White people in America should apologize to the OJ jurors. This should dispel any idea that the aquittal was racially based. Celebrities with high powered attorneys get off in LA: Robert Blake and now, so it looks, will Phil Spector. The formula is easy, the victims are losers, golddiggers and whores. And the attorneys simply sell their celebrity clients as unfortunate victims of these oportunistic losers.

Indeed, when you look at high profile celebrity violent criminal trials with male perpatrators and female victims, you see a pattern. Beginning with William Kennedy Smith, OJ, Robert Blake, Phil Spector, they were all aquitted. The only conviction was the Mike Tyson rape trial, so where is the racial pattern?

There is a lot in what you say, koplaw, though I am still holding my breath to see if the two holdouts for conviction were among the black jurors -- the defense team found a way to play the race card by showing the jury (under the risible pretext that it was evidence of her suicidal desperation) a tape of Lana Clarkson doing a probably offensive blackface act. I wouldn't like to think that any of my neighbors would let a killer off just because his victim committed a racial faux pas -- but the defense team evidently thought the black jurors would. Let's hope they were wrong, and at least one of the holdouts was white. Otherwise, I think you will see the stereotype continue, however unjust it may be.

But didn't the sheer speed of the O.J. verdict make it look like something was rotten in the jury room?

It's true that celebrities can afford high-powered lawyers, but it took the O.J. jury what, just hours to buy what was really an incredibly weak defense?

Of course, it's not all the jurors' fault; Ito was a lousy judge. But the jurors bear the ultimate responsibility for being snookered.

**Sigh**

OJ again. They'll never leave it alone and they refuse to get it right....but go ahead and prove your ignorance - blame the asian judge, blame the black jurors (forget the white and hispanic ones)..and why oh why do people refuse to acknowledge the throw up in your mouth feeling Mark Fuhrmann caused when he walked into the courtroom? .as usual the whites are totally innocent - even the notoriously racist LAPD (you have heard of driving while black in LA?... They've heard of it in Europe who would think you'd heard of it here). You've got an admitted racist and proven liar (who perjured himself in court) walking around for hours with the suspect's blood in his possession. Even if you knew OJ did it - short of seeing him you'd have to give him the shadow of doubt. I lived in LA and I even ran into Mark Fuhrmann. He's nauseating. I agree with the first poster because if you're rich enough you can hire lawyers who do the job they were hired to do.

All you have to do is look at footage of black and white reactions to the OJ verdict to know that race played a huge part in it.

The prosecution made some mistakes, but the defense wasn't so good that a conviction shouldn't have been obvious. For crying out loud, everybody knew he was guilty. There was no doubt in anybody's mind. Including the jurors, if they're honest. He had blood in his car, his footprints all over the murder scene, he was nearly suicidal on the day he was pursued by the cops...what more could you want? That stupid glove trick was nonsense.

Each trial is different. Race can play a role in many different issues. So can celebrity. Juries screw up on occasion, and issues of race and celebrity can increase the screw-up quotient.

Race played a role in the OJ trial. It was an issue raised by both the prosecution and defense. Alleged police misconduct was raised to a higher level in the trouble as a result of the race issues.

The OJ jurors let their emotions get in the way of their reason. The Spector jurors just got confused, likely the result of the screwed up jury instructions. I think Blake's jurors got it right (there was very little evidence that Blake was responsible other than his distaste for Bakely). I don't know much about the Smith trial.

"The prosecution made some mistakes" in the Simpson case?!? The prosecution blew the case. "The defense wasn't that good?" It doesn't have to be.

The defense doesn't have to prove a damn thing. The best cases for a defendant are the ones where the defense attorney can sit back and not say a damn thing. Seriously. I'd rather not present a defense unless I have to: if a witness doesn't say anything bad on direct, I'm not going to give him a chance to fix it on cross. If the State hasn't sealed the deal during their case-in-chief, why on Earth would I want to give them a chance to make save themselves while rebutting my evidence. And if I do have to put on a case, believe me, I'm going to keep it as short and sweet as I possibly can.

There's a long list of errors the Simpson prosecution made that the defense exploited: not vetting Fuhrman, tying themselves to a rigid theory of the case, and (yes) giving the defendant control of a key piece of evidence in front of the jury in a fashion that practically wrote Cochrane's closing argument for him all leap to mind a decade later. It's still worth noting, ten years later, that the piece of testimony the Simpson jurors were most interested in reviewing was the chauffeur's testimony that defined the State's timeline: if you didn't believe Simpson was at a specific location at a specific time on the prosecution's schedule, you didn't believe the State's case, even if you thought it likely that Simpson was a murderer--and that, friends, is the essence of possessing a doubt based on reason and common sense.

(I still remember, though it was long ago, my Crim Law professor, first year, explaining that a prosecutor generally wanted as much flexibility in his theory as he could swing, particularly with regards to time. Conversely, a defendant wants as narrow a window as he can get: it's a lot easier to account for your client's whereabouts at 12:28 p.m. than it is to account for his movements every single instant of the day. And a broad period of time is more time for the defendant to plan, to be culpable, to have changed his mind, to have walked away; a narrow window is the time-frame for accidents, impulses, crimes of passion, unpremeditated acts and lasting regrets. It may seem counterintuitive, but it's bluntly logical: saying the crime occurred exactly at 12:28:09 sounds specific and informed and in control of the facts until the defendant shows he was somewhere else from 12:27 to 12:31. And if he was there at 12:28:09? Well, you have to understand, he only decided to do wrong at 12:28:07 and at 12:29:01 it was too late to take it back, but he never had time to possess the requisite mental state to do anything as bad as the State would have you believe, no sir.)

