bye bye OJ
OJ’s just one of those typical attention whores.
He’s been causing all kinds of trouble down here in Florida
for the past several years (getting caught for stealing cable TV,
several car wrecks, public fights with people and his kids, etc.)
just to get his name in the paper and his face on the 11pm news.While its a terrible shame that he wasn’t convicted of two homicides,
everyone really need to IGNORE him and take away what he craves the
most ---- attention.Posted by TimO
10/04/2008 at 09:46 PM
Good Riddance to bad Rubbish!
May he rot in hell. Sooner rather than later.
Posted by Turtler
10/04/2008 at 09:56 PM
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the OJ jury in ‘95 remind you of obama voters of today?
I actually come down on the other side of this OJ issue - while I might accept that he might have had a part and/or knowledge of the murder deal - simply put there were many things (not just the biggies like no WMD, oh wait that is another debateable issue in America) that were questionable which then makes the jury acquital(reasonable doubt) ok. I think that the major issue in this was not did he or didn’t he do it - but that the Police and/or the Prosecution were too fast and too sloppy to get the conviction. Which is their bad.
The result makes me angry in that it re-inforces the new take on the Constitution - guilty (forever)if you are the #1 person of interest. . .Which is a freedom taken away and a risk to each and every citizen.
This new little ‘trial’ just goes to show that if someone (anyone) thinks that you are guilty there are a dime and a dozen ways to finally get that life sentence. And that OJ probably is just plain stupid enough to have done both ‘crimes’ and thus does indeed deserve the time. Karma - perhaps.
Having been in the area for a truly - disgusting, offensive and well deserved - he got away with murder - I find the OJ ‘story’ just more and more of trivalizing it all - celebrity, crime, murder, domestic violence, the law and so on. In 1988 a guy Mel Ignatow murdered Brenda Sue Schaefer in Louisville KY. He went to trial in Northern KY (moved by request of his lawyer since 99% of Louisville was for death and 100% wanted to pull the lever). During the trial his ex-girlfriend Mary Ann Shore was the ‘star’ witness for the Prosecution and laid out what happened and said Mel forced her to take pictures. Therein lies the whole rub with this case. The police went through the house (Mel’s) 2 or 3 times and found no pictures nor the stolen jewelery. And the jury thought she was trashy, had an axe to grind and since none of the items were found, acquited Mel. Forward six months after the trial and low and behold a carpet layer, doing new carpet for the new owners of Mel’s house finds a vent hidden under the carpet and finds the film.
Because of double jeopardy - can’t retry Ignatow for murder. The Feds did get him into prison for tax issues (he served a few years) and then KY went after him again for perjury in a grand jury testimony (I don’t think that it was in the Schaefer case) he served 9 years for that.
So this was a case for real, proof positive of getting away with murder. I don’t care about OJ - one way or the other - it was the prosecution/police who messed that one up (i.e. the system) - it made me angry about Ignatow - as he truly did (and yes the system (the jury)failed in this case too) get away with murder. The good news is that on Sept. 1st of this year Ignatow was found dead in his home - he apparently fell and bled to death.
Justice has been served - and in OJs case - maybe that too. But it was definately the Prosecution that failed in that one big time - or maybe like Obama said, it’s all about race.
I have to disagree with public opinion on this one.
Simpson was not convicted of murder. For those that don’t comprehend that concept, it means the jury was not convinced past a reasonable doubt he did it. In very simple terms, it means the police testimony, evidence and prosecutor’s arguments - despite the prosecutor putting on makeup and buying a new dress for the occasion - wasn’t convincing.
I’ve heard several of my acquaintances and colleagues tell me they would have voted for conviction had they been on the jury. Not that they heard any evidence, not that they had any knowledge but simply they decided Simpson was guilty based on newspaper accounts and bought the LAPD theory of “She’s a blonde, he’s a nigger. What more do you want?” For all of you who ‘know’ Simpson did it, you’re in a dream world. You don’t know anything. If you did, why didn’t you testify at the trial? You can believe anything you want, of course. Just like people who believe the Democrats will do a better job running the nation.
Based on courtroom testimony of the tow truck driver, the blood evidence in the infamous white Bronco seems to be placed there by the police. The rest of it was simply not very much and not very well researched. The case was rushed from start to finish by a mayor and chief of police who wanted the matter to ‘go away’ and look like they’d actually done something.
LAPD and the Los Angeles county prosecutors seem to be serially bad at prosecuting high profile cases. Robert Blake was arrested and tried in the murder of his wife. He was acquitted, because the prosecution could not convince a jury past a reasonable doubt.
In neither case did the county prosecutor or investigators even hint of doing an investigation regarding jury tampering or misconduct. Why was that?
Truthfully, I don’t know if O. J. Simpson killed his ex-wife and the waiter or not. It is entirely possible, but still remains in doubt - to anyone who entertains a concept of proof and evidence as the means of conviction at any rate.
Later, Fred Goldman finds the best judge and jury money can buy to ‘sue for wrongful death’. All that jury needed was a ‘preponderance’ of evidence, in other words, a 51% feeling of guilt. Goldman triumphed, at least assuaged his own feelings of inadequacy for having alienated his now dead son.
So now Simpson has been convicted of various felonies related to the questionable possession of certain of his personal items. Why didn’t Simpson report the matter to the police and take legal action? He said he doesn’t get much cooperation from police. I wonder if that could be true?
Simpson seems to be taking up the role of his own worst enemy. What he did in Las Vegas was pretty stupid at least. However, convicting him of this because he wasn’t convicted of that is really, really bad justice. In fact, in the United States, that is classic injustice.
