Patterico's Pontifications

8/15/2006

Patterico the Predictor

Filed under: Buffoons,Crime,General — Patterico @ 6:51 pm



A friend of mine today forwarded me an e-mail that I had sent to him back on October 3, 1995. Because I’m not proud, I’ll share it with you:

You heard it here first. O.J. is guilty as sin. First degree on Nicole, second degree on Ron. I honestly think there’s no doubt about it, judging from the closing arguments I saw, how quickly they came back, and what they had read back. Guilty. I keep hearing that the “conventional wisdom” is a quick verdict means not guilty. Pshaw! Guilty guilty guilty.

Heh.

I give myself an “A” for confidence, and a “D-” for accuracy. (Sure, I deserve an “F” — or an “F-” if such a thing exists — but, you know . . . grade inflation.)

And anyway, isn’t confidence really what counts?

P.S. I wasn’t a Deputy D.A. yet.

41 Responses to “Patterico the Predictor”

  1. Don’t sweat it, man. I thought Ryan Leaf was going to be a great NFL quarterback. And that Chevy Chase’s talk show would bury Leno and Letterman. And that there was no way Hillary Clinton could win a senate race. And that Michael Schumacher made a mistake when he went to Ferrari. And that…

    craig mclaughlin (e6d625)

  2. Don’t feel so bad. At least you got the first of the three right – guilty as sin. The verdict the jury wound up delivering was out of your hands.

    Dave in W-S (a7fb64)

  3. I was on a cyber jury (all walks of life, races, both sexes, all from different locations and with a wide rante of educations) for the OJ trial and required to watch it gavel to verdict. I could have told you back then how wrong your prediction would be. Our jury came back 175 not guilty to 2 guilty. The news media did a terrible job. I would watch the trial all day and then hear the evening wrap up and be shocked about how off it was or slanted. Most of us thought the defense shouldn’t bother to put on a defense as there was nothing at the end of the prosecutor’s case that hadn’t been shredded to bits. And no one paid any attention to Barry Scheck’s closing, which was brilliant. Everyone wanted to see Marcia and co. against Johnny Cochran and so missed the whole case.

    My opinion, Nicole wasn’t the target, Goldman, the toy boy, was. I base that on the fact that two of Goldman’s Mezzaluna buddies were murdered within a year of either side of him. One by the same type of vicious knife attack, the other with a single shot thru his car window to his head. What are the chances that 3 young men in their 20s who all worked for the same place would be murdered in 3 separate incidences in the heart of Beveraly Hills?

    I thought OJ was probably guilty up to about the half-way point of the prosecution’s case. It sucked big time.

    I wrote at the time: I am available to anyone with $5,000,000. I can lose a big profile case too, so give me a book deal.

    Sara (Squiggler) (47b627)

  4. Sorry, but I thought the DA blew it big time. I was recovering from back surgery and living in New Hampshire at the time. I watched almost every afternoon session on Court TV. The glove fiasco is what everybody focuses on but I thought Marcia’s closing argument lost it. That jury was looking for a way to let him off. I even wondered about a few things. DNA was a lot less sophisticated then. The loser was when Marcia lied about the limousine driver timeline. She lengthened it to allow OJ more time to be back and ready to go. The only testimony the jury had read back was the limousine driver’s. She lost the case right there. The glove and the venue change made it possible. The civil case guy (Petrocelli, I think) makes too much money to be an assisstant DA (Sorry big guy) but he got the conviction the prosecution lost. He got a break with the photo of OJ in the shoes but that could have been found.

    I do a lot of expert witness work and testify in courts all over the country. The skill of the lawyers makes far too much difference. The British system of barristers is probably more fair.

    Mike K (416363)

  5. I’ve been meaning to post about OJ. I heartily disagree with the two of you, Sara and Mike K. But let me ask both of you this:

    1) How important do you think the timeline was to the jury in the criminal case?

    2) Do you know how long it takes to drive from the site of Nicole’s condo to O.J.’s house?

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  6. My wife, who is a nurse, made a point at the time that I never heard anyone else make. Put on a pair of latex gloves and then try to put a tight pair of your own leather gloves on. You will not be able to do it because of the friction between the latex and the leather.

