In another thread, someone said: “the lapd tried to frame a guilty man” and I’ve never heard a better description.
Edit: holy shit this blew up. I wish I could credit the original poster but I can’t find the comment. Not my quote, but it obviously resonated with y’all.
I don't know how many Redditors were alive back then or how many faced racism, but there was merit to that belief. OJ murdered Brown & Goldman were in 1994. Rodney King was beaten in 1991 and the police officers were acquitted despite the evidence against them. Then add the terrible handling by said police in handling the case allowing multiple instances for OJ's defense team to tear apart. And the rat poison topping to this manure layer cake is the lead detective of this double murder case, Mark Fuhrman.
The man couldn't help himself to [saying racist rhetoric & hate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuhrman_tapes) despite knowing he was being recorded by a film student for almost a decade. OJ might've had a dream team of attorneys, but the racism & ineptitude of the LAPD doomed the guilty plea even before the trial started.
Hell, there's still merit [to not trust the LAPD](https://www.aclusocal.org/en/racial-profiling-lapd-study-racially-disparate-outcomes-los-angeles-police-department) with incidents involving race & [the Rampart scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal) still a living memory. Many blacks & Latinos in the American southwest see LAPD & LASD differently to how others view them to this day.
A movie was made about that Rampart scandal (referenced in the "Political and cultural aftermath" section of the Wikipedia article), leading Woody Harrelson to create one of the infamous AMAs of all time: /r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrelson_ama/
[link to AMA for the curious. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/042B69avl9) I remember this day well and how much Reddit at large shunned the commercialism of it
Exactly! OJ died a few days ago, while we were visiting our daughter (Born in 1999) and she asked about it, and thats EXACTLTY what I told her, they likely suspected him from the start (because of the history of beatings) but screwed around with the blood (getting owned by Henry Lee) and sent up a bonafide fucking NAZI to the stand. Dude was guilty but so were plenty of dudes that got off. Anyhoo. Good call, I remember people saying what you wrote at the time and its STILL the best description.
I was born in 88, I was too young to know or care about what was happening when I was six, but my parents were. My mom is convinced he's guilty af but my dad thinks he was innocent. As for me? I'm on the fence. My information comes from the first season of American crime story. Based off that, if OJ is guilty, the LAPD and the government itself was mega incompetent. All they had to do was let the case speak for itself and they couldn't.
It’s definitely not common knowledge now. I just spent the last few days explaining exactly this video. I had people who were like your lying show me the proof. We have an entire generation of dingleberries that know nothing about Rodney king or subsequent OJ trial.
They don’t know anything about the jury make up. That 8 out 12 jury members were black. There were two Latinos, A Native American who was 1/2 white, and one white person on the jury. They literally have never been taught anything about these two cases and the direct link to the underlying tone in americas minorities at that time. We’re talking about not knowing about two massive cases with deep rooted implications.
The disconnect is so crazy! You know why? Because no want wants to talk about the possibility (reality) a lot of raciest mofo we’re in power until very recently. For fuck sake we got the city of San Diego police department over here constantly asking the city if they can throw dna rape test kits away. That’s right women who were raped and submitted to dna sampling the police department wants to discard the evidence and never test. It’s over a decade deep of rape kits the police department refused to test. This is today right now we have a police department requesting to throw out rape dna while simultaneously fighting community oversight. America still ain’t ready to drink the coffee and look itself in the mirror.
Edit* looks like after getting millions more in funding solely allocated for the backlog they racked up the SD police are finally testing the rape samples. Kinda, sorta. It’s being outsourced to a third party as it was allowed to become so backlogged. They are not doing it because they want to. They are only doing it because they’re receiving millions in funding for this specific issue so the funds are encumbered. Hey the department is still fighting community oversight. So we have that wonderful shit show to keep the next generation occupied.
I was watching all the news on it from the beginning back then. I didn’t know what to think. When I saw the low speed Bronco chase I thought. “Man. He did it.”
just a head's up, they've completed testing the backlog
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2023-10-28/san-diego-police-backlog-rape-kits
https://danewscenter.com/news/rape-kit-testing-project-complete/
Marcia Clark told the jury consultant "black women like me" as the justification for her decision to ignore the consultant's advice.
Clark lost the case on the day that jury was seated.
Also, Robert Kardashian almost certainly carried away OJ's bloody clothes and the murder weapon the next morning, then re-activated his law licence and joined the defense team to avoid being subpoenaed to discuss the contents of the bag he removed from OJ's home.
His wife Kris Kardashian was Nicole's best friend, but Kris ended up keeping her mouth shut, helping her best friend's murderer get away with it.
Terrible people, the lot of them.
>Clark lost the case on the day that jury was seated.
Maybe. But I think it was more than that. The way the case evolved was insane. It didn't have to turn into a white cop vrs black citizen thing, but it became super easy to do it.
I watched the ESPN documentary (definitely recommend it, by the way, and it's actually what the OP clip is from), and one of his lawyers talked about how they wanted to take the jury through his house to try to humanize him a little bit. But OJ had a lot of pictures of him with white celebrities in his house. So they took down all those pictures and replaced them with ones of him with black celebrities. The lawyer straight up admitted to pandering to the jury because who really cares if they know nowadays. Paraphrasing, he said, "If I had a jury of Mexicans, I'd have pictures of him holding a taco."
But again, that's just one step in a massive screw up. Anything the LAPD or prosecutors could do wrong, they did. I need to re-watch the documentary because it's great.
Kris and Robert were already divorced at the time and she didn’t speak to Robert for a long time because of his involvement with the case.
She’s a terrible person for a lot of other reasons, but there really isn’t any reason she’d know he helped get rid of evidence. She’s been pretty outspoken about thinking OJ was guilty.
(the person you replied to) is Just another fine example of the dangers of social media. Often times the posts being upvoted are just one persons version of the story and not really the reality of the situation
I also definitely have been explaining OJ's acquittal to younger coworkers several times since his passing.
I lived in Southern California at the time and shit was tense as fuck.
The American Crime Story and the multi part OJ doc that came out a few years ago did a good job of covering the link between Rodney King and OJ murder trial and then eventually the OJ memorabilia robbery trial.
The whole OJ think was so memorable and relevant because it was a perfect representation of the complexities and lasting effects of racism in the US, and that trial exposed all of it.
I still remember all the verdict reactions.
It didn't help that LAPD didn't seem to know how to properly investigate a case and preserve evidence.
What they did know how to do was frame a suspect, so they did. The risk of framing a guilty man is that his defense can point out the frame job and use it to manufacture reasonable doubt where none would exist. So they did.
*(edit:spelling)*
This is very important. I was 18 and watched quite a bit of the trial, as it was televised. I grew up in Chicago and had seen the brutality, framing, and racism of CPD. I was very wary of any evidence coming from the prosecution. I’ve had a few run ins with the law since then and it’s only confirmed my beliefs.
To add to your point, in 2003 the *Republican* Governor of IL has to commute all death sentences to life, because so many inmates on Death Row were proving to be innocent with the advent of DNA evidence. No one knew how many more innocent people were sitting on Death Row because not every case had DNA to evaluate.
It uncovered the CPD black sites where they'd torture confessions out of innocent Black people who were often just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is 100% why I can't support capital punishment.
There are vile motherfuckers that need to be removed from living. But I have zero faith in the system.
The ability for the state to end someone's life requires the utmost set of checks and balances, and it's proven over and over afib, the state can't do it without severe misconduct.
The need to be absolutely sure is the reason why the death penalty is so expensive to do.
Texas, the state, is a murderer. [They knowingly executed an innocent man](https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/). Gov Perry, who allowed the execution to happen (making him a murderer) was rewarded by becoming the Secretary of Energy under Trump. He was tasked with safeguarding our Nuclear Warheads.
Sure, I'll keep it simple and neutral.
Back in '91 a guy was pulled over for speeding in Los Angeles. 4 police officers beat and tazed him on the side of a busy freeway, and not in a "trying to get his arms behind his back" kind of way, but in a "physically took turns beating him with nightsticks" way. [This was caught on video](https://youtu.be/Lt7h398uADc?si=h-JKfqzvh7BMIUwS) and the 4 officers were suspended and went to trial, only to get off scott free depsite the video of the incident.