I hope Robert Blake never parks in a handicapped zone. He’ll do life if convicted.
Excellent posts Wardmama and Archie. In Scotland they have another verdict available to the jury “guilty not proven”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven
I don’t know about Simpson’s guilt or innocence. I didn’t watch the ludicrous “trial” to me it represented the worst of America. Trial by media. It should have been held in camera However he did seem to be insufferably smug after the trial. Be that as it may in regard to his current situation I am afraid I have no sympathy.
Archie, please don’t forget that WE ALL SAW THE EVIDENCE. WE ALL SAW every damn second of that trial, for month after month after month.
If the case against OJ was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt, it was because of 3 factors:
1) Marsha Clark made her self look like run over dog shit on purpose. The woman went days with washing her hair, showering, or even changing her clothes. That was just one of the many ways which the state did their best to throw the trial on purpose, because they were afraid of the mob. The state threw the case. Witnesses that placed him on the scene at the time were not called, because they had spoken to some gossip paper. The Glove Don’t Fit - aka The Wookie Defense - was stupid showmanship. It is beyond belief that the prosecution didn’t try this one ahead of time. You can give me one of my own gloves, and I can flex my hand so that the glove won’t go on. It was a give away done on purpose so that they would lose the trial. I sat through months of that shit on TV, and I can not to this day believe that the state did not throw the case deliberately.
2) The media, and apparently a whole lot of people, seem to believe that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the same thing as “beyond even the smallest shadow of a doubt”. It is not.
3) Insane amounts of energy were wasted on the racial angle. Mark Furman’s testimony was completely discounted because he said “nigger” a bunch of years previous to the trial. Therefore he’s a racist. Therefore his testimony is invalid. Let’s not ignore the Compton and Watts crowd that the jury pool was drawn from. Had the jury actually been drawn from OJ’s peer group - rich folks in his neighborhood - he would have hung. This I guarantee.
Instead, the crowd that they did get would not have convicted him if they had a videotape of the crime in 3-D with slo-mo graphics.The trial was a sham Archie. Remember the Dancing Itos? OJ did it, they had him bang to rights within a few hours of the crime, but then the state spent most of a year slowly throwing the case on purpose to avoid another batch of riots in California.
I also think Marcia Clark’s banging by Christopher Darden (the other prosecutor in the OJ Murders) might have contributed to her unkempt appearance.
Drew, I saw the evidence as well. Frankly, I wasn’t convinced. There’s a good possibility he did, but the state couldn’t prove it.
The state threw the case. Drew, I have to hand it to you, in all this time, I’ve never heard that one. I’ve been to three county fairs and a hog calling and never heard anything like that. By the way, Marcia Clark is still whining about losing the case whenever anyone stops long enough to listen. She does a real good job of covering up the ‘dive’ to this day. That’s another one that it could have happened, but it isn’t a sure thing - not to my mind at least. (I’m far more sympathetic to the “incompetent” theory.)
Even if that were all true, does it change the current matter? Do we as a nation convict a man of anything because he skated on a prior charge? If one is so sure he’s guilty, then go and do something personal. Put on the vigilante persona and invoke a higher justice or something. But let’s not start ignoring what we’re supposed to be doing because we think someone else didn’t do it right. If the court system is screwed up, are we doing it any good to further twist it? That’s my main point in the current episode.
I won’t call him guilty in the murder.... I think the Scots verdict works well for the OJ murder trial: “Not proven.” I avoided hearing all of the trial I could. What saddened me was that a fair amount of the US was a) convinced of his guilt *AND* b) certain that he should be acquitted, BECAUSE he was a wealthy black “star” on trial for his life. The attitude was that rich white folks get away with stuff all the time, it’s the black man’s turn. I won’t claim that attitude was the majority opinion, but it most certainly wasn’t uncommon.
What nobody seemed to notice or care about was that when a rich white man, say Teddy Kennedy, got away with killing someone, most *white people* were furious about it. But when the rich black man was perceived as having murdered a white person and having gotten away with it, the public response was “take that whitey!”
I’ve seen plenty of failures of justice in my lifetime. It’s the downside of having a justice system run by *HUMANS*. But that was the first time in my life I ever saw someone publicly praised BECAUSE people believed he had murdered his wife. It was the first time I ever saw people cheering a verdict BECAUSE they believed justice had failed.
Regardless of whether OJ actually murdered anyone, the public reaction to the verdict marked, in my mind, the end of the American experiment in self-government. The fundamental power base of US government, the citizen, the place that the votes and the tax money come from, had decided that even the *appearance* of working together toward justice was not only unnecessary, but undesirable. The important thing was “I get mine, and if it screws you in the process, so much the better.” The important thing was to have a chip on your shoulder and to get revenge.Reading these and of course lightly purusing some of the stuff out there on the ‘new’ OJ verdict - just to me goes to the point I was making the OJ trial was not about two murdered persons and who killed them - it was about celebrity, media, law, crime, domestic violence, and more importantly dumbing down America.
If OJ is simply stupid (a real possibility) it still does not prove he was a murderer. And even if he was, that the Prosecution did not prove their case - or couldn’t even sit a jury that would convict - all shows their position was flawed. There is no statute of limitation on murder - why the rush?!? Political pressure, perhaps. Throw the case in fear of ‘riots’?!? Also political pressure. Where is the justice for any single person in the state of CA with any of those senarios - much less what it did to the justice system.
But then I’ve always felt that one of the Left’s mission in life is to undermine and eventually destroy the American justice system, legal system, economy, social system, culture and eventually America.
They are well on the way.
10/05/2008 at 03:57 PM