    Has anyone heard a credible explanation for the bizarre “car chase” if he didn’t do it??

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  7. “Most of us thought the defense shouldn’t bother to put on a defense as there was nothing at the end of the prosecutor’s case that hadn’t been shredded to bits.”

    Oh, so you thought someone else was walking around with O.J.’s DNA, too? That anyone thought someone was walking around with O.J.’s DNA was mind-boggling.

    sharon (63d8f8)

  8. Vincent Bugliosi does a great job demolishing the defense — and the incompetent prosecutors — in his book, Outrage: The Five Reasons O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder.

    His anger and contempt for Garcetti, Clark and Company drips from the pages. It’s a quick read and well worth the time.

    I had an opportunity to chat with him about the case five years after the verdict, and if anything, he was even angrier about it in person.

    Mike Lief (e9d57e)

  9. I read that a while back. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but a lot.

    Especially the part about where it was tried. I think that dictated everything else.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  10. I dunno, Pat. That case was a smorgasbord of bad decisions, bad lawyering, and rampant idiocy.

    One of my classmates clerked for “Judge” Ito, and he said the alleged jurist would watch tapes of Jay Leno’s Dancing Itos, then invite counsel into his chambers to watch with him.

    The decision to change venue aside, there were about a hundred other choices made by Marcia Clark and Chris Darden that leave me — and I’d venture most other D.A.s — scratching our heads in puzzlement.

    Mike Lief (e9d57e)

  11. I agree.

    But it was still, as presented, well beyond a reasonable doubt.

    To a rational jury.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  12. Sharon: No, I didn’t think that at all. I didn’t have to think about that, Vannatter took care of that for all of us. Then there is the little vignette of Vannatter’s partner having the Rockingham glove brought over to the Bundy crime scene and taking it in the bushes with him. Then there are all kinds of things I’m sure you have never heard about like the totally contaminated crime scene, the phony timeline, the horrendous collection techniques, the awful conditions at the lab, the bloody palm print that wasn’t there later, the police spending several hours alone at Rockingham before they had permission to search, the videographer and the straps on the bed, and on and on. This was a 1st degree murder case and there was so much reasonable doubt after the prosecution embarrassed itself that a not guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. And let’s not forget the lies and racist remarks of Mark Fuhrman. He has rehabilitated himself since with a help from Fox, but he was disgusting at the time and a pariah.

    Nicole’s sister was a joke, Fungo was a joke, Ron Shipp was a joke, and when the video showed up of OJ all smiles and hugging his son just a few hours earlier than the murders, it was a done deal.Not to mention that as strong as he used to be, OJ suffers from crippling rhematoid arthritis and was in a flareup that day per witnesses earlier in the day. There is no way he could pivot and feint the way he would have had to take on two strong healthy people. Nicole stated to someone, I forget who, that when the dog died she had to dig the hole because OJ couldn’t hold the shovel. Knife fights with a guy trained in martial arts, I doubt it. Doubt it being the operative phrase.

    On the shoes … there was a front page Florida rag picture that was published months earlier that show OJ in the same walking across the field pose and clothes, different shoes. We’d never heard of photoshop back then, so who’s to say. Unfortunately, it surfaced long after the trial.

    Patterico … I think the timeline was the case.

    I drove from Bundy to Rockingham and it didn’t take overly long. Do I think there was enough time to drive it, yes. But … not without the limo driver seeing OJ pull up out front, remember the gate was open and back then it wasn’t covered with big tarps like later. And there certainly wasn’t enough time to commit a very bloody murder, get home and clean up and not leave any traces at home except those perfectly round drops loaded with preservative.

    And back to Sharon, I forgot about those so-called pictures showing Nicole supposedly abused that turned out to be a makeup job she had done on the set of OJ’s movie at the time. Another of Marcia Clark’s silly promises, like the shovel and plastic bag that fizzled.

    Barry Sheck won the case hands down with help from Peter Neufeld. Johnny Cochran and the rest of the in court dream team were window dressing. The problem is the media barely covered that part of the case. Guess they thought it wasn’t sexy enough for them.