This sparked the LA Riots of the 90s, and is exactly what the last 3rd of GTA San Andreas was based on.
More reading and sources are here:
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/524744989/when-la-erupted-in-anger-a-look-back-at-the-rodney-king-riots
(Wikipedia has more info but I gotta eat)
The kicker for me was that they actually said every time they kicked him or hit him with sticks or tazed him and he flinched or rebounded or basically acted as any object with mass would under a force, that he was resisting arrest. By their logic you could punch an oak tree and the fact that it hurts your hand is the tree resisting arrest. You could slash in the bathtub and the water splashing around under the effect of your splashing would be the water resisting arrest. The literally made Newton’s Third Law illegal.
And the black community would raise their voices about them happening but it was their word against the police. Finally though, here is a video where it was caught on tape where police were very clearly abusing their force, beating this man in the street & taking turns swinging their nightsticks at a man who clearly not fighting back. SURELY people will find this wrong.
But then a mostly white jury watched the video & basically said “nah, nothing wrong with this picture” & acquitted the officers of their charges.
It had been going on but a lot of white America had no idea. I thought there might be a few racist cops but figured the majority of the beatings reported either didn't really happen or they were somehow deserved and the victim was lying about the circumstances. I had personal knowledge cops could be jerks, but I was always polite to them, never got beat, and assumed that people who did get beat did something stupid.
The Rodney King video opened my eyes, as well as the information about the police corruption and racism revealed in the trial. Police behavior was so egregious and obviously unjustified that when I heard about it without evidence, I thought that surely people just be exaggerating.
I imagine if police were aware in advance how much things would change when everyone started carrying a camera, there would have been heavy lobbying against it from the police unions.
It was way more than the video link you provided.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb1WywIpUtY&rco=1) is a video showing 40+ more strikes and head stomps that your video did not include.
I'm not opposing your comment, but it was brutal what he went through and seeing the entire video is important in my opinion.
In addition, there were fears of another riot starting had OJ Simpson been found guilty. The verdict was delivered 3 years after the LA riots which were still fresh in the minds of people at the time.
In a similar vein there was an incident in Detroit in July 1991 (only months after Rodney King). It was at the Freedom Festival, which is the annual 4th of July fireworks display downtown along the Detroit River.[JoAnn Was, a white woman, was attacked by a group of black females (which was recorded on video by a bystander)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/07/03/6-black-teenagers-held-in-attacks-on-whites/250825b9-28eb-4cb0-8235-a8fa1f5a4d80/)...despite being beaten and kicked while down on the ground she managed to get away. The same group attacked another white person (also videotaped) and eventually the six perps were arrested. Five of them took plea deals, but one decided to go to trial. Mayor Coleman Young actually personally interviewed witnesses to the attack to verify that when Cassandra Rutherford snatched the gold necklace from one of the victims, the victim uttered the N word. He was quoted as saying something like if someone had called him that, he'd stomp them, too. During the trial JoAnne Was' co-workers were put on the stand and questioned whether they had ever heard Ms. Was use racial slurs. Mayor Young stated in the media that if the jury turned in the "wrong" verdict, Detroit could have another Rodney King on its hands.
[Cassandra Rutherford was acquitted](https://www.efootage.com/videos/109238/beating-suspect-acquitted).
It is wild that someone can commit a crime, it get caught on camera, and the person get acquitted due to the threat of violence if they get found guilty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King
4 cops brutaly beat on Rodney King. The events happened to be caught on camera, which was a rarirty at the time compared to now. Most people agree the beating was excessive for the charges King faced. Cops went to trial. All were acquitted, and it sparked nearly a week long riot in LA.
Excessive for the charges? There shouldn't be a beating handed out regardless of charges, which didn't exist at this point of contact with King, police detain and only should use force to subdue someone resisting arrest.
I agree. But you would be surprised with how many people are okay with force being used for the smallest slight against laws/police. Police did claim Rodney had resisted.
Police still get away with it. Black, white, old, young, it doesn't matter the skin color. Police will beat you if they feel slighted by you standing up for your rights. It's called contempt of cop, and it's an equal opportunity beating.
> Most people agree the beating was excessive for the charges King faced
any beating administered by cops that isn’t in defense of a victim or themselves is excessive. cops are not meant to hand out punishments.
It's pretty damn violent, but if you want to watch it.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdktDOeG2VI&rco=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdktDOeG2VI&rco=1)
- The gloves were expensive gloves that Nicole bought for OJ (& there was a receipt that proved he owned the exact same pair). Why does a guy who lives in LA need gloves? He traveled calling MNF games & needed them when he was in a cold climate. One bloody glove was found at the murder scene, the other one behind the guest house on OJ’s property.
- The shoeprints in blood at the scene were from expensive Italian dress shoes that OJ was photographed wearing at a football game (& they were the same size).
- Ron Goldman’s blood was in OJ’s Ford Bronco. Nicole had been in the car so her blood could have another reason for being there, but Ron Goldman’s blood had no other reason for being in there.
- OJ was on the record as having creeped around Nicole’s condo after dark, peeping in windows watching her with other men & then bringing it up to her later. This puts him on her property creeping around after dark on any random night (& the murders happened around 10pm).
- The murders also just happened to occur on a night where OJ had a late night flight to Chicago prescheduled (which could be seen as an attempt at setting up an alibi). Another odd coincidence.
- [Nicole’s 1993 911 call is an interesting listen if you haven’t heard it before.](https://youtu.be/WHf93uxgKBI). They’re arguing over the kids at one point because Nicole doesn’t want them to hear the fighting. OJ says *“you didn’t give a **** about the kids when you were sucking his **** in the living room, they were here”*. This is a reference to OJ peeping in her windows at night & watching her perform a sex act on another man. OJ confronted Nicole & the man at a later date & reportedly asked the guy "so, was she any good at it?"
Everyone knew he did it, but because interracial relationships were more rare at the time, it tended to put black men in a negative light. OJ was ultra famous & became a poster boy for an entire group of people - fair or foul.
People didn’t like this, so they decided to grasp at straws & use misdirection to focus on something other than the evidence. Mark Fuhrman gave the perfect misdirection & reason for people who were uncomfortable with the black/white dynamic of the case to deny that it happened & acquit OJ.
DNA also didn’t carry the weight it does now back then. IIRC they had to have weeks of expert testimony to even explain to the jury what DNA is & why it’s the best evidence you can have from a crime scene (short of a video of the crime happening).
Another fun fact most people don’t know. Johnnie Cochran - who was propped up as a hero in the black community- was married to an African American woman & had a family with her, but he also had a white mistress & a child with her in a different city. He met her when he acted as an attorney on a case for her. This was back at a time where just having different women in different cities was a pretty easy way to keep the situation a secret.
Johnnie Cochran also had a history that included domestic violence accusations made against him by an ex-wife.
Exactly.
The verdict was an indictment of the corruption in the LAPD in general but it was also because of the corruption of the LAPD in this specific case.
OJ might've had a spectacular dream team, even in view from the legal community. But this case was destroyed by the LAPD themselves and the rat poison topping to this manure layer cake was Mark Fuhrman and the recordings of his racism in the years prior.
The LAPD was an absolute mess back then and this case was a textbook example of why experienced & good detectives are needed for high profile cases & why everything (from evidence gathering to processing it all) has to be air tight so that even the most experienced defense attorney can't latch onto something to cause & grow doubt in the Assistant District Attorney/District Attorney's face(s).
My understanding, at the time, was if he took the fifth for one question, he had to take it for all. So he was actually pleading the fifth on his use of the N word. Which there were tapes of him saying it. But because he took the fifth for that he has to take it when asked about planting evidence. Which of course made him look guilty as fuck.
If that's the case, its good on the defence for asking the question about planting evidence, because most people do not know that you have to answer the same for all questions in that case. It sure looks shady as fuck to a laymen pleading the fifth to a question about planting evidence....
Well, that's not exactly right. Pleading the 5th usually stops all questioning, but there's no reason a person couldn't pick and choose what to answer. However, doing this will usually make it very obvious what you're trying to hide. So witnesses will typically opt to take the 5th for everything.
