EdwardKnoxII 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 http://www.eonline.com/Features/Features/O...ex.html?fdcool1 A Decade After the Murders, the Key Players Are Still in the Spotlight by Joal Ryan | June 10, 2004 A Decade After the Murders, the Key Players Are Still in the Spotlight by Joal Ryan | June 10, 2004 O.J. Simpson knows from media cycles. "It's 10 years," Simpson told Fox News last week. "Everybody is getting another five minutes." Truth be told, most of the principals in Simpson's double-murder trial--the celebrity trial of the 20th century--don't need the extension. With the 10-year anniversary of the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman approaching Saturday, the players in the Simpson saga are closing in on a full decade's worth of fame. No one remains more in the spotlight than Simpson, the man charged with (and eventually declared not guilty in) the brutal stabbing deaths of his ex-wife and a waiter outside her condominium in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles, California, on June 12, 1994. But before the killings, before the accusations, Simpson was a well-regarded minor celebrity: The former USC and Buffalo Bills football star had built a solid career as a trusted TV pitchman (Hertz); as an agreeable, albeit stiff, actor (the Naked Gun movies, The Towering Inferno); and as a familiar football commentator (Monday Night Football, NBC Sports). Oh, how things have changed for the Juice. Post-indictment, post-Bronco ride (on June 17, 1994, Simpson led Los Angeles police on a slow-speed chase across the city's freeway system), post-criminal trial (the made-for-Court TV melodrama ran for eight months in 1995) and post-civil judgment (in 1997, Simpson was found liable for the deaths of Ron and his ex-wife, to the bankrupting tune of $33.5 million), the 56-year-old Simpson of today insists he is just a regular guy with a bum knee who tries to make ends meet with his untouchable NFL pension. He told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that he spends his days golfing, grocery shopping, watching Court TV (yep, Court TV) and struggling with the challenges of single parenthood. (Simpson retains custody of his two children with Nicole: 18-year-old Sydney, who is now college bound, and 16-year-old Justin, an honor student.) He says he's sometimes angry with his slain ex-wife for taking up with the wrong crowd after their split--he described her friends to Fox News as "a group of nomads." Otherwise, Simpson is "content." (He does concede to being discouraged that his hunt for Simpson and Goldman's "real killers" has fallen off in recent years.) If he has had run-ins with the law in Miami, Florida (where he moved in 2000, along with his children), it's because he, as he told NBC News' Katie Couric, is a target. "I'm not a guy to get in fights," said Simpson, who was charged with and acquitted of first-degree battery in an alleged road-rage incident in 2001. "And trust me, there's very few Americans out there, guys who think they're relatively macho, that could hold their temper with some of the stuff I've had to go through, with the media and paparazzi and stuff." While Simpson complains about the media, he rarely punishes them with silence. He is marking the anniversary of the killings--a date he says he wouldn't remember if reporters didn't remind him--with a round of interviews, including a scheduled live Q&A on Wednesday (9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT) on--oh, yeah--Court TV. Plus, don't forget, E! has already been there and done that--catch double O.J. marathons featuring our own exclusive E! True Hollywood Story "O.J. Corralled" interview on June 12 and 17. He has written a book, I Want to Tell You, published one month into his 1995 trial. He has hawked a video, O.J. Simpson: The Interview, his 1996 account of the murder case. He has been filmed for a since-scrapped Osbournes-type reality series. More recently, he has talked up a Punk'd-style prank show in which he'd pull gags on innocent bystanders. "What they call 'juicing' people," the ex-sports star told Fox News. Then again, Simpson, who hasn't earned a steady paycheck since 1994, might not do the show at all. "I'm not going to do it if it results in [the Brown and Goldman families] receiving any money for something [the murders] I didn't do," Simpson said on Dateline NBC. Come Saturday, Simpson expects he'll be out of the country with his two youngest children. He doesn't think he'll bother to persuade anybody of his innocence. "I'm beyond that," Simpson told Dateline. "[Years ago] I was still trying to convince people otherwise. I've just thrown that away. That's their problem, you know?" Here's a look at what the stars of the O.J. Simpson case are doing these days: Player: Marcia Clark Role: Prosecutor Current Project(s): Now a TV talking head, most recently providing analysis of the Kobe Bryant rape case for Entertainment Tonight. O.J. Book? Without a Doubt (1997). Player: Christopher Darden Role: Prosecutor Current Project(s): Now a TV talking head for CNN, also runs a private L.A.