Justice, too, has a Sense of Humor - The Rolling OJ Simpson Legal Thread

oj as an individual is only compelling in the way that most sociopaths can be compelling--he's essentially an inexplicable void--but what really makes this documentary great (so far) is the way that something like history or larger socio-cultural forces become caught in the black hole of his orbit and then get explosively expressed through the whole sordid mess. it's riveting and even exhilarating to watch that unfold.

Very well described--that's exactly why I thought it was so great, the way O.J.'s story was so inexorably linked to larger events (he's almost like the anti-Ali). Toobin's book (and every book of his I've read) is very good.

As the whole thing unfolds, there are a few elephants in the room who don't show up as interviewees: Darden and Ito are at the top of the list. (Shapiro fell out with the other lawyers the day after the case ended, so his absence isn't surprising). Darden must obviously still be really bitter about the whole thing. Someone suggested in the Q&A I attended that Ito was duty-bound not to participate, but the director quickly made it clear that Ito could have taken part if he'd wanted to. Also, that Garcetti's participation was the only reason Clark (who swears like a truck driver...) took part.

Fuhrman seems to take great pleasure in being the villain. Wasn't sure how to read him.

the director edelman said darden was one of the first people he tried to talk to but that dude doesn't wanna say word one about any of this apparently. can't really blame him

the most obvious missing talking head is OJ's first wife, and I can absolutely understand her not wanting to have anything to do with this or anything else about the guy, who I'll assume treated her like shit. she denied in the divorce proceedings that he abused her, and that's possible, but the doc makes clear that he cheated on her numerous times.

http://www.vogue.com/13446573/where-is-marguerite-simpson/

the spectacle of people surrounding the cops (who were themselves surrounding OJ) at the moment of his surrender cheering "Free OJ", etc. is so unbelievable. it's a mix of black folks and white folks. some of them are probably righteously indignant at the LAPD, for very good reason, but a lot of it reminded me of the retrograde penn state rioting after joe paterno was fired. just throwing their reflexive support behind an odious figure.

i should add, throwing their support behind him just because he's a celebrity they admired for his athletic prowess.

i was in college when all this went down. i remember watching part of the chase on TV, but then i moved on to something else... and i remember at the time (1995/96) feeling vague contempt toward people urging me to watch the trial on TV. i dunno, i guess i was just a snobby college kid, and i felt kind of repulsed by the whole thing. so a lot of this stuff is totally new to me, even though i easily could have been watching it 20 years ago.

most of the immed post-verdict reaxtion ftage shd be in the smithsonian, particularly the old woman screaming THE JUICE IS LOOSE HES LOOOOSE

i was in 6th grade when the trial ended so i didn't understand any of it. i didn't even understand until now what a big deal he used to be. unrelatedly, when he committed the robbery in las vegas he was 60 years old!

yeah i didnt have much context for the level of fame he had at the time of the chase, i knew from the reporting that it was a big deal but i had no idea why besides he possibly murdered someone

i said elsewhere the doc has been like a v comprehensive college course, it pulls a lot of threads together really well

Some of those ex LAPD on-camera interviews in ep 2/3 are so infuriating

i think i was a jr in hs, they wheeled a tv into my spanish class for the verdict

me too

i was too young to witness OJ's football career, so i mostly knew him as one of those celebrities who is mostly famous for being famous. oh, and "the naked gun" (where he is quite funny).

i was actually a little underwhelmed by the documentary, perhaps b/c expectations had been set so high. it's very good for what it is, particularly the first three episodes. but i found some of the discussion of the trial (and his history w/ nicole simpson) needlessly confusing, and there were some major lacunae.

I finished final ep tonight, was impressed that they don't really let anyone off the hook. Like, it's kinda shitty all round. And even Carl Douglas & Danny Bakewell claiming victory so decisively it comes across as pyrrhic

carl douglas is a very compelling screen presence.

yeah definitely. they should have had him play himself in the tv series!

i would listen to a carl douglas podcast/radio show for fucking hours

i love the way he talked about redecorating oj's house for the jury tour

"oh nooooo we would never do that" lol

and in the final episode talking about the nevada charges, "that thing was 2 years soaking wet" cracked me up

i think the achievement of the doc is the weight & sheer amount of context they gave to the "oj is innocent" movement

like i definitely came away with much more understanding of the complexities than i had before, in terms of the history of la wrt race & the lapd

Its def true all that plays in, but I was glad they also included the pov that the jury was just like fuck this we want to go home, your prosecution team was wack as hell so we are not even deliberating

still the superstar in rent-a-car

yeah that one juror was like fuck you I deliberated for 257 nights "I didnt deliberate" eat a dick

i kinda liked that old juror too, she was real as hell

the doc just briefly and gingerly touched on this, but i personally found the jurors' "we didn't like the prosecutors or the way they presented their case" excuse for the verdict to be a cover for an implicit misogyny. they blamed nicole.

