the criminal case foreshadowed the mixed up thinking that has now become prevalent in our society; such thinking stipulates that a member of a favored minority group can never be a criminal or oppressor, while a member of a non-favored group can never be a victim. Once a society abandons the notions of objective truth and equal protection under the law, that society is heading toward oblivion, because persecution in the past--no matter how abhorrent--does not justify the application of double standards in the present; the only sane way forward is to strive for equality, not some perverse "equity," because pursuing the latter is a path whose tragic consequences have been seen in the former Soviet Union and other countries whose revolutionaries claimed to be eliminating tyranny but instead implemented tyranny.
More than a decade after evading conviction and incarceration for a double murder for which there is no other suspect and for which he did not have a credible alibi, Simpson spent nine years in prison as a result of his conviction for armed robbery and kidnapping. Simpson and several accomplices held people at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room while purportedly attempting to recover stolen sports memorabilia. Simpson was fortunate to only spend nine years in prison, because his 33 year sentence stipulated that he serve at least nine years before being eligible for parole. Had he not been granted the earliest possible parole, he could have died behind bars, a possibility that I mentioned 16 years ago when I summarized Simpson's legacy:
O.J. Simpson's athletic gifts provided him a golden opportunity to better his life, the lives of his family members and, if he had chosen, to make a positive contribution to society by using his name and influence to support a greater cause, like Jim Brown has done with his Amer-I-Can foundation. Instead, Simpson left a trail of misery and destruction culminating in the possibility of spending his final days on Earth locked behind bars. What a pitiful, tragic waste of human potential.
Simpson was the NFL's premier running back during my early childhood, and he still ranks as one of the greatest running backs in both college and NFL history--but, because of his poor life choices and lack of self-control, he determined that his legacy will be forever tarnished.
Simpson never demonstrated the slightest bit of contrition or remorse, and in fact he ghoulishly tried to profit from the double murder by writing a book titled "If I Did It" wherein he denied his guilt and yet explained in detail how he would have committed the crime if he had done it. After a protracted legal battle, Ron Goldman's father Fred obtained the publication and royalty rights for the book to satisfy part of the $33.5 million judgment against Simpson.
I hope that the Brown and Goldman families find some closure and peace now that Simpson is no longer around to flaunt his wealth and freedom three decades after they buried their loved ones whose lives had been brutally cut short.
8 comments:
David,
The U.S. legal system is adversarial is a big reason why I think that there were cheers and jeers from Black America and white America, respectively, when the acquittal verdict for OJ came down in fall 1995. Trials are all-or-nothing affairs.
Context is important. We must remember that the Rodney King beating that we all saw on TV just three years before, with those racist LAPD cops getting off, was roughly contemporaneous with the OJ trial. We Black folks overwhelmingly cheered the verdict, not so much for OJ, but rather, for our true champion, the real hero of the case, Johnny Cochrane.
We already knew that OJ was uninterested in the Black community. We didn't need Jim Brown, another culture hero, to clarify that point. For OJ was clearly much more interested in all the white friends, indeed, the beautiful white wife, that his massive celebrity and wealth afforded him. But we appreciated OJ in that post-Rodney King moment because he was the occasion for Johnny Cochrane to beat the man at his own game. Black America basically despised OJ as an Uncle Tom, but we nevertheless appreciated that OJ gave Cochrane a chance to do beat the system.
Sidenote: Johnny Cochrane is the reason why I went to law school to be a criminal defense lawyer. He had fought the good fight against the racist LAPD for years. I do get that most Black folks will think of the OJ trial as a continuation of that fight (Mark Furhman!), whereas many white folks will think that Cochrane went sideways. Although, as a lawyer, David, you understand that every person is innocent until proven guilty and every person moreover has the right to a vigorous legal defense.
Black America mostly cheered the verdict because a Black man beat the anti-Black racist courts. For once! Our visceral reaction was not necessarily a proud moment. I, for one, am not proud of the fact that I cheered when OJ was acquitted. Actually, I didn't cheer so much as fistpump. Nor am I proud of those Howard University students that famously (infamously?) celebrated the verdict.