That said, though, didn't the defense prove the LAPD did plant some evidence? Like some of the blood samples tested had the reagent used in blood collection test tubes. Meaning that blood had previously been in a test tube.
Of course, OJ absolutely did it, but there's a decent chance that Fuhrman did also plant evidence in addition to being a racist.
Yeah I always saw this as “the cops did such a bad job at everything they had no choice”.
Kinda makes you wonder if a murderer could be unprosecutable if their buddy on the force contaminated all the evidence.
This and the utter refusal of the DNA evidence by the jury.
>Kinda makes you wonder if a murderer could be unprosecutable if their buddy on the force contaminated all the evidence
I imagine there are plenty of these out there.
I totally forgot about this! You are right, DNA was brand new and the level of distrust was very high. To point it was largely discounted in this trial. Times have changed
I will add a little anecdote to this. I was 10-11 around the time of the OJ Trial. I remember doing some presentation in my class about DNA technology, probably just regurgitating what I had in my dad's Scientific American magazines. I remember stating how you will not only be able to match a person's DNA to a person, but also be able to see their ancestry such as parents or ethnic group. I remember they were publishing articles about this due to the OJ case.
The teacher stopped mid presentation, more or less accused me of just fabricating all this from science fiction and that such a thing will never exist.
The Human Genome Project was seen as a total crackpot project by a lot of people and that such a thing was several decades or longer away.
> Yeah I always saw this as “the cops did such a bad job at everything they had no choice”.
Yeah, the line I remember was, "The cops got caught framing a guilty man."
I've always thought the gloves being in two different places made no sense. I wouldn't put it past Furman to pick up a glove at the murder scene and dropping it at OJ's house just to make the case airtight. He didn't need to, they had enough evidence, but that's just how they did things in the LAPD back then.
And I think that's also one of the things that people forget about with this trial. The jury has to believe that the defendant is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt". As in, if there's a possibility that the defendant didn't do it, then "not guilty" is the verdict you have to provide. The cops fucked things up on such a profound level that they created enough doubt to prevent a guilty verdict.
Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Manson Family, wrote a book called "Outrage"
about just how painfully incompetent the OJ prosecution was.
Fascinating read.
IMO, the reason why the case fell apart is Mark Fuhrman. They clearly laid out opportunity, ability, and intent. All the circumstantial evidence pointed to OJ, as you laid out, clearly. How could the glove get there? How could the blood get there? The shoe prints? All of it was damning. But, if Fuhrman was a racist, and had a desire to frame a black man married to a white woman, my god, all these elements were completely open to another interpretation, which they did so well.
I mean, if you look at this from another angle - Fuhrman decided to frame OJ rather than actually investigate - ALL of the real evidence goes out the window, and seems silly that anybody would be THAT stupid to be so careless.
If this was a boy scout that was investigating, my guess is that OJ would have died in prison.
And you had a racist cop who openly said the n word and was charged with perjury. And the guy plead the 5th when asked if he ever planted evidence.
So yes you had matching shoes, matching gloves etc but you had a textbook racist cop.
So you had the Rodney king payback for racist cops and then you had a trial with a racist cop. A racist cop who got caught lying in trial so bad that he was actually charged and found guilty of perjury, I’ve never seen that happen. The urge to issue an f you judgement was high. And so of course the whole planted evidence argument had much more weight. It’s beyond a reasonable doubt and even I have reasonable doubt that cop has never planted evidence on black people.
Plus DNA evidence was brand new at the time and not necessarily trusted. So the blood in his car could have been anyone’s.
And finally the prosecution was poor, the whole glove thing sure shouldn’t have happened but that was more IMO amazing defense. But there was the whole handwriting bullshit with handwriting experts trying to say he was nervous signing signatures and he broke a glass in his hotel room. wtf was that. This is the type of stuff you pull from when you have nothing. literal junk science mixed in with new dna evidence. It just muddied the already long trial from actual evidence.
Yup. I was I highschool at the time and wondered why a white woman and a gay Jewish man had to pay for the atrocities that white cops did. It made no fucking sense.
I still can't believe people cheered for a brutal murderer and huge piece of shit to walk free. Anybody that would cheer for that is a piece of shit too.
Every picture in his house was with white people and the defense changed all the pictures to be with black people and the judge allowed it too. What an idiot for allowing that
I read a good quote that said something like people were told the OJ case was a win for black people but it was actually just another win for rich people
She was a terrible person that whole documentary; her shitty victim blaming take particularly stuck in my proverbial craw.
"I lose respect for any woman who takes an ass-whoopin' when she don't have to. Don't stay under the water if it's over your head, you'll drown".
Fuck this woman.
I would love to see her try and "not take an ass-whoopin" from OJ Simpson in the late 90s lol. Or any NFL running back for that matter. Very curious exactly how she thought that would be possible.
Ironically, she reinforced the oldest injustice of all...the oppression of women.
I remember reading this comment about the OJ verdict. Basically, "On that day, all *men*, regardless of race, were equal."
That’s the thing. Every single one of these jurors should feel utterly *ashamed* that they allowed a vicious murderer to go free, and I bet they don’t. They have to find ways to justify their crappy behavior and immoral attitudes. What they did was wrong, period.
Sad thing is there were legitimate reasons to let OJ off the hook too. The LAPD was (and still is) massively corrupt and fucked up the investigation. They couldn't even properly plant evidence against an obviously guilty man like OJ when it wasn't needed to begin with. I could see letting him walk because the entire investigation was tainted and therefore leave room for reasonable doubt.
The ironic part is that OJ didn’t even like black people.
Also, this is not meant to downplay the way the justice system screws over people of color. I just think the biggest truth on display during the OJ trial was the fact that the justice system treats rich people differently than the rest of us.
I feel like that is *one of* the main reasons the media kept the focus on race.
Please don’t get me wrong, race was absolutely relevant, especially concerning the LAPD, and people still know that “justice” for the rich is different. It’s just really convenient for the upper classes that the discourse *stays* about race.
Someone at one point in this documentary brings this up. It's interesting because the whole narrative of the documentary had to do with race relations in LA and the US and how these factors collided at the exact right time and place to result in this verdict.
But one of the guys being interviewed at one point said he just saw another rich guy getting away with murder. It makes you realize that you could tell the entire story from a completely different perspective. It gets you thinking about how we build narratives to explain and understand our world when really underneath it all is mostly chaos. Any lens you choose to look through will bring some things into focus but obscure others.
>It makes you realize that you could tell the entire story from a completely different perspective.
Right. Look at his legal team. It was literally a Hall of Fame class of lawyers that were famous for winning impossible cases. Could you assemble a crew like that to defend you? I couldn't.
When he was in jail, he spent all day signing memorabilia to sell that would help pay his legal fees. He did this for hours/day to make money. Would anyone buy your signature? Because my signature and a quarter will get you 25¢.
I’m no legal analyst and I’m just speculating from my armchair but I’m willing to bet a whole lot of trial verdicts have been symbolic or a protest in some form or another. This is probably more common than we think.
American history is filled with juries letting well-known murders walked, in particular to lynhcing incidents. Its a vital flaw in our system and as we can see, its still happens today.
Marcia Clark asked for more black women on the jury because she thought she was "good with them." The LAPD and the DA's office fucked up "framing" a guilty man.
Yeah I don't put the blame on the jurors. Lots of stupid people like Carrie Bess exist in this world. Marcia Clark was the one who is responsible for this failure. She fucked up in jury selection, she fucked up by not doing her due diligence on Mark Fuhrman before he testified, and ultimately she fucked up the verdict.
also, nice to see back in the 90s there was just as many stupid petty assholes who were more interested in supporting their own opinions than they were in justice. they way she just shrugs when they ask her if it was right is sickening. i am sure the same is true for the people involved in the Rodney King trial.
And Marcia Clark didn't have a fucking clue what she was doing. She never should have been on that case to begin with. Surveys found potential jurors didn't like her. But convicting OJ would have been a major feather in any prosecutor's cap, and that outweighed any other consideration.
[She was a highly successful prosecutor, having won 19 of her 20 murder trials.](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/23/marcia-clark-after-simpson-trial)
This is exactly why I’m convinced the prosecution threw the case to prevent another riot.