carl douglas seems like a deeply morally compromised dude

he's also charismatic as hell

ideal combo for a defense attorney!

the doc just briefly and gingerly touched on this, but i personally found the jurors' "we didn't like the prosecutors or the way they presented their case" excuse for the verdict to be a cover for an implicit misogyny. they blamed nicole.

well, there was the one juror (now an elderly woman) who said a whole string of very unsettling things, including that she blames battered women for the harm done to them, since they didn't have the courage to leave their men.

xposts ... no, i didn't "like" that juror. she was "real" insofar as she admitted making her decision based on something other than a careful weighing of evidence.

the lack of deliberation is ridiculous. i've been on a jury for a much more small-potatoes crime (workplace harassment) and we deliberated for two whole days.

one guy on the jury was a contractor and constantly reminded us that for every hour we deliberated, he was losing money. eventually we had to call the judge in to remind him of his duty (and more or less tell him to shut up).

i mean, i was sympathetic to the guy (i was losing money, too, though maybe not as much money), but if you're on a jury you gotta deliberate.

granted we had not been sequestered for nine months, which to me is just unimaginable... almost like torture.

the insane experience of the sequester is as plausible a reason for the verdict as any. the defense team put on a dazzling show for nine whole months, the prosecution bumbled, often offensively so, and so it's not a far stretch to say they literally inhabited an alternate and distorted reality.

xpost yeah it's too long, any jury would work against you after that long sequestered

that whole thing where marcia clark said "they just didnt care" after presenting the domestic abuse material made me think that it was less the jury not caring and more that the prosecution just assumed the jury WOULD care without trying to understand their own jury or frame it in a way to make them care? idk

i think we have to admit that some folks on the jury (yes, even women) had some really retrograde notions about domestic abuse. and that played into the verdict. :(

yeah, i guess that's more the point :(

the doc just briefly and gingerly touched on this, but i personally found the jurors' "we didn't like the prosecutors or the way they presented their case" excuse for the verdict to be a cover for an implicit misogyny. they blamed nicole.

― ryan, Monday, June 20, 2016 1:43 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. they touched on that a bit though. didn't the prosecutor discover that the jury had an "unfavorable" view of nicole simpson? that was so fucked up to me. poor women was trapped in an abusive relationship with a probable sociopath since she was 18 years old.

in the end, i didn't understand why cochran, a civil rights lawyer, decided to take this on. he made his name protecting people who were unjustly victimized by the lapd and oj simpson was.... not that.

still on pt 3 tho

Didn't they explain that he did cases for famous people before?

As someone who don't remember anything about the case, which really didn't make sense as a kid in Denmark, this was a weird viewing experience. Of course, I know of the case, it's been referred to so much since then, but a lot of it was still very new to me. And very interesting. On the other hand, the story seemed slightly skewed. I know the trial is THE major part of any story on OJ Simpson, but from a purely dramatic viewpoint, it's really not the climax. It's the turning point, and the real story is from there til they jail him for something much less serious.

Which takes up way too little.

I think in Johnnie Cochran's eyes, O.J. was unjustly targeted by the LAPD. I only partly agree with that--I'm very much of the two seemingly contradictory truths view, that O.J. was 100% guilty and that the LAPD probably did try to embellish its case--but I don't think there's any doubt that Cochran saw, most egregiously in Fuhrman, a perfect case to underscore his life's work.

I think Cochrane was the only person who understood OJ and LA on a deep, cynical level and knew that the less this case was about murder the better. And he wanted to WIN. Prosecution wanted so badly to be right that they didn't realize they were playing small-ball til it was too late

and i agree with clemenza

You can get Cochran's whole closing statement online:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/cochranclose.html

Echoing VG's point--rather amazing, when you think about it--Cochran ends his statement with this: "That is Mark Fuhrman."

Actually, the title says "Excerpts," so I can't be sure that was the way the statement ended. Going by the placement of the eliding asterisks, it would seem so.

LAPD's institutional racism and general ineptitude undermining an open-and-shut case should come as a surprise to no one (or at least no Americans)

for real

it is truly awful that such horrific murders were not afforded a non-circus trial, i feel terrible for nicole's family & the goldmans

but there's a tiny part of me that is (somewhat guiltily) impressed by cochrane's laser vision

oj can eat a dick forever tho

finished part 4. i think cochran was drawn to the extraordinary opportunity this trial offered for both noble and ignoble reasons (fame on the one hand, and exposure for the very real issue of racial injustice on the other). he was a powerful orator and this was a once in a lifetime stage... idk, he comes across ambiguously to me in the end.

it's hard for me to believe anyone on the defense team sincerely believed oj was innocent though.