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

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.

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)

― Οὖτις, 6. juli 2016 22:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is the main thing I took from it. It's presented as if this was kinda just the first time a black defendant had the money to really do a background check on the LAPD officers who was on the case, and - surprise! - there was a Mark Fuhrman. But there would always have been a Mark Fuhrman, because this is the LAPD. The institution was so racist, so rotten, that it could never have won the case cleanly.

the florida years are so weird.

the las vegas thing, too, seemed like a subconscious attempt to face justice, like raskolnikov returning over and over to the scene of the crime or whatever. although if he was a true sociopath i guess he wouldn't feel that sort of guilt.

like all lawyers described as "high-powered," cochran was an egotist - he wanted the glory (and probably the intellectual challenge) of winning a high-profile case, and incidentally didn't mind the money, either. i don't know why we have to assume his "race card" defense was sincere (or why it would matter). btw by the mid-1990s cochran had long since displaced much of his civil-rights work for celebrity clients.

Finally finished the doc just now. an amazing piece of work and i tink ryan above puts his finger on it with larger socio-cultural forces become caught in the black hole of his orbit and then get explosively expressed through the whole sordid mess., and what Veg said about it feeling like a college course. the director's ability to field all these themes, and then explore them in depth via digressions throughout the documentary, was impressive, as well as his ability to tie all these threads together.

so many thoroughly sleazy and unlikable characters throughout the story. OJ's the key demon, but really: Furhman and his self-pity; Peter Hyams, who knew OJ did it but couldn't comprehend and hated african-americans' joy at the verdict; the defence team, who were only doing their job but seemed proud of how adeptly they did it; nearly everyone involved in the Florida and Vegas era...

this is marvelous

the other amazing moment in part 3 is watching oj watch johnny cochrane roast darden in the sidebar abt the nword -- i think bailey or someone tries to whisper something to oj and he just is so intently focused on johnny & u can practically see his expression of like omg theres no way im getting found guilty

― johnny crunch

One of the year's best moments.

In a sign of unity Trump should pardon OJ and hire him for his cabinet. Inner city physical fitness outreach?

xp of this year or 1995

never 4get

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JR-HGfMcwLbhqxnx17cwJpbt8qY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3638570/bushcampaignevent.0.jpg

BBC showing the full thing uncensored
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04st1yv/oj-made-in-america-part-1

tore through the first 3 hours last night, god damn this is amazing. sheer disbelief that there are people who are prepared to go on tv in 2017 and be equivocal about
the whole Rodney King thing.

i see it's up for an Oscar for Best Doc too.

It's amazing.

By weird coincidence I've just started watching the drama starring Ross From Friends now its on Netflix, and it's very jarring, having devoured all of that fantastic, very sober, very dark and very depressing documentary, to see the same story retold with very little nuance or subtlety and with constant, distracting "No really look its the Kardashians! Off TV!" digressions. Not not annoying it - it's trashy but good at being trashy - but it leaves a funny taste in the mouth after that magnificent, epic documentary.

binged this via t0rr3ntz on a couple of long flights last summer and was totally blown away - will def watch again on iplayer, it's just masterfully put together.

i kinda think it's better to watch the Murphy tv drama then follow up with the doc- it's like going from paint by numbers to an impressionist painting

i told a friend the doc is like taking an undergrad course in OJ

the doc is v v good

and agreed on the uncanny valley chasm between the doc and american crime story. my pop crit radar is completely off, though - i thought the show starring john travolta's forehead was r r bad, like R bad, like every time the camera would spin around the room 360 degrees and land back on that forehead i was more and more convinced that there was something subversively good going on, but the badness was unintentional. then it got all these award show nominations and people were taking it seriously and writing episode recaps and all that shit.

i have not read this thread so apologies if a bunch of people here liked the show and i'm being a dick. judging by the general acclaim for the ross/travolta-forehead show, there's probably quite a few fans here too

i enjoyed it but there's a weird disconnect between the actors who are intentionally camping it up and those who are unintentionally camping it up and those who are trying to be good and succeeding and those who are trying to be good and failing and those who aren't trying at all

also the bizarreness of cuba gooding jr as the main character, yet barely appearing at all and barely saying anything (for good reason), compared to the fascinating portrait of oj you get from the doc.

cuba's the weakest & most baffling part of the tv show to me. like, he's nowhere close to capturing oj physically or his charm or aggression ... it's just cuba pretending to be oj & it's dumb

i mean Sterling K Brown or Courtney Vance hit it out of the park & Cuba's playing fkn wiffle ball idgi

i told a friend the doc is like taking an undergrad course in OJ

Yes! And also American race relations in the 60s-90s, and the sins of the LAPD, and corruption at the higher echelons of American society, and how celebrity seduces so thoroughly it can help those who possess it literally get away with murder.

And tbf American Crime Story is R R BAD, esp any scene involving the younger Kardashians, but Ross From Friends is not camping it up even slightly and is actually really affecting in his role as the guy who believes in the Juice and really wants to save him but often seems really critically inept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=726Ujz_KOHE

Cuba's nothing performance actually makes People v OJ fit alongside the doc a bit better. The show is about the lawyers and the people surrounding the case, while the doc takes a deep deep dive into OJ himself. They complement each other.

good point

Fuhrman stuff; pretty mindblowing. had no knowledge of him before.

Cataclysmic, as I remember the Fuhrman tapes; split the trial into before and after.

not surprising that he's still a racist shithead, saying the lapd should have just choked rodney king

Halfway through a rewatch. Not something that most viewers will care about, but I wish they spent a bit more time on his two years with the 49ers--at the very least, some details as to how he ended up there. The film has him retiring before you even know he's playing for San Francisco.

Not too many people in this who come across worse than Roy Firestone.