    The question is not did he do it or not, the question is, as it always should be, did the prosecution prove he did it. They did not.

    Sara (Squiggler) (47b627)

  13. Absolutely. But that keys in to Marcia Clark’s performance during jury selection.

    The D.A. retained a high-powered jury consultant who told Clark that black women hated her. Clark ignored the consultant, confident that she could form a bond with the women in the jury pool. She was wrong.

    But all that aside, your point is well taken. A rational, reasonable jury would have convicted in a New York minute.

    One of the guys I work with uses the O.J. trial in voir dire. He asks jurors what they think of the verdict. Anyone who says they think it was a good result gets booted.

    Mike Lief (e9d57e)

  14. Sara would be one of the prospective jurors my colleague would thank and excuse.

    Mike Lief (e9d57e)

  15. I drove from Bundy to Rockingham and it didn’t take overly long.

    How long?

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  16. Patterico — if I could tell you exactly, I would have in my first comment. Back in 1995, I knew the case backwards and forwards. I was with two others who were equally well informed, one a sitting judge from another jurisdiction. He was driving and we weren’t putting a stop watch on it, but we were very aware of the timeline.

    One of the requirements for the cyber jury was to write up our overall impressions of the performances of the various players. We turned these in each Sunday night. Unlike a real jury, we were also asked to monitor the public relations aspects of each of the players and our overall impressions to date.

    A summary I wrote got some attention and Cochran quoted it verbatim in the closing. It was only a snippet from that particular week’s events, but critical to the timeline. My own memory has become fuzzy with time, but suffice to say the timeline was the sticking point for almost everyone. Coupled with the forensics disaster, it was extremely important.

    I’m sorry I don’t recall any better than to say that after our drive, no one was changing their minds. In the intervening 11 years, I’ve had 4 interstate moves at the pleasure of an employer, my 32 marriage fell apart, my Mother had two major strokes and I had to make 7 trips from the East Coast to Calif. and eventually move here to take care of her. She died after five very difficult years. I’ve broken my back and had a knee replacement. And … I probably haven’t thought about the details of this case more than a handful of times in those intervening years.

    All I’m saying is, it wasn’t the jury. It was the badly handled evidence and an over confident and insufferably arrogant prosecutor who caused the not guilty verdict. It was the eagle eye of a woman in Atlanta, a court reporter married to an attorney, who brought attention to the blanket used to remove the body and the video fact that the cops and coroners were treading all over it in uncovered shoes, it was those pesky straps on the bed, first up then down, in the Rockingham interior video, it was the video of OJ at the recital, not all morose as Marcia described to the jury, but laughing and joking, sent in by a guy in Iowa, I think. Marcia Clark alienated everyone, not just the black women on the jury. I was a middle-aged, middle America, middle class white woman and to me she came off, using her favorite term, egregiously incompetent. We were also all having a problem accepting some of the other incompetence that showed up, like the FBI guy from their lab and the shoe guy. I was raised in an era of the Super Duper FBI of the Hoover era and Efrem Zimbalist, it was a rude awakening.

    Dennis Kucinich said on the O’Reilly Factor the other night that terrorism has skyrocketed in the last four years and he, of course, blames it on the Bush administration. I think the blame, if any to lay, is at the feet of IBM and Bill Gates. What you see today with the Green Helmet Man, catching the photoshopping, the ability to check facts and exchange information a la Dan Rather and the TANG documents, or set up conspiracies and communicate with terror cells world wide has come into its own, and the OJ trial set off the cycle. When people tune in and have a vehicle to express their knowledge, technical information, and opinions, the dynamics change.