Anyway, enough! We'll see if California prosecutes Mr. Spector again, and see what happens then. If you don't like the Anglo-American legal system with its wrinkles and warts and potential to free guilty men, I suggest you defect to North Korea--they find everybody guilty there, from what I hear.

When OJ was on trial I did something I rarely do: I refused to give an opinion. If I say "George Bush is a dumbass" I'm entering into the conversation with the intent to back up my argument, and to fight for the position I've taken.

I couldnt do that in the OJ case - I wasnt presented with the evidence. Do I think OJ did it? Sure do - I have a strong bias against men like him. I dont like ... jocks. I think they're a spoiled, narcissistic bunch who've been told their whole lives they're special, they can do whatever they want. OJ and Tyson were paid large sums of money to be violent - it doesnt take much of a stretch of the imagination to see them as violent off camera as well.

But the thing about bias, its just that, biased. It has no actual basis in fact - I wasnt on the jury, I didnt see the evidence. Ok, they discounted the DNA - well, real life isnt like CSI. Grissom succeeds because the writers are on his side, not science (I dont watch the CSI shows anymore because I can name at least one instance where science wasnt on their side). Maybe the lab did a poor job processing the DNA, maybe the DNA sample was contaminated, maybe it wasnt a match. I just dont know.

Do I think Phil Spector did it? Seems plausible. Rich, arrogant record exec thinks he's all that blows away a B-movie hottie cause she wont put out. Ok, sure, I get guys a lot less rich and influential climbing up my bumper in their Lexus merely because they drive a Lexus - if you have money you're more of a man, you're Better than the hoi polloi grubbing for their daily bread, people should step aside for you. And men who think women are merely things to be screwed, well, they're hardly uncommon. So its not hard to see a rich mysogenist killing because a woman says no.

But, again, I'm not on the jury. I havent been presented with facts - no matter how respected an institution the BBC is (where I get the majority of my news) no one is personally showing me evidence one way or the other. I've also known beautiful women who hate themselves - and suicide by lead poisoning is hardly unusual in Hollywood.

I cant even comment on the racial bias - unless a juror is a member of the Klan or a similar racial terrorist group, how can you really say, well the whites voted one way, the blacks the other because of race. Ok, you're in Alabama, its the 1950's, yeah, you can say racial bias, but the 21st century is a little more complicated. I'm not on the jury, I cant say for sure what the people in the jury think about skin color.

Whatever you say about the prosecution, there was enough evidence for a conviction. People have been convicted on far less.

But now that he's confessed in his book anyway, it's all a moot point. The dude was guilty. Everybody knew it. No need to hedge on the issue. He was guilty as hell.

Spirit is Forever:

**Sigh**

OJ again. They'll never leave it alone and they refuse to get it right....but go ahead and prove your ignorance - blame the asian judge, blame the black jurors (forget the white and hispanic ones)..and why oh why do people refuse to acknowledge the throw up in your mouth feeling Mark Fuhrmann caused when he walked into the courtroom? .as usual the whites are totally innocent - even the notoriously racist LAPD (you have heard of driving while black in LA?... They've heard of it in Europe who would think you'd heard of it here). You've got an admitted racist and proven liar (who perjured himself in court) walking around for hours with the suspect's blood in his possession. Even if you knew OJ did it - short of seeing him you'd have to give him the shadow of doubt. I lived in LA and I even ran into Mark Fuhrmann. He's nauseating. I agree with the first poster because if you're rich enough you can hire lawyers who do the job they were hired to do.

All of what you and the top poster say is true except in regard to The OJ case the massive amount of evidence against OJ TRUMPED the racism of Furman.

No rationally honest person could possibly conclude OJ was innocent with all of the blood evidence against him.

Nor, could any rational person conclude that even a racist like Furman could have planted every single drop of that evidence.

That would be impossible.

There was no doubt in the OJ case.

What you had was a jury wholly unwilling to convict, no matter what.

I agree. It is unfortunate that Furman was a taint on the case. His racism cannot excuse the fact that OJ Simpson murdered two people.

Exactly. It was unfortunate and gave the defense the precise weapon they so badly wanted to use...The old race card.

Cochran set back race relations in this country, 50 years ,by his exploitation of his own race.

Literally, he pimped off the jury with the exploitation of their most base fears and biases.

Near time voters start to understand and take steps to marginalize people whose historic behaviors are similar to Furman's They have no place in law enforcement and God forbid in the court system.

For crying out loud, this is absurd. Even one of OJ's main lawyers, Robert Shapiro, said right after the verdict that Johnny Cochran had played the race card to the jury. ( Didn't Cochran threaten Judge Ito with a race riot during a press conference?) The LA riots was a backdrop for the whole thing. The jurors all knew that Black America was watching them, and after the verdict, Black America cheered, while the jurors partied with OJ's crew.

While there may well have been a significant race element in the OJ case, one cannot escape the observation that LA juries seem unwilling to convict celebrities.

It may also be that anyone who can afford the sort of legal talent that these guys did could get an acquittal there. Seems to me that the LAPD's reputation for misconduct is such that even middle-class white jurors are willing to believe they could be faking the evidence.

I didn't follow any of these cases very closely so am unwilling to comment on whether the juries made the correct choices based on the evidence presented.