-based law firm. O.J. Book? In Contempt (1996), plus coauthorship of four legal thrillers, including Lawless (2004). Player: Johnnie Cochran Jr. Role: Defense attorney Current Project(s): Celebrity litigator who finds, per his Website, "no greater joy and no higher calling than seeking justice for clients," including, in recent years, Michael Jackson and Sean Combs. O.J. Book? Journey to Justice (1996), plus the memoir A Lawyer's Life (2002). Player: Kato Kaelin Role: Houseguest/prosecution witness. Current Project(s): Underemployed actor, TV guest and punchline; townhouse owner. Agent this week declined to disclose current projects, saying "I don't know what he wants said." Recent credits include 2003 bit on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. O.J. Book? Not yet. Player: Denise Brown Role: Sister of Nicole Brown Simpson/prosecution witness Current Project: Lecturer, lobbyist on domestic-violence issues; leads Nicole Brown Charitable Foundation with younger sister Tanya. Hosting a Dana Point, California, candlelight vigil on the date of the murders for Nicole, Goldman and "all victims of violence." Criticized Marcia Clark last month for being "insensitive" to her sister's slaying and "trash[ing]" the Brown family in her book. O.J. Book? Nope, but has her own Website. Player: Mark Fuhrman Role: LAPD detective, prosecution witness caught lying about use of racial epithet on stand Current Project(s): Author, TV talking head, Dominick Dunne confidant. O.J. Book? Oh yeah. Murder in Brentwood (1997), Murder in Greenwich (1998) and other true-crime books Player: Fred Goldman Role: Father of murder victim Ron Goldman Currect Project(s): Arizona resident (relocated from SoCal following civil trial); retired talk-radio host. O.J. Book? His Name Is Ron (1997). Player: Lance Ito Role: Camera-friendly criminal trial judge Currect Project(s): Still serving on the L.A. County bench; still staying mum on O.J. case, post-verdict. O.J. Book? Maybe when he retires. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EdwardKnoxII 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2102084/?GT1=3584 We Won't Get O.J.-ed Again How could we have been so stupid? By Dahlia Lithwick Updated Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 3:38 PM PT June 12 will mark the 10th anniversary of the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Predictably, the catch-us-up interviews and where-are-they-now roundups have begun, reminding us that the O.J. Simpson story—Ford Bronco, bloody gloves, Kato Kaelin, Paula Barbieri, et al.—was an international phenomenon: an indelible experience still fat with meaning. This is strange, when you stop to consider it. After all, since O.J., we've certainly seen more famous people go on trial (Martha Stewart, Winona Ryder). We've seen more insanely violent people go on trial (Timothy McVeigh, John Allan Muhammad). We've seen people of far greater historical consequence go on trial (Slobodan Milosevic, Bill Clinton's impeachment). We've seen the "dream team" of lawyers who defended O.J. go on to represent other famous people. (Johnnie Cochran represented police misconduct victim Abner Louima and rapper P. Diddy; Robert Shapiro represented Robert Downey Jr. and, for a while, Phil Spector.*) Yet we don't talk about those cases 'round the water cooler. We read about them on page A12. Still, while I know precisely what I was doing when O.J. was decided, I cannot seem to recall where I was when the Tim McVeigh verdict was returned. In an NBC poll taken in 1999, the majority of the Americans asked deemed the O.J. Simpson criminal trial the "Trial of the Century." But none of us seems to know quite why. Possibly the Simpson saga offered what was, in hindsight, a "perfect storm" of archetypal narratives. You had your sex plot. You had your race plot. You had your rags-to-riches, and your police corruption, and your 9-1-1 tapes. But while all this seems like an epic tale unparalleled in the courts before or since, the truth is that many of the subsequent "trials of the century" have offered similarly archetypical tales without capturing the imagination of the entire country as O.J. did. (Think of Andrea Yates as the "Mad Mother," or Lee Boyd Malvo as "angel gone astray.") One of the paradoxes of the O.J. Simpson criminal trial is that, contrary to the predictions of some legal scholars, the cultural force of the event has not really diminished in the intervening years. The other paradox of the O.J. Simpson trial is that the widespread predictions that every trial thereafter would be "worse"—a greater spectacle, a madder circus—have also proven wrong. The whole thing was really just an outlier; a blip. It's hard to know what makes one trial a "trial of the century" while another is just interesting legal news. But in 10 years, there hasn't been another O.J. And while some pundits speculate that the upcoming Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson trials will rival it for mayhem, my prediction is they will not. They'll be nuts, to be sure. But they won't be O.J. There are lots of important meanings affixed, in hindsight, to the O.J. Simpson trial, but most of them are wrong. It's a mistake, for instance, to argue that the American obsession with celebrity trials began with O.J. People have been