    I’m no liberal softy. But I do take very seriously the charge to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. I sat on a jury back in my early 30s that was a murder trial. 17 weeks worth and we deliberated to a 6-6 hung jury after 9 days. The experience was stressful and everyone took their jobs very seriously. When you hold someone else’s life in your hands, you need to be really really sure you’re right. When it was all over the judge called us in and berated us all and called us stupid. I left the courthouse that day in tears. It was a defining experience for me because I knew we had given it our best shot with the evidence we were presented. I learned much later that we were the 2nd time around and that the first jury had hung 11 to 1 to let the guy off. The prosecutor improved with our 6-6, but the fact remained that they couldn’t overcome one very important fact, an iffy time clock stamp indicating the guy was at a half-way house at the time the prosecution said he was committing the murder. The fact that he was a very bad dude, who had a history of very bad deeds and should have been locked up not withstanding, our jury did its best. When juries think a prosecutor is lying to them, think Marcia C., they don’t like it at all. It makes them suspicious about your whole case. In today’s world, there would be thousands checking everything. Back in OJ’s trial, we were doing it on computer bulletin boards using UNIX commands and without the benefits of graphics. Nearly everyone except the rabid sports fans thought OJ was guilty going in for many different reasons. Like myself, about halfway through, our opinions began to shift. Even those who still thought he might be guilty were appalled at the quality of the case. The judge mentioned above told me that he wasn’t convinced of innocence, but he was 100% convinced of not guilty. Retrying the guilt or innocence of OJ at this late date is a futile exercise, but hopefully law schools and the public are constantly reexamining the flaws in the trial to correct the systemic problems. Blowhards like Bugliosi and arrogant cops like Fuhrman and over confident and underprepared prosecutors like Marcia can’t do business as usual in a world of worldwide instant commuications. Most of the time I think this is a good thing, unless it is my dog in the hunt, then like everyone else, I want the bastards drawn and quartered.

    Sorry if this sounds all over the map. I’ve had only a couple hours sleep in the last two days due to a project and my brain and fingers are a bit out of synch.

    Sara (Squiggler) (47b627)

  17. For what it’s worth, the guy who sat next to OJ on his flight to Chicago, which is where he was when he found out about the murders, is a friend of mine’s brother-in-law. This guy is a lawyer and testified at the trial. He said (as best as I can recollect) that OJ was cool, calm and a nice guy and did not appear to be someone who had just murdered two people. Does this mean that OJ is innocent? Of course not, but it certainly points in the direction that he may not have done it.

    btorrez (8373bb)

  18. Marcia Clark, did, indeed, miscalculate jury nullification. While I was disgusted with the verdict, I was pretty sure it would come down that way because of a conversation I’d had (on a wholly unrelated subject) about 6 mos before, when a female friend told me, “If I have to choose between my race and my sex, my race wins every time.” You may believe that the DNA evidence was “demolished.” I found it incredibly stupid that jurors were talking about “somebody walking around with the same DNA as O.J.” Was the tampering with the crime scene? Perhaps. But O.J. Simpson was loved and admired by white people as well as black ones, so the whole race card was idiotic. And there’s just never been any real motive given for the murders, let alone murderers. But I’m sure O.J. is searching really hard.

    sharon (63d8f8)

  19. Anyway, it takes five minutes to drive from Bundy (Nicole’s condo) to Rockingham (O.J.’s house).

    Five minutes.

    I’ve done it in 4 1/2. It’s never taken me more than 5 1/2. I’ve done it maybe a dozen times and all but one were done in 5 minutes or less.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  20. the district attorney’s office threw the case.
    why didn’t they file in west l.a., instead of downtown? they wanted o.j. to be tried by a jury of his peers, specifically, peers of the same color.
    if it wasn’t done deliberately, what were the odds of getting a japanese-american judge for both the criminal and the civil cases? hopefully, this will be the end of race-conscious judge-shopping in specific cases.
    i vowed i would never read a book about this case, but one day i was bored and there was marcia clark’s book. god what a basket case. she had no business prosecuting traffic offenses. she could have gotten a mistrial and a do-over when it became known that judge ito’s wife, peggy whatsername, the l.a.p.d. captain, was peripherally involved in the investigation, but in her book she admits holding off out of deference to judge ito’s career! she coyly danced around the remaining interesting question, whether or not she was shtupping chris darden, the token black prosecutor. all in all, a most unsatisfactory read.

    assistant devil's advocate (e8bae5)