But historical context is important. The realities of Dred Scott and Jim Crow persist in the U.S. criminal justice system. Rodney King then; George Floyd and Breanna Taylor et al. now.
Maybe Black America should have chosen a better defendant for our righteous cause against lawless law enforcement. But we made do with OJ for the larger purpose of the Johnny Cochrane show. Surely it's understandable why Johnny Cochrane emerged from the "trial of the century" as a bona fide Black culture hero. Anyway, he's the biggest reason why I went to law school.
Anonymous:
I understand the historical context, and I agree that a bedrock principle of the U.S. judicial system is "innocent until proven guilty." Legally, Simpson is innocent of the double murder from a criminal standpoint, and the finding of civil liability does not change that fact.
However, the likely reality is that Simpson committed the double murder but was acquitted because (1) he was the rare criminal defendant who could outspend the government to hire a legal "Dream Team," and (2) because of the sordid racist history that you described the jurors may have felt inclined to send what they perceived to be a defiant message to a system that they may have believed to be unfair (I say "may" because I cannot read their minds and know for sure why they did what they did).
I understand the visceral "why" behind the cheers when Simpson was acquitted, but my larger point is that the Simpson trial was a seminal historical moment not only because how it accelerated the growth of "reality TV" (and its modern social media equivalents) but also because Simpson's acquittal represented the now widely accepted notion that a member of a group defined as a minority cannot be guilty and the corollary notion that a member of a group defined as a majority cannot be innocent (I say "defined" for several reasons, including the fact that in the circles where such notions are propagated women are defined as a minority even though they are numerically a majority and because Jews are numerically a tiny minority but are defined as part of the white majority).
The judicial system needs to be reformed, but some of the ideas regarding how to transform the judicial system are dangerous and counterproductive. In a just world, the racist cops who tortured Rodney King would have been sent to prison for their crimes, and Simpson would have been convicted of a double murder for which he was the only credible suspect and for which he did not have a credible alibi.
David,
I don't disagree with what you said about Simpson's acquittal representing the notion that a minority defendant can't be guilty.
But your supposed corollary does not follow, the notion that a majority defendant can't be innocent.
Throughout U.S. history, white-majority defendants who were clearly guilty of murdering innocent Black folks, or of lynching them by mob, were acquitted as a matter of course. The white men who got away with murdering Emmett Till are a famous example of this phenomenon.
U.S. history brims with all-white juries letting Klansman off for murdering Black folk (or Jewish folk for that matter). Not only Klansmen. All-white juries have notoriously let all manner of white defendants off the hook for obvious murder, when the victims were Black.
These days, white persons in blue uniforms (any persons in blue uniforms, regardless of race, to be fair) are generally deemed by juries to be automatically innocent.
What the OJ trial represents is Black folks doing the jury nullification thing just like Klan-supporting white folks did then, and "blue lives matter" supporting white folks do now, as far as letting obvious murderers off the hook.
Two wrongs don't make a right, of course. But you framed it as if minority defendants now can do no wrong, whereas majority defendants can do no right.
I'd argue that the minority jurors who let OJ off the hook merely emulated what majority jurors have done for Klansmen and cops for eons.
Anonymous:
You are correct--and it is well-documented--that white defendants who were clearly guilty of murdering innocent Black people have been acquitted on numerous occasions.
What I am arguing against is the "intersectional" notion that, by definition, any minority member is innocent and any majority member (defined in a way that purposely excludes Jews) is guilty. We see this now in public discussions about Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty attack against Israel. Many people--including professors, media members, and politicians--take the position that Hamas represents an oppressed minority and therefore any action by Hamas (up to and including kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder) is justified, while any action by Israel is unjustified. I also see this kind of branding in the slogan ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), a notion that I vigorously dispute--just as I also vigorously dispute the notion that the cops who have done wrong are just "a few bad apples." There is without question a police brutality problem that must be addressed, but the answer is not defunding the police, or giving minority members license to commit any crime because minority groups have been persecuted (and are still persecuted).
I understand that the Simpson jurors may have felt that they were merely copying a wrong that had been done numerous times to minorities, but I would emphasize and agree with your statement that two wrongs don't make a right.