obsessed with the theater of trials since there were trials to watch. Aaron Burr complained in 1807 that all the pretrial publicity about his case would keep him from getting a fair trial. And it's said that more reporters covered the Bruno Hauptmann trial for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1935 than covered all of World War I. As the Samuel Sheppard case revealed in the 1950s, the American public's taste for other folks' blood knew no bounds even then. The difference with O.J. wasn't that we were suddenly fascinated. It's that we were invited in. It's also not accurate to say that O.J. became a national phenomenon for peeling back the truth on the simmering racial tensions in America. For one thing, it's naive to insist that the public didn't already know what O.J. purported to reveal: that the majority of African-Americans so believe that the legal system is skewed against a black man that they would credit an incredible conspiracy narrative over seemingly incontrovertible scientific evidence. But the explosive acquittal of the police officers who brutally beat Rodney King, and the riots they triggered in Los Angeles, happened well before the O.J. verdict. O.J. didn't reveal anything that wasn't already crystal clear about race in America. It's also, ultimately, an oversimplification to suggest that O.J. was a landmark trial because it launched the era of "cameras in the courtroom," spawning Court TV as the first "reality show." Trials had been televised long before O.J.'s, and trials have been televised long after. The entire trial of Adolph Eichmann was carried live on television in 1961, as were the Lorena Bobbitt trial in 1995 and the William Kennedy Smith trial in 1991. None to the effect of O.J. It's not at all clear that television caused the madness that became O.J.-mania, or merely exposed it. All the above factors may have played some role in the circus that became the O.J. trial. But they didn't cause it. Ultimately, the way in which the O.J. Simpson case differed from the celebrity trials that came before and after has little to do with the fact that the television cameras invited us in the courtroom, and everything to do with the fact that we showed up. And stayed. All three major networks and CNN saturated us with O.J. because we demanded it. And we demanded it because we could get it. It was a moment in history in which the public and the media became a match made in hell. Neither of us could get enough of each other. An astonishing 91 percent of the television viewing audience watched the verdict in O.J. and a poll at the time famously showed that 74 percent of Americans could identify Kato Kaelin but only 25 percent knew who Vice President Al Gore was. In so many ways, the trial was a watershed for everything that was worst about law, the media, and our obsession with fame. But in so many ways it was also a one-time race to the bottom. We look back on the long lunches and the skipped classes; the pundits reviewing the analysis of the earlier pundits who had analyzed the alleles in the blood samples, and we all feel a little sheepish. All sleazy one-night stands must come to an end. And the good news is, we got over it. Unless I'm wrong, and we are as stupid for Scott Peterson as we were for O.J., we won't be O.J.-ed again Certainly, there were other lessons to be learned from O.J., like, don't have the defendant try the glove on in front of the jury without being certain it'll fit. I've also been told by more than one criminal lawyer that juries since O.J. are far more willing to give credence to stories of police misconduct than before. And between the O.J. jurors and Barry Scheck's testimony (and his subsequent work at The Innocence Project), it's become a nationally understood truth that some crime labs are sloppy or worse; and that even the best DNA evidence can, quite simply, lie. Some of the other important lessons of O.J. have been learned by the judges. Judge Lance Ito meant well, but he was out of his weight class when it came time to wrestle the media beast. Judges since have learned from his mistakes: Don't let the media control you, for one thing. Don't sequester your jury for 266 days. Don't permit counsel to strut and posture like a bunch of teenage drama students. Gag everyone. Keep it all short, clean, and sweet. Literally dozens of law review articles have been written on the significance of the O.J. trial: the role played by race; the ethics of the attorneys; the meaning of jury nullification; the significance of domestic violence; and the meaning of forensic evidence. But none of that is the real legacy of O.J. It's just an attempt to find meaning in a trial that should have meant very little. The truth about O.J. is that for one brief moment, the law and the media went crazy and had a lot of sex, and gave birth to a vast sprawling beast that ate us all. With the trial over, life, law, and television returned us to our previously scheduled broadcast. It was all just a mistake, really. Let's keep it that way. Correction, June 11, 2004: This article originally stated that "Johnnie Cochran defended police misconduct victim Abner Louima." In fact, no criminal charges were ever brought against Louima; Cochran didn't defend him but rather represented him in a civil suit. Cochran's name was also originally misspelled "Cochrane." (Return to the corrected sentence.) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lil' Bitch 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 And he's still looking for the real killers too. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly Report post Posted June 13, 2004 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/040611 By Bill Simmons Page 2 Things That Make Me Feel Old, Chapter 253: There's an entire generation that doesn't remember the O.J. Trial. Some of you remember bits and pieces. Like the surreal Bronco Chase. Marcia Clark breaking out her Mokeski perm. Chris Darden's disastrous idea to have O.J. slip on the murder gloves. Johnnie Cochran wearing so many crazy suits, one reporter purchased a book of 64 crayons so he could accurately describe the colors. The crazed look on O.J.'s face when the verdict was announced, like even he couldn't believe he was going free. Do you remember where you were when the verdict was handed down? Bits and pieces. If you're 21 or younger. And if you're older than that, you remember everything that happened 10 years ago, starting with the double murders on June 12, 1994. We always hear phrases like "Fight of the Century" and "Trial of the Century" ... well, this really was the Trial of the Century. A Pro Football Hall of Fame running back might or might not have killed his wife and one of her male friends. All evidence pointed to him. No other suspects. No alibi. A disturbing history of domestic abuse. A motive. Blood splattered everywhere, including back at the suspect's house. It should have been easy. Instead, the trial stretched until September of the following year, fracturing the nation along the way. We learned about the legal process, forensic science and the cult of celebrity (personified by Kato Kaelin, the ultimate freeloader). We learned how quickly a screwed up case can get more screwed up. We learned about the inherent flaws of our jury system, a process which eliminates just about anyone who follows the news. We learned that our nation could and would poke fun at anything, even when the murders of two innocent people were directly involved. We learned that the stakes change for wealthy defendants, that it's possible to buy your own acquittal. We learned about lawyers, how some will do anything to win a case, no matter what the cost. Where are they now? Page 2 finds out what's up with the principal characters from the O.J. trial. ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossack writes on the importance of the O.J. trial. Your thoughts: Send a letter on the O.J. saga to SportsNation. From the Page 2 archives: Top 10 sports trials Ralph Wiley on HBO's O.J. documentary. We learned we don't know many of these athletes and celebrities. We think we do ... but we don't. That sounds pretty simple, but believe me, in those first few days after the murders, everyone had the same reaction: We know this guy. He couldn't have done it. Like with the Kobe Trial, it seemed farfetched that a handsome athlete with everything going for him could be charged with a heinous crime. But after what happened with Simpson, you never know. O.J. turned out to be a string of dichotomies -- a black ex-football player who hung out with white businessmen; a philandering husband and wife-beater who claimed that he loved his wife "too much;" an articulate college graduate who could barely write a sentence. He wasn't living the life of a football legend; he was eating meals at McDonald's with Kato, filming cheesy infomercials, throwing tantrums because his wife didn't save him a seat at their daughter's dance recital. His whole life was a lie. Still, he walked. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Making commercials, laughing on TV ... this is the OJ we all knew. Like many Americans, I became an O.J. Trial junkie in the mid-'90s. Unlike many Americans, my interest was piqued mostly because I didn't have anything better to do. Back then, I was working as a high school sports reporter for the Boston Herald, working 25-30 hours a week covering games and writing profiles. With every event starting after 3 p.m., I had more than enough free time on my hands. And since Al Gore hadn't created the Internet yet, my mornings and afternoons revolved around making trips to Dunkin' Donuts, writing short stories I couldn't get published, playing season after season of "NHL '95" and following the trial. There was always something happening. Either they were having the trial, or two talking heads on CNN were arguing about the trial, or one of the superb journalists covering the trial (especially Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair and Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker) had written something good. When you went out drinking, you argued about it. When you went home for Easter, you discussed it with your family. It was everywhere. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had a theory about the murders. Those who believed he was guilty worried he would get away with it -- a belief that seemed like an impossibility when he was fleeing in the white Bronco, but something that seemed more realistic with every passing day. Everything started with the Bronco Chase. We knew two people were dead. We knew O.J. was a suspect. But he couldn't have murdered them, for God's sake. After all, this was O.J. -- the guy who rushed for 2003 yards for the Buffalo Bills in 1973, the guy who played Nordberg in "Naked Gun," the guy who sprinted through airports in those Hertz commercials.We knew this guy. I mean ... didn't we? Then he disappeared. Friday afternoon, June 17, 1994. Out of nowhere. During a hastily scheduled news conference, an LAPD spokesman announced Simpson had failed to turn himself in by the 11 a.m. deadline, adding "The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr. Simpson." Wait a second ... what????????? You could hear the gasps from the reporters on hand. Millions of people began thinking the same thing: "Good God, he must have done it." Everyone in America stopped working. People huddled around televisions in offices, bars, restaurants, wherever. Simpson's lawyer, Robert Shapiro, scheduled a second press conference begging O.J. to turn himself in. One of O.J.'s friends and lawyers, Robert Kardashian, read an apparent suicide note O.J. had left behind. This was insane. This couldn't be happening. That weekend I was visiting friends in Connecticut, prepared for a raging night on the town: Pitchers of beer, some shuffleboard, maybe even a late-night stop for chili-and-cheese fries. Once the white Bronco materialized on the 405, we never left the house. Poor NBC was stuck with Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Rockets and Knicks, bouncing between O.J. & A.C. and Ewing & Olajuwon. Finally they settled on a ludicrous split-screen, which seemed to satisfy everyone -- those who cared about the game, and those who were waiting to see if O.J. would blow his brains out on national TV. Not even a key game in the NBA Finals could keep the Bronco Chase off the air. We were mesmerized. I still remember everything about that night, everyone in the room, even where everyone was sitting. We were about to watch O.J. Simpson kill himself. A.C. had already done his hilarious "This is A.C., I got O.J. in the car ... you know who this is, g--dammit!" routine. The cops had been trailing them for hours. Now they were headed toward O.J.'s Rockingham Estate, crawling along at a snail's pace on Sunset, an eerie feeling of anticipation in the air. One of my buddies was getting anxious, ready for some sort of resolution. "Hurry up, O.J.!" he said. "Do something! We're running out of beer." We all felt that way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the trial happened in 2004 instead of 1995, Simpson and his gravity-defying noggin probably would be rotting away in prison right now. He couldn't have survived the overwhelming DNA evidence. The science is the same, but thanks to the startling popularity of "CSI" and "CSI: Miami," forensics doesn't seem nearly as complicated today as it did in the mid-'90s, when scientists wasted entire days of the trial simply explaining the basics of DNA evidence to the jurors. Of course, those efforts were completely wasted, as evidenced by the words of one juror after the trial: "I didn't understand the DNA stuff at all. To me, it was just a waste of time. It was way out there and carried no weight with me." Keep in mind: Blood was found at the crime scene, dripping on the left side of the footprints leaving the area (and yes, O.J. had an unexplained cut on his left hand). There was a 1-in-57 billion chance that the blood did not belong to O.J. There was blood in the Bronco, blood on the rear gate, blood on O.J.'s socks (found in his bedroom at home), blood on the gloves (one left at the crime scene, the other dropped behind Kato's guest house at the Rockingham estate). In each case, the odds were in the millions and billions that the aforementioned blood didn't belong to Simpson, his ex-wife or Ron Goldman. This would have been the most boring episode of "CSI" ever; Gil Grissom might have sent O.J. packing in 10 minutes. But this was 10 years ago. Only educated people understood the ramifications of the DNA evidence ... and educated people have a way of being bounced off juries. Faced with overwhelming evidence against their client, Simpson's defense team embarked on a two-pronged strategy, setting out to prove that the incompetent LAPD mishandled much of the blood evidence -- which it had, to some extent -- because they were so consumed with trying to frame Simpson with the murders, because they hated African-Americans. Think about that for a second. On the one hand, the defense argued the LAPD was completely incompetent, so you couldn't possibly trust the DNA evidence. On the other hand, they played the race card, arguing the LAPD was calculating enough to arrive at a crime scene and, within about 10 minutes of digesting what had happened, hatch a convoluted plan to frame Simpson because he was African-American ... even though they didn't have any idea if he had an alibi or was even in the country at the time. Does that make any sense? Of course not. But it worked. Because Mark Furhman