  21. Bad judge. Very, very bad judge. By disregarding so many rules of evidence and procedure, Judge Ito denied due process to both sides. Worse, he did not protect the jury. Sequestering them for more than six months. Subjecting them to an eighteen-hour video of O.J. jumping around. Allowing all kinds of collateral and speculative testimony from both sides. The dog barking? Even a black man should not be convicted on the testimony of a dog (that’s sarcasm). If the jury was not rational at the time of the verdict it was because it had been rendered totally confused and irrational.

    nk (32c481)

  22. For once, I completely agree with A.D.A. I couldn’t understand at the time (I hadn’t gone to law school yet) how Marcia Clark could be so completely incompetent and that Judge Ito could make such a mockery of the justice system. The whole thing reeked.

    sharon (03e82c)

  23. @squiggler:
    the judge berated you after your jury service? that’s outrageous. you should have berated him right back. the rights of jurors is an area of the law of interest to me, and i believe jurors are mistreated from the moment they enter the courthouse. voir dire used to be about picking a fair jury, now it’s about picking a stacked jury, and no private area of the jurors’ lives seems to be off-limits to the inquiry. i’m waiting for a juror to take a contempt citation all the way to the u.s. supreme court. in texas, a heroic juror named diana brandborg refused to answer questions about her income, she was convicted of contempt in state court and got it knocked out in federal court. oddly, i have never been summoned for jury service in my life, and would be unlikely to be retained on the panel considering my background.

    assistant devil's advocate (e8bae5)

  24. The closest I came was when I was picked for a jury pool. The defendant took one look at us & decided to plea bargain. 😉

    My mother, on the other hand, was a favorite juror. She was an R.N., immigrant, married 38 years, and grandmother of 8. I think both sides somehow thought they would persuade her. Oh, if they’d only asked us.

    Your point about the insane voir dire is well taken. Frankly, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business how much I make, what church I attend, if I do volunteer work, how many kids I have, how many times I’ve been married, if I own property, or if I vote regularly.

    sharon (03e82c)

  25. OJ suffers from crippling rhematoid arthritis

    How does he play golf all the time?

    Gerald A (bdfba2)

  26. We’re still waiting for you to tell us the backstory about what went going on with that case.

    Fredrik Nyman (be2f9e)

  27. Erk, the above comment got pretty mangled. Let’s try again:

    Patterico — we’re still waiting for you to give us the inside story about what happened in the OJ case.

    Fredrik Nyman (be2f9e)

  28. I’ve driven the distance in 5 minutes. That wasn’t the issue. She changed the time in her closing argument and she got caught at it. That was the only testimony read back to the jury. I’m sure you know that lying and getting caught, even on a minor matter, blows your testimony or argument for good.

    I’ve spent a lot of time testifying, both in criminal and civil cases. I’ve seen lawyers lie and have been asked by an asst DA to lie. The OJ case was poorly handled in a number of ways. The stuff about Fuhrman was a setup. He did a dumb stunt trying to pitch a book and somebody tipped the defense. I don’t think he’s racist but he was a bad choice to put on the stand. The medical examiner is a clown. I spend time there with medical students. They have good medical examiners but ever since Noguchi, “Coroner to the Stars,” the place has been ruined by politics.

    As far as OJ, My wife went to school with Nicole and was at their wedding. There was always lots of coke around their place in Laguna. I suspect OJ was using crystal meth and had a drug frenzy, then was over it by the time he was on the plane. I admit I was influenced by the guy on the plane and the sky caps on his demeanor that night.

    Petrucelli did the job Marcia was incapable of doing.

    Mike K (6d4fc3)

  29. Mike … I’ve always thought drugs the motive and not some trumped up OJ jealousy. Not Columbian drug lords, plain old-fashioned local thugs or rip-off scumbags. As the trial went on, I became more and more convinced that Goldman was the target and that he was followed to Bundy by someone who knew he was delivering coke. Nicole came out when she heard the scuffle, perhaps shouts, and got taken out on the steps. I never understood why the police didn’t immediately search and seal RG’s apartment. When it came out that two of Mezzaluna’s employees/former employees were also murdered/executed, I became more convinced.