Our society desperately needs equal justice for all, not a misguided equity that will just create more problems. I feel great compassion and empathy for minority members who are afraid of police officers based on horrific things that have happened (and still happen, though thankfully not as often as before)--but I do not believe that acquitting Simpson moved our society any closer to solving the larger problem.
David,
I agree that Orenthal James Simpson should have been convicted of double murder. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Be that as it may, white America should not try to take the moral high ground on those Black jurors that acquitted OJ.
The historical record, of U.S. law regarding Black Americans or African Americans, is too shocks-the-conscience racist for white America to moralize against those Black jurors. I mean, the U.S. Constitution itself was used to sanction slavery and all its paramilitary paraphernalia: slave patrols and all-white militias and then, post 1865, white lynch mobs and anti-Black police brutality. All-white juries have been a perennial keystone of our anti-Black racist legal system.
I see the jury that acquitted OJ as a counterpoint to the much more pervasive phenomenon of white-mob jury nullification.
As for Hamas, I agree with you 100% there. They are a terrorist organization plain and simple. Their atrocities should not be excused on account of their claims to victimhood. Moreover, I agree with your overall point against the notion that "the victim is always right."
U.S. society these days tends to romanticize the victim. We see this on the right and on the left. White-male supporters of Trump often play the victim no less than do their counterparts on the left. Extremists on both sides are counterproductive in terms of reaching our nation's ever-elusive constitutional consensus that "We the people" can only do from a more centrist and pragmatic standpoint.
The U.S.'s dominant ideology these days seems to be victimology. Which is a huge reason why our nation and the world at large is falling to pieces.
Again, we agree that two wrongs don't make a right.
I just think that white America too often expects us Black folks to be "magical negroes" taking the moral high ground. For once, those Black jurors did the same by the apparent Black murderer that legions of white jurors have done by legions of apparent white murderers.
Anonymous:
I certainly don't speak for all of "white America," nor do I hold Black people to a higher moral standard than any other group, and I don't mean to suggest that the Simpson jury is somehow guiltier or more morally repugnant than all of the juries that acquitted white murderers of Black people.
My point is that the Simpson acquittal did not make things better for anyone (other than Simpson), and that--as we agreed already--two wrongs don't make a right.
I think that we agree overall, and I appreciate your articulation of the perspective of those who cheered Simpson's acquittal; I understand the feelings behind those cheers, but I just wish that all of that energy were directed to fixing the system as a whole. I can understand why such a systemic fix seems fanciful, and why some people would prefer to just cheer a perceived short-term victory as opposed to doing the long, hard work of fixing society's ills.
I would add that even though many Black people may have viewed Simpson's acquittal as some kind of racial triumph, I believe that Simpson's acquittal had at least as much to do with money and social class as race: he was that rare defendant who had enough financial resources to assemble a "Dream Team" that could go toe to toe with the prosecutors, and he was famous and popular enough that his trial was internationally televised, which likely played a role in how the jurors voted.
A huge aspect of the trial that isn’t mentioned enough is how awful the prosecution was. They made numerous glaring mistakes, the biggest one being the glove debacle, and that absolutely played a huge role in Simpson’s acquittal. A case could be made that justice was served with the verdict as everyone, regardless of their social status or high probability of guilt, deserves a fair trial. It isn’t Simpson’s fault that the prosecution fumbled the ball on numerous occasions in a case that should have been a decisive victory for them.
Michael:
That is true. The prosecutors displayed gross incompetence, and that makes it even more sickening that they later profited from their fame by becoming published authors, TV celebrities, etc.
When I was in law school, one of my professors showed a clip of Judge Ito asking Marcia Clark if she had Shepardized the cases that she had cited; in layperson's terms, he was asking if she had done the minimal level of research expected from a law clerk, let alone from a prosecutor in a double murder trial. Clark fumbled around and then threw a subordinate under the bus while Judge Ito noted that his clerk had determined that the cases that Clark had cited were not on point. Our professor told us to make sure that we don't make the basic mistake that Clark made, or else take our law school's name off of our resumes!
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