O.J. is, in the most positive aspect, a deeply immature individual who’d rather play Batman than simply call the police and bring the cops instead of his gun-toting goofball pals with him. I mean, if there’s even a shred of truth to his story, that’s what I (and, I presume, most anyone reading this) would do.The likely truth is there’s something shady going on here, and Simpson, like so many of our pro athletes, simply believes he is well above the law.
I get really angry when I hear folks—usually white folks—call the Simpson murder jury stupid or accuse them of acquitting O.J. simply because he was black. That really irritates me (and, I presume, them). Given the judge’s instructions, that jury had no choice but to acquit Simpson. Convicting him just because they know, in their hearts, the man is guilty—now that would make them as ignorant as many white folk seem to think they are.
These were intelligent, informed, thoughtful people who made a painful decision under extreme duress. Given the rules of evidence and the instructions from the judge, given the prosecutor’s failure to offer alternative charges they might have convicted on, they had no choice but to admit that key evidence had been tampered with and the LAPD’s lead investigator had been caught flat-footed in a lie.
By law, they had to acquit Simpson. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, it just meant that God spared his life. Spared it for better things than shockingly exploitative books, trying to cash in on a heinous crime. Spared it for more than golf games and autographing memorabilia, skating around the civil judgment and causing more suffering to the families of his alleged victims.
But, instead, O.J. kept on his path. Kept up his foolishness. And now, incredibly, he is charged with enough felony counts to keep him in prison the rest of his life. Charges hurled at him not on the merits of the case but on the notoriety of the defendant. This Vegas prosecutor wants him so bad he can taste it, wants him so bad he’s making deals with liars and, like Detective Mark Fuhrman, zealously prosecuting the case to the point of obsession. To me, this prosecutor is exactly what many if not most whites accuse the Simpson murder trial jury to be: biased. And, perhaps, a less intelligent and less dutiful all-white Las Vegas jury may likely ignore their conscience and the law and send this guy up, not for this nonsense about the footballs, but for what he should have been jailed for in the first place.