    Apparently Nicole’s coke use was well known and she was no wall flower with, what, six sleeping partners, and her association with Faye Resnick. Fuzzy memory, but didn’t it come out in the trial that she had an auto accident with Faye where the car caught on fire and the testimony was that she hit the guy because she had her head down trying to snort coke and drive at the same time? And Goldman himself, what did anyone ever really know about him. Hardly a word about him in the trial. I do seem to recall being taken aback at the info that someone as young as he had already declared bankruptcy. A toy boy with money problems working somewhere that seemed very shady and who spent his time hanging with rich women with too much time on their hands. Was he making extra money for himself as a drug courier? Seems possible.

    Just a theory, of course.

    Sara (Squiggler) (47b627)

  30. Anyone who doubts that OJ was guilty should spend some time reading the case as presented by Dan Petrocelli, who litigated the civil suit. He was everything the prosecution of the criminal trial should have been, but sadly was not. His summation was excellent and left no doubt whatsoever that OJ was indeed the murderer. And that jury returned their verdict rapidly, with no dissent (from what I recall), with many jurers agreeing there was no doubt in their mind whatsoever.

    Gotta Know (f41eca)

  31. Let’s talk about that DNA. Blood swatches that were taken from Bundy 12 hours after the murder were so degraded that when they were tested they could hardly find any DNA. They blamed it on the refrigation unit in the criminalogist van being broken. But wait! They sent Fung to Rockingham to collect evidence first, so wouldn’t the blood stains from OJ’s house be MORE degraded than the ones from Bundy since they were in the van for a longer period of time? Not so! Perfect DNA match.
    And let’s not forget the blood spatters on Nicole’s back that were never collected and tested and that very telling blood trail at the FRONT of Bundy that the defense never knew about until the Civil trial. But, how do you explain OJ leaving a bloody footprint and blood drop trail leading out the BACK of Nicole’s condo when there was another blood trail leading out the FRONT.
    Stop blaming the jury for the not guilty verdict. Blame it on the “OJ is the only suspect” mentality that took over the case as soon as they knew it was Nicole Brown Simpson that lay at the bottom of those stairs.

    sp (ae02b5)

  32. Come on SP, Nicole herself said OJ would kill her. There is so much more evidence than the blood that you can throw it out entirely and not change a thing. Just because the police botched the case (assuming they did) doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

    Gotta Know (f41eca)

  33. I had some doubts about the DNA at the time but I think OJ did it. Petrocelli proved it. Nicole had some issues, such as not wearing underwear to high school and being sent to Europe by her parents to get her away from high school friends. The line on the Brown family was that the girls all had boob jobs but none had a college degree. Still, that doesn’t justify what happened.

    I liked OJ and went to all his football games. I liked that he seemed to be making it in a world that isn’t all that friendly to black athletes. Especially when they can’t run and catch passes anymore. If he had stayed with his wife and kept himself clean, he might be running for the Senate like Lynn Swann. Nicole was eye candy but he lost his soul there and that’s too bad. I don’t think he is evil, just dumb and has terrible judgement.

    Mike K (416363)

  34. @squiggler:
    unless you’ve ever been a young buck who spent some time with rich (and beautiful) women with too much time on their hands, don’t knock it. it sure beats the mail room. i can almost remember the days when i….
    @mike k:
    you think he did it, but you don’t think he’s evil, just dumb and with terrible judgment. thank you for your unintentionally hilarious comment. i get accused of moral relativism too. remember, if i ever saw at a woman’s neck to make her look like a human pez dispenser, it’s not because i’m evil, i’m just having a bad day.

    assistant devil's advocate (438125)

  35. How did the EDTA – an anticoagulant used to anticoagulate blood you want to anticoagulate prior to clotting – get on a clotted blood sample collected at the crime scene? Mark Furman has a weekday radio show in Spokane – he’s really pretty good, overall. He reprised the O.J. trial and showed that Vanatter, the lead Detective, was a big problem.

    Vanatter carried O.J.’s voluntarily given, EDTA anticoagulated, blood sample around with him for some time, perhaps overnight. Furman, who thinks O.J. certainly did it, claims this was because Vanatter didn’t know how to “book” blood samples. Right, Mark.