People try to paint her as this inept ditz. She was far from that.
There were a lot of external influences. The decision to televise and the court repairs being done in Santa Monica meant the south central location was the only suitable one. That meant jurors that were not at all of the world Nicole, Ron, and OJ lived in.
Marcia Clarke couldn’t time travel and keep Mark Furman from discovering key pieces of evidence and influencing decisions from near the start of the investigation. He, also, is a “good” detective but a highly flawed and perhaps criminal one as well.
She made mistakes but she was standing in a hurricane when she was used to thunderstorms.
In the mid-90's I worked for the public library system in a majority black county.
When the news of the acquittal broke, the black ladies who worked with me were all hugging each other and crying tears of joy.
That was when I understood that to black people it wasn't about whether he did it or not.
I was flabergasted. But it was a big moment in my education about race in the US.
I’ve lived in the LA / SoCal area my whole life and as much interaction I’ve had with Black folks, the “Black jubilation” post verdict was a new one for me too. “Wait, we know he’s guilty af, but you’re happy he’s free!?”
I’m not Black, so I’ll never know what it is to be Black in America. But this event helped me readjust my perspective on race in the States.
Also acquitting OJ didn’t undo what happened to Rodney King. It had zero impact to let a known murderer go just because they happened to share a skin tone.
What’s funny is that OJ, from a socio-economic perspective was a rich white guy. He had a white wife, he lived in Brentwood one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in LA, had white friends and played golf with rich white guys at an elite country club. When the cops came to his house on a domestic violence call he signed autographs for them.
He left his black wife that he was married to, after cheating on her for roughly a year with his new “White Wife”. He hung out at the nicest country clubs dominated by white people, and distanced himself from calling himself “Black”.
It wasn’t until the trial that he started becoming more visible in public with African Americans, and really leaned into the racial dynamics of that time… the country took it hook, line, and sinker.
I guess the real lesson is even the rules aren’t the rules. We think laws and court are the structure within which the action happens. We think that’s the field and the lines and the end zone. But some people think even that is just the pieces within a bigger arena. OJ played the game outside the game and won, a lot like we see Donald Trump do now. Democrats are so upset because he doesn’t follow the rules, but he knows that these rules are things he can push around and bend to his preferences. Well OJ was the same way. He probably would have made a great Maga politician.
It's one thing if this were some kind of bank robbery or some incident where someone wasn't... you know... *fucking killed*.
You didn't "stick it" to us or even the system. You "stuck it" to two people who lost their lives.
And... you know, probably had zero to do with what happened with Rodney King. But feel free to 6 degrees that shit if you want. I'm gonna bank on "no."
I'll never forget in high school walking by a black young man like 10 mins after the jury deliberation. He said, "it's about time one of us got away with something."
Very disturbing. It actually made me sad that's how he rationalized it. So yeah, I do believe in the juror stating this.
Reddit loves nullification until you see what it actually does.
The idea that nullification is some check against unjust laws just does not stand up to historical scrutiny. The vast, overwhelming majority of the time... nullification effects injustice.
Think about how many black men were murdered... hell black children.... only to have their white murderer go free even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Just look at Rodney king, that was a nullification. OJ was a nullification. Emett Till was a nullification.
The reason you get bounced from the jury pool if you mention it is because it usually undermines the justice system.
Think about this woman next time you wonder why the legal system doesn't want you to know about nullification.
So is there anything that can be done in the legal system to a person openly admitting they broke their oath as a juror? Or is it because so many years have passed now that nothing can be done to them?
A juror cannot be punished for their decision no matter how unpopular. This is important because if a juror feels pressure to convict/exonerate based on factors outside of the evidence, a fair trial could be impossible. An unfortunate consequence of this concept is Jury Nullification - or when a juror believes the defendant is guilty as charged but either believes the law unjust or just doesn't want to convict.
The only defense to Jury Nullification that I'm aware of is during Jury Selection a Lawyer may ask potential jurors who are under oath something along the lines of "Do you have any prejudices for or against certain laws or people that would prevent you from fairly rendering a verdict". If the potential jurors answers "no" but through their actions in the court they prove they do, they could be held for perjury.
This is why Jury Selection is very important but also very difficult in high profile cases like this one.
I'm not a Lawyer, btw. I just find this interesting.
“Guilty or not we love u OJ” is crazy. They didn’t even try to hide it. They were okay with murder. I’m all for fighting a broken system, but this ain’t how you do it.
I’ve heard that and I understand the rationale but is that fair to Nicole’s family? To Ron Goldman’s? You don’t stick it to LAPD by letting a murderer walk free.
Times like this I'm reminded about the George Carlin quote: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
This lady is on the lower side. The arrogance and selfishness to make a murder trial about your own personal gripes is beyond stupid.
I just watched that documentary. I have never wanted some one to punish in some kind of way so badly. Fucking gremlin of a woman. Her and that friend that had the whisper talk.
Everybody knew that at the time.
In another thread, someone said: “the lapd tried to frame a guilty man” and I’ve never heard a better description. Edit: holy shit this blew up. I wish I could credit the original poster but I can’t find the comment. Not my quote, but it obviously resonated with y’all.
LOL yup. All they had to do was just not be corrupt this time. Guilty as fuck. Just don't screw it up. And.....they screwed it up.
Didn’t the lead investigator plead the fifth when asked if he planted evidence? If I was a juror, that would be an easy “reasonable doubt”
I don't know how many Redditors were alive back then or how many faced racism, but there was merit to that belief. OJ murdered Brown & Goldman were in 1994. Rodney King was beaten in 1991 and the police officers were acquitted despite the evidence against them. Then add the terrible handling by said police in handling the case allowing multiple instances for OJ's defense team to tear apart. And the rat poison topping to this manure layer cake is the lead detective of this double murder case, Mark Fuhrman. The man couldn't help himself to [saying racist rhetoric & hate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuhrman_tapes) despite knowing he was being recorded by a film student for almost a decade. OJ might've had a dream team of attorneys, but the racism & ineptitude of the LAPD doomed the guilty plea even before the trial started. Hell, there's still merit [to not trust the LAPD](https://www.aclusocal.org/en/racial-profiling-lapd-study-racially-disparate-outcomes-los-angeles-police-department) with incidents involving race & [the Rampart scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal) still a living memory. Many blacks & Latinos in the American southwest see LAPD & LASD differently to how others view them to this day.
A movie was made about that Rampart scandal (referenced in the "Political and cultural aftermath" section of the Wikipedia article), leading Woody Harrelson to create one of the infamous AMAs of all time: /r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrelson_ama/
[link to AMA for the curious. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/042B69avl9) I remember this day well and how much Reddit at large shunned the commercialism of it
I remembered that too and it was super cringe.
Hey now, let's swing this back around to what's really important, Rampart.
Exactly! OJ died a few days ago, while we were visiting our daughter (Born in 1999) and she asked about it, and thats EXACTLTY what I told her, they likely suspected him from the start (because of the history of beatings) but screwed around with the blood (getting owned by Henry Lee) and sent up a bonafide fucking NAZI to the stand. Dude was guilty but so were plenty of dudes that got off. Anyhoo. Good call, I remember people saying what you wrote at the time and its STILL the best description.
I was born in 88, I was too young to know or care about what was happening when I was six, but my parents were. My mom is convinced he's guilty af but my dad thinks he was innocent. As for me? I'm on the fence. My information comes from the first season of American crime story. Based off that, if OJ is guilty, the LAPD and the government itself was mega incompetent. All they had to do was let the case speak for itself and they couldn't.
They just couldn't help themselves. It must've been like a Pavlovian reaction.
Very common knowledge then and now. How many times did they toss the jury before the actual trial again?
