Legal Eagle

The greatest aged OJ joke remains the age check question from Leisure Suit Larry.

Written about a decade before his infamous trial.

The intended answer is D. I kid you not.

I assume that was because of the star football player thing. As in, you don't want to start a fight with him.

Heh, the devs at the time had no way of knowing that "B" would have been the right answer too someday.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 8:26:05 PM

There's an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine had a boyfriend who shared a name with a serial killer, so she tried to get him to change his name to O.J.

OJ was a scumbag, but honestly, I feel like the specter of the case hung around all this time because people wanted to have something to point as an example of reverse racism/Political Correctness Gone Too Far, specifically comparing it to the Rodney King case. But a rich and famous person getting away with murder is an individual tragedy for the families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, the LAPD's structural racism impacted thousands of lives.

And hey, the case had a lesson for the police: Framing the Guilty Party is not a good idea.

That seems a little unfair when the guy seems to have been all too eager to capitalize on his case.

Not sure how that's relevant coz that literally didnt happen.

Yeah, they merely contaminated the crime scene with their incompetent detective work when it came to preserving it.

Edited by Weirdguy149 on Apr 26th 2024 at 10:00:06 AM

Again, multiple things can be true at once. The LAPD had a history of racism and incompetent detective work, and OJ was guilty of murder.

Neither excuses the other. It just so happens that the trial brought these two elements into direct conflict, and the result was an acquittal because our justice system is supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 26th 2024 at 10:23:52 AM

In other words, the LAPD was aiming to find him guilty regardless of whether or not he actually did it, and he just so happens to have been guilty. And because of this unfair starting position, OJ was acquitted despite being guilty.

It actually likely did, one officer invoked the fifth amendment when asked if he’d planted evidence against O.J.

That’s probably a big part of what led the trial to going the way it did, it’s really hard to get “beyond reasonable doubt” when at least one cop has basically confessed to planting evidence.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:44:52 AM

I heard the phrase "the LAPD was too incompetent to frame a guilty suspect" thrown out recently.

The police in question was Mark Fuhrman. He perjured himself about the use of racial slurs, and then when asked about the chain of evidence plead the fifth.

my take is, that he found a pair of gloves at the scene, and took one and dropped it at OJ's house. It doesn't make any sense OJ would have just dropped one glove behind his pool house; either he left both at the scene, or he noticed he was missing a glove by the time he got home, and for some reason instead of disposing it (a literal bloody glove!) with the rest of his presumably bloodsoaked clothes, just threw it on the ground at his own property.

And to be sure, I believe he was guilty, because he did not notice that there were bloodstains on his car, that provided a clear link to the crime scene. But he clearly had the foresight to get rid of the clothes he wore at the scene, and what I think is most likely, leaving the gloves at the scene (there was also a knit hat on the scene, another one that makes sense to leave behind), because there's some explanations as to why your clothes have blood on them, bloody gloves are much more difficult to explain as is a knit cap in June in LA. Why leave a single bloody glove lying around? Why was it in the spot that it was? Fuhrman was alone when he said he discovered the second glove. Sure, there's the problem of how did he get the glove without anyone else at the crime scene noticing, but I can easily chalk that up to the blue wall of silence.

Fuhrman was then sentenced for the perjury. My read is that the LAPD and the DA's office were already mired in so much bad press, that having to put in legal record that one of their detectives tampered with evidence would have been a scandal to rival Rampart, and would of course, invite review of every single murder conviction he worked on. Getting him on the perjury, that he very unambiguously did commit, was seen to be enough.

I will freely admit I have a strong bias on this subject, but I think history bears evidence that LAPD (and the LASD, which is another story altogether) is extraordinarily corrupt even among the many US police departments with history of corruption and scandals, and that this was especially true in the 1990's. Fuhrman became a detective during the Daryl Gates era.

The police accidentally trying to frame someone with the actual evidence against the same person is some shit that would get called out in detective novels.

The fact that he did it so thoughtlessly kinda tells me he did it all the time, too.

Was there anyone involved in that trial who didn't screw up?

OJ's lawyer, for one. He was apparently quite on the ball.

He was full of shit but still a very charismatic guy.

IIRC, OJ's lawyer was one of the codifiers of the Chewbacca Defense trope. The thing about being a defense attorney that many people forget is that if the client is acquitted, you have done your job effectively.

If you win by confusing the jury into being unable to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, you still win.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 29th 2024 at 11:13:56 AM

Granted, if you get a guy off who actually did it, you kinda screwed up in a different way.

This is not strictly true. The duty of a defense attorney — established in law — is to ensure that a defendant's rights are preserved. If the prosecution fails to prove its case and/or violates the defendant's rights, those may be grounds for acquittal regardless of factual innocence or guilt.

The integrity of our justice system relies on making sure that people are not convicted unfairly.

I've recounted my personal experience with this a few times, and I'll do it again. I served on jury duty many years ago. The defendant was a homeless, mentally ill veteran accused of making a bomb threat. During the trial, we listed to a tape recording of the 911 call, but it was missing the actual threat. It was literally blank for several minutes, like Nixon had gotten to it.

Now, we were fairly sure the guy did it, but "fairly sure" is not "beyond a reasonable doubt". The prosecution failed to provide evidence to support its prima facie case, and so acquittal was the only fair decision.

In the larger scheme of things, he didn't deserve to be in prison, but instead needed psychological care and rehabilitation. Unfortunately, that was beyond our power as jurors to fix.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 29th 2024 at 11:14:29 AM

The defense lawyer in theory goes into a case presuming innocence. If they found out the guilty is truly guilty somehow, they cannot represent them IF the client them pleads not guilty.

Because among other things that is perjury. The lawyer in that case is supposed to recuse themselves from the case.

If the attorney comes into possession of material evidence proving guilt, that's one thing, but simply believing that they did the crime is not a bar to giving them a full-faith defense. All defendants are entitled by the Constitution to a fair trial.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 29th 2024 at 8:24:19 AM

I'm now curious if there's any good youtube videos that do a point by point breakdown of the O.J. Simpson case, cause it sounds like a huge rabbit hole.

They is why they have to recuse themselves. They cannot in good faith represent their client and so someone else must represent them. The client deserves representation but they are not entitled to any specific lawyer doing it.

A lawyer still also has responsibilities to the court and thus cannot be an accessory to perjury.

Edited by M84 on Apr 29th 2024 at 8:46:45 PM