lied on the stand about using racial slurs, apparently that meant he planted the second glove at O.J.'s house. Poor Dennis Fung, the hapless doctor who handled the blood evidence after the murders, was demolished for nine consecutive days by maniacal defense attorney Barry Scheck, then suffered the further ignominy of having the defense team hug him and shake his hand after his testimony ended. Sorry we called you a liar and insinuated that you framed our client ... we're just doing our jobs, no hard feelings. That's how ridiculous this trial was. The defense had no case -- if anything, they just sat back like Bernard Hopkins, waited for the prosecution to screw up and pounced on every mistake. They presented no alibis, no other suspects, no semblance of a defense that related to O.J. as a person. And when all else failed, they brought out the race card and smashed it over everyone's heads. Consequences be damned. Fortunately for the defense, the LAPD started mangling this case from the moment they arrived in Brentwood. Do you realize that, right after the murders, the LAPD interviewed Simpson for 30 minutes -- without his lawyers present! -- and failed to tie him down to any sort of an alibi, then let him go when they ran out of questions? Simpson admitted to dripping blood all over the place on the very same night his wife was brutally murdered, a night in which he had no alibi whatsoever, and they didn't even pursue this? In a movie scene, wouldn't they have been battering away at him for hours on end, while O.J. chainsmoked with sweat pouring from his head? Please. The prosecution was equally inept, screwing up the case to smithereens. (If you're interested in the gory details, read "Outrage" by Vincent Bugliosi). Marcia Clark, so confident and cocksure at the beginning of the trial, became more and more harried as things dragged along. At one point, after the Enquirer published revealing photos of her, she actually broke down in court as Darden shielded her from the Court TV cameras. By the middle of the trial, Judge Lance Ito was treating her with open disdain, which was funny because he was such a joke in his own right (thanks to his Art Shell-ian clock management, the jury was sequestered for more time than any jury in the history of California). Meanwhile, Darden was self-destructing like John Starks against the Rockets, unable to stand up to boyhood idol Johnnie Cochran. As Cochran gleefully pushed his buttons, snidely questioning his competence and experience, poor Darden became so flustered he would actually turn away from the judge's desk and rock back and forth like Leo Mazzone. You really had to see it. There were at least four different times during the trial when it seemed like Darden would snap and either have a nervous breakdown or kill everyone in a 25-foot vicinity. It was like watching one of the roommates slowly lose his mind over the course of a "Real World" season. Simpson's defense team rolled through Clark and Darden with ease. Scheck blistered holes in their DNA evidence, sneering in contempt at every witness, like he couldn't believe they would bring something so moronic in front of a jury. He was like James Mason in "The Verdict," crossed with a Rottweiler. And Cochran was so polished, so righteous, so likable ... it almost seemed like an actor was playing him, as if the defense team had hired Morgan Freeman for the duration of the trial. Johnnie could throw anything out and you would believe it. Isn't it interesting that there were only two gloves found? What happened to the third glove? Why isn't anyone talking about this? What did the LAPD do with it? I find this whole thing veeeeeeeeeery interesting. If Christopher Darden had one mulligan in life, no doubt it would be the incident with the gloves. And you'd buy it! Old Johnnie could sell mink coats at a PETA rally. But the biggest contribution came from F. Lee Bailey, the renowned trial lawyer who came off as a trembling self-parody in the disappointing Fuhrman cross-examination. He made up for it later in the trial by successfully goading Darden -- whispering into his ear, "You have the balls of a field mouse" -- prompting an enraged Darden to have Simpson try on the gloves found at the murder scene without knowing if they would fit. In the Pantheon Of Horrible Ideas, that one ranked somewhere between "Bowie over MJ" and "The Magic Hour." Not only had the gloves shrunk from all the testing, but O.J. had to wear latex gloves when he was trying them on. They never had a chance. Both Darden and the trial would never be the same. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When Simpson was found responsible for the murders in the civil trial -- ordered to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families -- some believed this made up for the criminal trial. I don't see it. He's still walking the streets. Still playing golf. Still giving interviews. Still living a lie. And even though he has to turn all income over to the families, he still lives a decent lifestyle off his NFL pension. Most of his friends deserted him, and he's somewhat of a social pariah, but anything's better than prison. More importantly, nothing could erase the damage of his criminal trial, the wounds that opened across the nation. Again, you had to be there. Had to be standing in a group of people, hearing the verdict delivered, seeing O.J.'s face light up, feeling the life sink from your body. You had to glance around the room, seeing your friends or co-workers staring blankly at the television in disbelief. This was Generation X's defining "I remember exactly where I was when it happened" moment, our version of JFK's assassination. You couldn't think of something to say that could match the moment, so you didn't even try. There were no words. Minutes after the verdict was announced, we learned something disheartening: The chasm between whites and blacks in this country was more pronounced than anyone imagined. As TV stations started showing various reactions to the verdict around the country, those images confirmed everything we refused to believe for 15 months. The defense was right. This trial wasn't about a double-murder, it was about a distressing racial divide, a legacy of mistrust between blacks and whites. The O.J. trial taught us one thing, we are still a racially divided nation. At the time, many African-Americans had trouble trusting police, lawyers, the legal process as a whole ... too many of their own people had been railroaded or mistreated over the years, personified by the revolting images from the Rodney King beating and the subsequent acquittal of the policemen involved. These scars affected every facet of Simpson's defense: the jury selection, the defense, even the verdict. When the system acquitted a clearly culpable man, some of these same African-Americans rejoiced upon hearing the news. One of their own had finally beaten the system. Didn't matter how. And yes, some blacks believed O.J. was guilty, just like some whites believed he was innocent. But those weren't the images that television chose to show us. And that remains the legacy of the trial, that astonishing moment when the verdict was announced -- My God, he's going to walk -- followed by many blacks celebrating like they won the Super Bowl, many whites recoiling in horror, O.J. and his team rejoicing, and saddest of all, Kim Goldman and her father sobbing uncontrollably. Ten years later, that image of the Goldmans endures over everything else, a sobering reminder of two brutal murders, of the mounds of evidence pointing to one man, of a trial that evolved into something else. Ten years later, we're still picking up the pieces. And if you can't remember what happened ... maybe you're lucky. Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
2GOLD 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 And he's still looking for the real killers too. Considering all the golf courses he is looking on, I'm starting to think the killer was a PGA tour star.... Where was Fuzzy Zeller that night! Why wasn't he questioned?!?! SEE! More racism against poor innocent OJ. For the record, thought he was innocent till the Civil trial and then things kind of unraveled on him. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Prime Time Andrew Doyle 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 Weel I think that Some Puetorican (sp?) did it Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
1234-5678 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/040611 By Bill Simmons Page 2 Things That Make Me Feel Old, Chapter 253: There's an entire generation that doesn't remember the O.J. Trial. That makes me feel really old too, and I am only 22. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Highland 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 For the record, thought he was innocent till the Civil trial and then things kind of unraveled on him. I always thought he was guilty, but if he was acquitted in a criminal trial then why should he have even been tried in a civil proceeding? It seems like just a way to get around double-jeopardy. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest MikeSC Report post Posted June 13, 2004 For the record, thought he was innocent till the Civil trial and then things kind of unraveled on him. I always thought he was guilty, but if he was acquitted in a criminal trial then why should he have even been tried in a civil proceeding? It seems like just a way to get around double-jeopardy. Well, it was a way to make him suffer --- but double jeopardy only means the state can't try you twice. It doesn't mean the victims' families aren't free to sue the living snot out of you. -=Mike Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Highland 0 Report post Posted June 13, 2004 For the record, thought he was innocent till the Civil trial and then things kind of unraveled on him. I always thought he was guilty, but if he was acquitted in a criminal trial then why should he have even been tried in a civil proceeding? It seems like just a way to get around double-jeopardy. Well, it was a way to make him suffer --- but double jeopardy only means the state can't try you twice. It doesn't mean the victims' families aren't free to sue the living snot out of you. -=Mike -chuckle- At least the ability to sue is good for something. Thanks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