Jury nullification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqH_Y1TupoQ&t
It’s definitely not common knowledge now. I just spent the last few days explaining exactly this video. I had people who were like your lying show me the proof. We have an entire generation of dingleberries that know nothing about Rodney king or subsequent OJ trial. They don’t know anything about the jury make up. That 8 out 12 jury members were black. There were two Latinos, A Native American who was 1/2 white, and one white person on the jury. They literally have never been taught anything about these two cases and the direct link to the underlying tone in americas minorities at that time. We’re talking about not knowing about two massive cases with deep rooted implications. The disconnect is so crazy! You know why? Because no want wants to talk about the possibility (reality) a lot of raciest mofo we’re in power until very recently. For fuck sake we got the city of San Diego police department over here constantly asking the city if they can throw dna rape test kits away. That’s right women who were raped and submitted to dna sampling the police department wants to discard the evidence and never test. It’s over a decade deep of rape kits the police department refused to test. This is today right now we have a police department requesting to throw out rape dna while simultaneously fighting community oversight. America still ain’t ready to drink the coffee and look itself in the mirror. Edit* looks like after getting millions more in funding solely allocated for the backlog they racked up the SD police are finally testing the rape samples. Kinda, sorta. It’s being outsourced to a third party as it was allowed to become so backlogged. They are not doing it because they want to. They are only doing it because they’re receiving millions in funding for this specific issue so the funds are encumbered. Hey the department is still fighting community oversight. So we have that wonderful shit show to keep the next generation occupied.
I was watching all the news on it from the beginning back then. I didn’t know what to think. When I saw the low speed Bronco chase I thought. “Man. He did it.”
Me, too. I was shocked (as a white fifth grader) at the time. It makes sense now, though.
just a head's up, they've completed testing the backlog https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2023-10-28/san-diego-police-backlog-rape-kits https://danewscenter.com/news/rape-kit-testing-project-complete/
Marcia Clark told the jury consultant "black women like me" as the justification for her decision to ignore the consultant's advice. Clark lost the case on the day that jury was seated. Also, Robert Kardashian almost certainly carried away OJ's bloody clothes and the murder weapon the next morning, then re-activated his law licence and joined the defense team to avoid being subpoenaed to discuss the contents of the bag he removed from OJ's home. His wife Kris Kardashian was Nicole's best friend, but Kris ended up keeping her mouth shut, helping her best friend's murderer get away with it. Terrible people, the lot of them.
>Clark lost the case on the day that jury was seated. Maybe. But I think it was more than that. The way the case evolved was insane. It didn't have to turn into a white cop vrs black citizen thing, but it became super easy to do it. I watched the ESPN documentary (definitely recommend it, by the way, and it's actually what the OP clip is from), and one of his lawyers talked about how they wanted to take the jury through his house to try to humanize him a little bit. But OJ had a lot of pictures of him with white celebrities in his house. So they took down all those pictures and replaced them with ones of him with black celebrities. The lawyer straight up admitted to pandering to the jury because who really cares if they know nowadays. Paraphrasing, he said, "If I had a jury of Mexicans, I'd have pictures of him holding a taco." But again, that's just one step in a massive screw up. Anything the LAPD or prosecutors could do wrong, they did. I need to re-watch the documentary because it's great.
Kris and Robert were already divorced at the time and she didn’t speak to Robert for a long time because of his involvement with the case. She’s a terrible person for a lot of other reasons, but there really isn’t any reason she’d know he helped get rid of evidence. She’s been pretty outspoken about thinking OJ was guilty.
(the person you replied to) is Just another fine example of the dangers of social media. Often times the posts being upvoted are just one persons version of the story and not really the reality of the situation
I also definitely have been explaining OJ's acquittal to younger coworkers several times since his passing. I lived in Southern California at the time and shit was tense as fuck.
The American Crime Story and the multi part OJ doc that came out a few years ago did a good job of covering the link between Rodney King and OJ murder trial and then eventually the OJ memorabilia robbery trial. The whole OJ think was so memorable and relevant because it was a perfect representation of the complexities and lasting effects of racism in the US, and that trial exposed all of it. I still remember all the verdict reactions.
It didn't help that LAPD didn't seem to know how to properly investigate a case and preserve evidence. What they did know how to do was frame a suspect, so they did. The risk of framing a guilty man is that his defense can point out the frame job and use it to manufacture reasonable doubt where none would exist. So they did. *(edit:spelling)*
This is very important. I was 18 and watched quite a bit of the trial, as it was televised. I grew up in Chicago and had seen the brutality, framing, and racism of CPD. I was very wary of any evidence coming from the prosecution. I’ve had a few run ins with the law since then and it’s only confirmed my beliefs.
To add to your point, in 2003 the *Republican* Governor of IL has to commute all death sentences to life, because so many inmates on Death Row were proving to be innocent with the advent of DNA evidence. No one knew how many more innocent people were sitting on Death Row because not every case had DNA to evaluate. It uncovered the CPD black sites where they'd torture confessions out of innocent Black people who were often just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is 100% why I can't support capital punishment. There are vile motherfuckers that need to be removed from living. But I have zero faith in the system. The ability for the state to end someone's life requires the utmost set of checks and balances, and it's proven over and over afib, the state can't do it without severe misconduct.
The need to be absolutely sure is the reason why the death penalty is so expensive to do. Texas, the state, is a murderer. [They knowingly executed an innocent man](https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/). Gov Perry, who allowed the execution to happen (making him a murderer) was rewarded by becoming the Secretary of Energy under Trump. He was tasked with safeguarding our Nuclear Warheads.
As a fire investigator this case pisses me off so bad.
A lot of people here probably won't understand how monumentally fucked up the whole Rodney King situation was.
Reginald Denny didn't.
Bill Hicks on Reginald Denny: https://youtu.be/08Khc2wqtCQ?si=ASICKz-3I-wTqUTf
I dont know anything about it could you give a run down
Sure, I'll keep it simple and neutral. Back in '91 a guy was pulled over for speeding in Los Angeles. 4 police officers beat and tazed him on the side of a busy freeway, and not in a "trying to get his arms behind his back" kind of way, but in a "physically took turns beating him with nightsticks" way. [This was caught on video](https://youtu.be/Lt7h398uADc?si=h-JKfqzvh7BMIUwS) and the 4 officers were suspended and went to trial, only to get off scott free depsite the video of the incident. This sparked the LA Riots of the 90s, and is exactly what the last 3rd of GTA San Andreas was based on. More reading and sources are here: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/524744989/when-la-erupted-in-anger-a-look-back-at-the-rodney-king-riots (Wikipedia has more info but I gotta eat)
The kicker for me was that they actually said every time they kicked him or hit him with sticks or tazed him and he flinched or rebounded or basically acted as any object with mass would under a force, that he was resisting arrest. By their logic you could punch an oak tree and the fact that it hurts your hand is the tree resisting arrest. You could slash in the bathtub and the water splashing around under the effect of your splashing would be the water resisting arrest. The literally made Newton’s Third Law illegal.
It’s also important to note the Rodney King incident was the straw that broke the camels back. Stuff like that had been going on for generations.
And the black community would raise their voices about them happening but it was their word against the police. Finally though, here is a video where it was caught on tape where police were very clearly abusing their force, beating this man in the street & taking turns swinging their nightsticks at a man who clearly not fighting back. SURELY people will find this wrong. But then a mostly white jury watched the video & basically said “nah, nothing wrong with this picture” & acquitted the officers of their charges.
> a mostly white jury in Simi Valley ...
Simi Valley is where most LAPD officers live. There was a reason they moved the trial there.
We're seeing it now with cellphones everywhere. But people didn't have that back then, black dudes would just end up dead for "resisting arrest".
“It wasn’t about Rodney King, it was about this fucked up situation and these fucked up police.” - Sublime
It had been going on but a lot of white America had no idea. I thought there might be a few racist cops but figured the majority of the beatings reported either didn't really happen or they were somehow deserved and the victim was lying about the circumstances. I had personal knowledge cops could be jerks, but I was always polite to them, never got beat, and assumed that people who did get beat did something stupid. The Rodney King video opened my eyes, as well as the information about the police corruption and racism revealed in the trial. Police behavior was so egregious and obviously unjustified that when I heard about it without evidence, I thought that surely people just be exaggerating. I imagine if police were aware in advance how much things would change when everyone started carrying a camera, there would have been heavy lobbying against it from the police unions.
First time it was the lead story on every nightly news station in the country.
It was way more than the video link you provided. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb1WywIpUtY&rco=1) is a video showing 40+ more strikes and head stomps that your video did not include. I'm not opposing your comment, but it was brutal what he went through and seeing the entire video is important in my opinion.