    Yet, consistently, Furman also claims Vanatter was testifying on the stand to things he didn’t do himself, beyond the normal leeway allowed. That is, Vanatter was lieing. And Furman also says that the case would have been thrown out if Judge Ito had known what Vanatta was doing behind the scenes: Vanatter apparently actually intercepted a letter from Furman’s partner, Fred Roberts, to his Chief and then instructed Furman to keep “his boy” under control. According to Furman, Roberts was miffed because he wasn’t getting any play as Furman’s partner on the scene. And Vanatter was testifying to things he didn’t really do.

    The point is that Vanatter was constantly meddling and seeking attention in a way which would have shown Police bias, and he perhaps planted some blood. Goodbye, case.

    I watched nearly the whole case and was similarly mystified by the nightly discussions by people who had apparently not watched the case. We should have been allowed to see the Civil case.

    With the p.c. trio of Clark, Darden, and Hoagamen – the obligatory White Male whuss, the Prosecution should have won going away, right? Wrong. For example, Darden had tried one murder case in something like the last eight years, and it showed. I also wondered how gloves were supposed to “fit” over other gloves. Johnny Cochran claims F. Lee Baily goaded the overly emotional Darden into this fiasco. Or maybe by looking at the gloves O.J. knew the gloves wouldn’t fit.

    As the facts came out, the “domestic violence” motive was obviously p.c. rediculous. Not that it means too much, but Lenore Walker, the Mother of the Battered Woman Syndrome, was set to testify for the defense. And the Black Forewoman stated this point exactly when she said something like, “If you want to try domestic violence, take it down to another courtroom.” She seemed very irritated. Imo, she thought the motive did not fit the facts. Actually, for a long time Black females killed their “intimates” more often than did Black males. Now it’s about equal, and markedly reduced. Etc..Did O.J. kill Nicole because he was a Black Male? The Racist-Sexist card was patently evident to me, also.

    The time-line indicated that O.J. spontaneously nearly committed the perfect crime. What a man! A superhuman man. Because he was Black and played football?

    If O.J. did it, the police and prosecution ineptitude got him off.

    J. Peden (1594c4)

  36. The time-line indicated that O.J. spontaneously nearly committed the perfect crime.

    How so? The drive took 5 minutes.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  37. With the little I know of the case, and what has been said here, a drug-related robbery would not have left such a brutal scene, unless they wanted to make it look like it was done in a rage.
    Whether white, black, yellow, or purple, a husband furious over a promiscuos (sp?) wife would find the energy to over-ride most rheumatism, and likely would make a bloody mess of the scene.
    Someone who has little remorse over a crime (whether they think it was justified or they are simply sociopathic- conscience doesn’t work anymore) is not likely to be too distraught afterwards.
    If he didn’t do it, please explain the bizarre “car chase”.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  38. And his obsession with getting his golf clubs. And his blood all over his house. And the blood splatter on his socks. (Try figuring out Vanatter’s attention to THAT detail.) And the fact that the Bronco was gone when the limo driver arrived. And the fact that OJ was lurking outside the house even though he was “taking a shower.” And the Bruno Magli shoes. And the cut on his hand. And his suicide note. And Nicole’s safe deposit box with photos. And the fact that she finally, once and for all, ended the relationship after sitting on the fence for years. She wasn’t going back to him, and he knew it. Motive. Beating a hasty retreat to the airport. Opportunity.

    I don’t even need the car chase, which could conceivably been done by a distraught guy stressed out for whatever reason. The passport and cash are harder to explain, but he could conceivably been freaked out by the fact that it looked like he did it. But you can’t explain away all the other hundreds of facts that linked him to the murders, and Petrocelli laid it all out. No other conclusion was even remotely possible.

    Gotta Know (ba8871)

  39. Here’s the Petrocelli summation:

    http://walraven.org/simpson/jan21-97.html

    Fascinating.

    Gotta Know (ba8871)

  40. […] A lot of you folks responded to my recent post in which I told you how I had predicted a guilty verdict in the O.J. case. One commenter reminded me that I have told you in the past that I have a few stories about the case to tell. So I thought that, over the next few days, I could tell some of my O.J. stories. I’ll start tomorrow; today is merely the introduction. […]

    Patterico’s Pontifications » The O.J. Posts — Part One: Introduction (421107)


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