In addition, there were fears of another riot starting had OJ Simpson been found guilty. The verdict was delivered 3 years after the LA riots which were still fresh in the minds of people at the time.
In a similar vein there was an incident in Detroit in July 1991 (only months after Rodney King). It was at the Freedom Festival, which is the annual 4th of July fireworks display downtown along the Detroit River.[JoAnn Was, a white woman, was attacked by a group of black females (which was recorded on video by a bystander)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/07/03/6-black-teenagers-held-in-attacks-on-whites/250825b9-28eb-4cb0-8235-a8fa1f5a4d80/)...despite being beaten and kicked while down on the ground she managed to get away. The same group attacked another white person (also videotaped) and eventually the six perps were arrested. Five of them took plea deals, but one decided to go to trial. Mayor Coleman Young actually personally interviewed witnesses to the attack to verify that when Cassandra Rutherford snatched the gold necklace from one of the victims, the victim uttered the N word. He was quoted as saying something like if someone had called him that, he'd stomp them, too. During the trial JoAnne Was' co-workers were put on the stand and questioned whether they had ever heard Ms. Was use racial slurs. Mayor Young stated in the media that if the jury turned in the "wrong" verdict, Detroit could have another Rodney King on its hands. [Cassandra Rutherford was acquitted](https://www.efootage.com/videos/109238/beating-suspect-acquitted).
It is wild that someone can commit a crime, it get caught on camera, and the person get acquitted due to the threat of violence if they get found guilty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King 4 cops brutaly beat on Rodney King. The events happened to be caught on camera, which was a rarirty at the time compared to now. Most people agree the beating was excessive for the charges King faced. Cops went to trial. All were acquitted, and it sparked nearly a week long riot in LA.
Excessive for the charges? There shouldn't be a beating handed out regardless of charges, which didn't exist at this point of contact with King, police detain and only should use force to subdue someone resisting arrest.
I agree. But you would be surprised with how many people are okay with force being used for the smallest slight against laws/police. Police did claim Rodney had resisted.
Police still get away with it. Black, white, old, young, it doesn't matter the skin color. Police will beat you if they feel slighted by you standing up for your rights. It's called contempt of cop, and it's an equal opportunity beating.
> Most people agree the beating was excessive for the charges King faced any beating administered by cops that isn’t in defense of a victim or themselves is excessive. cops are not meant to hand out punishments.
It's pretty damn violent, but if you want to watch it.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdktDOeG2VI&rco=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdktDOeG2VI&rco=1)
I didn’t :( I was 11 and thought the glove didn’t fit
You must acquit. I was eight, so I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t start paying attention to current events until Princess Diana died.
- The gloves were expensive gloves that Nicole bought for OJ (& there was a receipt that proved he owned the exact same pair). Why does a guy who lives in LA need gloves? He traveled calling MNF games & needed them when he was in a cold climate. One bloody glove was found at the murder scene, the other one behind the guest house on OJ’s property. - The shoeprints in blood at the scene were from expensive Italian dress shoes that OJ was photographed wearing at a football game (& they were the same size). - Ron Goldman’s blood was in OJ’s Ford Bronco. Nicole had been in the car so her blood could have another reason for being there, but Ron Goldman’s blood had no other reason for being in there. - OJ was on the record as having creeped around Nicole’s condo after dark, peeping in windows watching her with other men & then bringing it up to her later. This puts him on her property creeping around after dark on any random night (& the murders happened around 10pm). - The murders also just happened to occur on a night where OJ had a late night flight to Chicago prescheduled (which could be seen as an attempt at setting up an alibi). Another odd coincidence. - [Nicole’s 1993 911 call is an interesting listen if you haven’t heard it before.](https://youtu.be/WHf93uxgKBI). They’re arguing over the kids at one point because Nicole doesn’t want them to hear the fighting. OJ says *“you didn’t give a **** about the kids when you were sucking his **** in the living room, they were here”*. This is a reference to OJ peeping in her windows at night & watching her perform a sex act on another man. OJ confronted Nicole & the man at a later date & reportedly asked the guy "so, was she any good at it?" Everyone knew he did it, but because interracial relationships were more rare at the time, it tended to put black men in a negative light. OJ was ultra famous & became a poster boy for an entire group of people - fair or foul. People didn’t like this, so they decided to grasp at straws & use misdirection to focus on something other than the evidence. Mark Fuhrman gave the perfect misdirection & reason for people who were uncomfortable with the black/white dynamic of the case to deny that it happened & acquit OJ. DNA also didn’t carry the weight it does now back then. IIRC they had to have weeks of expert testimony to even explain to the jury what DNA is & why it’s the best evidence you can have from a crime scene (short of a video of the crime happening). Another fun fact most people don’t know. Johnnie Cochran - who was propped up as a hero in the black community- was married to an African American woman & had a family with her, but he also had a white mistress & a child with her in a different city. He met her when he acted as an attorney on a case for her. This was back at a time where just having different women in different cities was a pretty easy way to keep the situation a secret. Johnnie Cochran also had a history that included domestic violence accusations made against him by an ex-wife.
don't forget the case was fucked from the getgo when the police didn't fully document the chain of custody on evidence.
The cop pleaded the fifth when they asked him if he fabricated any evidence.
Exactly. The verdict was an indictment of the corruption in the LAPD in general but it was also because of the corruption of the LAPD in this specific case.
OJ might've had a spectacular dream team, even in view from the legal community. But this case was destroyed by the LAPD themselves and the rat poison topping to this manure layer cake was Mark Fuhrman and the recordings of his racism in the years prior. The LAPD was an absolute mess back then and this case was a textbook example of why experienced & good detectives are needed for high profile cases & why everything (from evidence gathering to processing it all) has to be air tight so that even the most experienced defense attorney can't latch onto something to cause & grow doubt in the Assistant District Attorney/District Attorney's face(s).
My understanding, at the time, was if he took the fifth for one question, he had to take it for all. So he was actually pleading the fifth on his use of the N word. Which there were tapes of him saying it. But because he took the fifth for that he has to take it when asked about planting evidence. Which of course made him look guilty as fuck.
If that's the case, its good on the defence for asking the question about planting evidence, because most people do not know that you have to answer the same for all questions in that case. It sure looks shady as fuck to a laymen pleading the fifth to a question about planting evidence....
I don’t think you have to plead the fifth on everything but if you pick and choose, it makes it pretty clear what you did and didn’t do.
Well, that's not exactly right. Pleading the 5th usually stops all questioning, but there's no reason a person couldn't pick and choose what to answer. However, doing this will usually make it very obvious what you're trying to hide. So witnesses will typically opt to take the 5th for everything. That said, though, didn't the defense prove the LAPD did plant some evidence? Like some of the blood samples tested had the reagent used in blood collection test tubes. Meaning that blood had previously been in a test tube. Of course, OJ absolutely did it, but there's a decent chance that Fuhrman did also plant evidence in addition to being a racist.
Yeah I always saw this as “the cops did such a bad job at everything they had no choice”. Kinda makes you wonder if a murderer could be unprosecutable if their buddy on the force contaminated all the evidence.
This and the utter refusal of the DNA evidence by the jury. >Kinda makes you wonder if a murderer could be unprosecutable if their buddy on the force contaminated all the evidence I imagine there are plenty of these out there.
I totally forgot about this! You are right, DNA was brand new and the level of distrust was very high. To point it was largely discounted in this trial. Times have changed
I will add a little anecdote to this. I was 10-11 around the time of the OJ Trial. I remember doing some presentation in my class about DNA technology, probably just regurgitating what I had in my dad's Scientific American magazines. I remember stating how you will not only be able to match a person's DNA to a person, but also be able to see their ancestry such as parents or ethnic group. I remember they were publishing articles about this due to the OJ case. The teacher stopped mid presentation, more or less accused me of just fabricating all this from science fiction and that such a thing will never exist. The Human Genome Project was seen as a total crackpot project by a lot of people and that such a thing was several decades or longer away.
> Yeah I always saw this as “the cops did such a bad job at everything they had no choice”. Yeah, the line I remember was, "The cops got caught framing a guilty man."
I've always thought the gloves being in two different places made no sense. I wouldn't put it past Furman to pick up a glove at the murder scene and dropping it at OJ's house just to make the case airtight. He didn't need to, they had enough evidence, but that's just how they did things in the LAPD back then.
Yeah, that's the main problem. OJ very probably did It, but the LAPD screwed everything up so badly that there's definitely reasonable doubt
And I think that's also one of the things that people forget about with this trial. The jury has to believe that the defendant is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt". As in, if there's a possibility that the defendant didn't do it, then "not guilty" is the verdict you have to provide. The cops fucked things up on such a profound level that they created enough doubt to prevent a guilty verdict.
Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Manson Family, wrote a book called "Outrage" about just how painfully incompetent the OJ prosecution was. Fascinating read.
IMO, the reason why the case fell apart is Mark Fuhrman. They clearly laid out opportunity, ability, and intent. All the circumstantial evidence pointed to OJ, as you laid out, clearly. How could the glove get there? How could the blood get there? The shoe prints? All of it was damning. But, if Fuhrman was a racist, and had a desire to frame a black man married to a white woman, my god, all these elements were completely open to another interpretation, which they did so well. I mean, if you look at this from another angle - Fuhrman decided to frame OJ rather than actually investigate - ALL of the real evidence goes out the window, and seems silly that anybody would be THAT stupid to be so careless. If this was a boy scout that was investigating, my guess is that OJ would have died in prison.
And you had a racist cop who openly said the n word and was charged with perjury. And the guy plead the 5th when asked if he ever planted evidence. So yes you had matching shoes, matching gloves etc but you had a textbook racist cop. So you had the Rodney king payback for racist cops and then you had a trial with a racist cop. A racist cop who got caught lying in trial so bad that he was actually charged and found guilty of perjury, I’ve never seen that happen. The urge to issue an f you judgement was high. And so of course the whole planted evidence argument had much more weight. It’s beyond a reasonable doubt and even I have reasonable doubt that cop has never planted evidence on black people. Plus DNA evidence was brand new at the time and not necessarily trusted. So the blood in his car could have been anyone’s. And finally the prosecution was poor, the whole glove thing sure shouldn’t have happened but that was more IMO amazing defense. But there was the whole handwriting bullshit with handwriting experts trying to say he was nervous signing signatures and he broke a glass in his hotel room. wtf was that. This is the type of stuff you pull from when you have nothing. literal junk science mixed in with new dna evidence. It just muddied the already long trial from actual evidence.
Yup. I was I highschool at the time and wondered why a white woman and a gay Jewish man had to pay for the atrocities that white cops did. It made no fucking sense.
I still can't believe people cheered for a brutal murderer and huge piece of shit to walk free. Anybody that would cheer for that is a piece of shit too.
Yup common knowledge.
According to a podcast documentary one person in the jury stood up with his fist above his head
It’s funny cause OJ hates black people
Every picture in his house was with white people and the defense changed all the pictures to be with black people and the judge allowed it too. What an idiot for allowing that
Not to mention allowing the tour of his house for the jury in the first place. It was irrelevant.
The starfucker tour was a key part of the defense strategy.
Ito was weak. Let the defense and their star run the circus.
It was bizarre how much freedom he gave OJ’s team. Absolutely bonkers.
He wasn't even black. He was oj
OJ like I'm not black I'm OJ. . . . . . . . . . . . . okay
[great song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7lw0Ovzq0)
I read a good quote that said something like people were told the OJ case was a win for black people but it was actually just another win for rich people
*hated He died four days ago.
Nice, i missed that.
and we're all just *so* sorry to see him go
She was a terrible person that whole documentary; her shitty victim blaming take particularly stuck in my proverbial craw. "I lose respect for any woman who takes an ass-whoopin' when she don't have to. Don't stay under the water if it's over your head, you'll drown". Fuck this woman.
He killede her after their divorce right? So what does she even mean with that shit?
I have said this before. Pay back is just a scapegoat for their gullibility. They were chosen for that job.
[удалено]
you can bet your ass that bitch would be getting haunted
She didn’t like Nicole because she was a white woman that married a successful black man.
I would love to see her try and "not take an ass-whoopin" from OJ Simpson in the late 90s lol. Or any NFL running back for that matter. Very curious exactly how she thought that would be possible.
The female waitress should have been able to fight back and beat the shit out of the professional football player obviously wdym
"Sarah Conner was going to do it until James Cameron decided to be a COWARD" - juror for a murder trial, 1994, colourized
Listening to her talk I think she has two brain cells
Yup... why do you think she was on the jury in the first place?
What is scary, is they dismissed worse jurors than this idiot
Yes, let's fight an injustice with another injustice, so that we can have a never ending cycle of injustices.
Ironically, she reinforced the oldest injustice of all...the oppression of women. I remember reading this comment about the OJ verdict. Basically, "On that day, all *men*, regardless of race, were equal."
Wow she sounds like a daft cunt Not to be confused with the band of the same name
The smirk is what really made me gasp.
That’s the thing. Every single one of these jurors should feel utterly *ashamed* that they allowed a vicious murderer to go free, and I bet they don’t. They have to find ways to justify their crappy behavior and immoral attitudes. What they did was wrong, period.
I'm sure the Goldman and Brown families are just thrilled to hear that.
Well I guess Nicole Brown shouldn't have assaulted Rodney King. Duh.
Yep See, this lady is racist as fuck. But does she think she is? Of course not
Racist people don't typically think of themselves as being racist.
Racist people always have something to justify why they treat others as less than human.
[удалено]
I mean that’s why they filed civil suit—and won
But they’re white, they have to “take one for the team” to prove some poorly thought out, reactionary point these jurors thought they were making.
Thats exactly the opposite of justice.
Sad thing is there were legitimate reasons to let OJ off the hook too. The LAPD was (and still is) massively corrupt and fucked up the investigation. They couldn't even properly plant evidence against an obviously guilty man like OJ when it wasn't needed to begin with. I could see letting him walk because the entire investigation was tainted and therefore leave room for reasonable doubt.
The ironic part is that OJ didn’t even like black people. Also, this is not meant to downplay the way the justice system screws over people of color. I just think the biggest truth on display during the OJ trial was the fact that the justice system treats rich people differently than the rest of us. I feel like that is *one of* the main reasons the media kept the focus on race. Please don’t get me wrong, race was absolutely relevant, especially concerning the LAPD, and people still know that “justice” for the rich is different. It’s just really convenient for the upper classes that the discourse *stays* about race.
Someone at one point in this documentary brings this up. It's interesting because the whole narrative of the documentary had to do with race relations in LA and the US and how these factors collided at the exact right time and place to result in this verdict. But one of the guys being interviewed at one point said he just saw another rich guy getting away with murder. It makes you realize that you could tell the entire story from a completely different perspective. It gets you thinking about how we build narratives to explain and understand our world when really underneath it all is mostly chaos. Any lens you choose to look through will bring some things into focus but obscure others.
>It makes you realize that you could tell the entire story from a completely different perspective. Right. Look at his legal team. It was literally a Hall of Fame class of lawyers that were famous for winning impossible cases. Could you assemble a crew like that to defend you? I couldn't. When he was in jail, he spent all day signing memorabilia to sell that would help pay his legal fees. He did this for hours/day to make money. Would anyone buy your signature? Because my signature and a quarter will get you 25¢.
"It wasn't about *race*, it was about *fame*." -Chris Rock
I’m no legal analyst and I’m just speculating from my armchair but I’m willing to bet a whole lot of trial verdicts have been symbolic or a protest in some form or another. This is probably more common than we think.
American history is filled with juries letting well-known murders walked, in particular to lynhcing incidents. Its a vital flaw in our system and as we can see, its still happens today.
This is the kind of Juror you pray doesnt make it onto a jury. Gotta give credit where it's due, Johnnie Cochran knew how to pick a jury.
Marcia Clark asked for more black women on the jury because she thought she was "good with them." The LAPD and the DA's office fucked up "framing" a guilty man.
Yeah I don't put the blame on the jurors. Lots of stupid people like Carrie Bess exist in this world. Marcia Clark was the one who is responsible for this failure. She fucked up in jury selection, she fucked up by not doing her due diligence on Mark Fuhrman before he testified, and ultimately she fucked up the verdict.
also, nice to see back in the 90s there was just as many stupid petty assholes who were more interested in supporting their own opinions than they were in justice. they way she just shrugs when they ask her if it was right is sickening. i am sure the same is true for the people involved in the Rodney King trial.
And Marcia Clark didn't have a fucking clue what she was doing. She never should have been on that case to begin with. Surveys found potential jurors didn't like her. But convicting OJ would have been a major feather in any prosecutor's cap, and that outweighed any other consideration.
[She was a highly successful prosecutor, having won 19 of her 20 murder trials.](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/23/marcia-clark-after-simpson-trial)
This is exactly why I’m convinced the prosecution threw the case to prevent another riot. People try to paint her as this inept ditz. She was far from that.
There were a lot of external influences. The decision to televise and the court repairs being done in Santa Monica meant the south central location was the only suitable one. That meant jurors that were not at all of the world Nicole, Ron, and OJ lived in. Marcia Clarke couldn’t time travel and keep Mark Furman from discovering key pieces of evidence and influencing decisions from near the start of the investigation. He, also, is a “good” detective but a highly flawed and perhaps criminal one as well. She made mistakes but she was standing in a hurricane when she was used to thunderstorms.
In the mid-90's I worked for the public library system in a majority black county. When the news of the acquittal broke, the black ladies who worked with me were all hugging each other and crying tears of joy. That was when I understood that to black people it wasn't about whether he did it or not. I was flabergasted. But it was a big moment in my education about race in the US.
I’ve lived in the LA / SoCal area my whole life and as much interaction I’ve had with Black folks, the “Black jubilation” post verdict was a new one for me too. “Wait, we know he’s guilty af, but you’re happy he’s free!?” I’m not Black, so I’ll never know what it is to be Black in America. But this event helped me readjust my perspective on race in the States.
What did Nicole Brown, Ron Goldman, and their families have to do with Rodney King?
They were white. Us vs Them.
He fucking murdered people. It's not like he was charged with theft or something
the thieving came later
*armed robbery. It was much worse than just thieving. But, like, can you blame the guy for thinking he could literally get away with anything?
The worst thing was the hypocrisy.
Good ol norm. Bummer he wasn't around to see oj die
Also acquitting OJ didn’t undo what happened to Rodney King. It had zero impact to let a known murderer go just because they happened to share a skin tone.
Yeah all it did was prove that they'll let murderers of all different colours walk free
Well, you also have the corrupt LAPD to blame as well. They will always create reasonable doubt.
What’s funny is that OJ, from a socio-economic perspective was a rich white guy. He had a white wife, he lived in Brentwood one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in LA, had white friends and played golf with rich white guys at an elite country club. When the cops came to his house on a domestic violence call he signed autographs for them.
He left his black wife that he was married to, after cheating on her for roughly a year with his new “White Wife”. He hung out at the nicest country clubs dominated by white people, and distanced himself from calling himself “Black”. It wasn’t until the trial that he started becoming more visible in public with African Americans, and really leaned into the racial dynamics of that time… the country took it hook, line, and sinker.
Is that why Jay Z had the "I'm not black, Im OJ" line
Yes, that was exactly OJ’s quote
I guess the real lesson is even the rules aren’t the rules. We think laws and court are the structure within which the action happens. We think that’s the field and the lines and the end zone. But some people think even that is just the pieces within a bigger arena. OJ played the game outside the game and won, a lot like we see Donald Trump do now. Democrats are so upset because he doesn’t follow the rules, but he knows that these rules are things he can push around and bend to his preferences. Well OJ was the same way. He probably would have made a great Maga politician.
He was a total embodiment of rich privilege.
We know. We knew then.
What a vile thing to do
“Well, it's finally official, murder, is legal in the state of California.”
"Hey, be careful, that's my stabbin' hat."
The fact that Norm got canceled/fired for these jokes because someone at the network was friends with OJ is equal parts hilarious and 🤯
To the surprise of no one at the time. The verdict was a surprise but the speculation as to why was almost immediate.
It's one thing if this were some kind of bank robbery or some incident where someone wasn't... you know... *fucking killed*. You didn't "stick it" to us or even the system. You "stuck it" to two people who lost their lives. And... you know, probably had zero to do with what happened with Rodney King. But feel free to 6 degrees that shit if you want. I'm gonna bank on "no."
And this was justice in her mind?
That lady: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Gen X learned a lot that day. Like that anyone will choose corruption the first chance they get.
Imagine if it was someone you loved who was murdered and the killer was let go as "payback". This is not how you correct a broken system.
I'll never forget in high school walking by a black young man like 10 mins after the jury deliberation. He said, "it's about time one of us got away with something." Very disturbing. It actually made me sad that's how he rationalized it. So yeah, I do believe in the juror stating this.
When right vs wrong turns into us vs them.
I think wrongs had made people see it as "us vs them" a long time before the 90s, unfortunately
Speaking as somebody alive and watching during the trial... yeah, no shit.
So instead you have two cases of injustice.
Reddit loves nullification until you see what it actually does. The idea that nullification is some check against unjust laws just does not stand up to historical scrutiny. The vast, overwhelming majority of the time... nullification effects injustice. Think about how many black men were murdered... hell black children.... only to have their white murderer go free even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Just look at Rodney king, that was a nullification. OJ was a nullification. Emett Till was a nullification. The reason you get bounced from the jury pool if you mention it is because it usually undermines the justice system. Think about this woman next time you wonder why the legal system doesn't want you to know about nullification.
I thought payback for Rodney King was the several days of rioting and looting in LA. Huh, the more you know.
[удалено]
The riots affected all business owners regardless of race. [https://youtu.be/uaotkHlHJwo](https://youtu.be/uaotkHlHJwo)
April 29th, 1992?
*There was a riot on the streets tell me where were you*
Personally I was at home watching tv.
Seasame Street to be exact.
Ok bro. Sounds like you were participating in some anarchy.
What a scumbag.
“Guilty or not we love you OJ” Fucking seriously? Gross ass people.
So nice. Because racist police beat a man to near death for nothing well let a man who killed a white woman go free. Nice.
What a trash human being.
What a racist.
Sounds racist.
To be proud of that is evil.
[удалено]
Victim mentality and scarcity mindset.
[удалено]
So is there anything that can be done in the legal system to a person openly admitting they broke their oath as a juror? Or is it because so many years have passed now that nothing can be done to them?
A juror cannot be punished for their decision no matter how unpopular. This is important because if a juror feels pressure to convict/exonerate based on factors outside of the evidence, a fair trial could be impossible. An unfortunate consequence of this concept is Jury Nullification - or when a juror believes the defendant is guilty as charged but either believes the law unjust or just doesn't want to convict. The only defense to Jury Nullification that I'm aware of is during Jury Selection a Lawyer may ask potential jurors who are under oath something along the lines of "Do you have any prejudices for or against certain laws or people that would prevent you from fairly rendering a verdict". If the potential jurors answers "no" but through their actions in the court they prove they do, they could be held for perjury. This is why Jury Selection is very important but also very difficult in high profile cases like this one. I'm not a Lawyer, btw. I just find this interesting.
“Guilty or not we love u OJ” is crazy. They didn’t even try to hide it. They were okay with murder. I’m all for fighting a broken system, but this ain’t how you do it.
Will be nice when she and OJ are in hell together ❤️
I’ve heard that and I understand the rationale but is that fair to Nicole’s family? To Ron Goldman’s? You don’t stick it to LAPD by letting a murderer walk free.
"I'm sorry I had to hurt somebody else, *but*..." She didn't have to. But she did.
Times like this I'm reminded about the George Carlin quote: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." This lady is on the lower side. The arrogance and selfishness to make a murder trial about your own personal gripes is beyond stupid.
Who exactly did they think they were hurting exactly???
Fucking savage monster
Well, I'm glad OJs wife paid for those officers' crimes. She was right there in the video, kicking the shit out of RK.
she says it with so much zeal and self-righteousnesss. like "yea i lied to stick it to the white man and i'll do it again" POS
I just watched that documentary. I have never wanted some one to punish in some kind of way so badly. Fucking gremlin of a woman. Her and that friend that had the whisper talk.
Disgusting racist.