People who thought OJ Simpson was innocent at the time of the trial, did you later change your mind?
People who thought OJ Simpson was innocent at the time of the trial, did you later change your mind?
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OJ's trial goes beyond his innocence or guilt. His trial was racially charged and cannot be understood outside this context. I don't think those who celebrated his acquittal believed in his innocence as much as they saw it a victory that a black man used his privilege and resources to escape justice the way so many white criminals had in the past. Not justice, but equality, American style.
For white America, it came as quite a shock that a rich black celebrity could leverage race tensions to escape accountability. This was such a singular event it resonates 30years later. If you're black, you don't need a long memory to see justice betrayed behind some racist bullshit.
I think a major factor was also that the police apparently tried to frame him. It's unfortunate that this resulted in the jury not believing the actual evidence, but the blame lies with the police for that.
Yeah the absolutely botched detective work and diareagrd for crime scene discipline caused a total overhaul of how crime scenes are handled today. The first cops on scene treked through the blood and took vloddy footprints across the house before the detectives showed up to start gathering evidence.
I find it weird how everyone acts like he absolutely 100% did it, when we know that the police investigation was racist, explicitly corrupt, and incompetent, and the evidence we do have points more heavily at his son Jason having done it.
Oh wow, a convicted felon accepted $600k for a book deal. He also tried to setup a robbery of a trading and collectables dealer, all that's evidence of is that OJ wanted money.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
it's true that it was close to impossible for the jury to remain unaffected by the political situation in LA at the time.
But the police and prosecutors did such a bad job it was almost impossible to convict him beyond reasonable doubt. He was convicted easily in the civil case later.
There was something that you touched on that goes unnoticed in your presentation. The context also includes the media cycle. OJ's case was HIGHLY publicized. It was unlike any other trail in history. There was constant coverage of a former NFL superstar turned into a movie star under a murder charge that he ran away from in a high speed freeway chase. We literally watched the verdict being read in highschool where everyone could hear it. The scale was phenomenal and I don't feel it has been followed the same since.
This is probably the most succinct I've ever heard it described.
This is a really good point.
If this opinion is indeed common, it is so fucked up. "Yes, he is criminal, but he is my race criminal, so I am glad that he could escape accountability because he is rich (while I am not)". This seems to me just insane, or at very least deeply immoral.
Taking the above comment at face value:
The meaning you see in this is that the world is now a worse place because a guilty man walked free.
The meaning they see is that maybe this means the world is only fucked up in a classist way and not in both a classist way and a racist way.
I think it's insane to view the first as more moral, it just seems more surface level to me, it's not examining what this means about how our broader system functions. It also seems to accept the LAPD investigated evidence and theory at face value.
Well, if jury was predominantly white, I would agree with you. But if anything his acquittal was also based race, at least it can be interpreted that way. So, celebrating that blacks can be racist too is not something I would do.
He wasnt acquitted by an all black jury, and the acquittal was not an act of racism, it was an act of logic given the incompetent police investigation.
Again, if it happened when jury was predominantly white, I would agree with you. As such your statement is unproven speculation.
From Wikipedia about Simpson trial:
After the verdict, polling showed that 75 percent of White Americans thought Simpson was guilty while 70 percent of Black Americans thought he was innocent.
If you think that somehow Black juries were immune to that, you have to provide strong evidence of that.
Sounds like 70% of Black Americans had a view of our police force that white Americans only recently woke up to.
So, you are confirming my point that acquittal was racially motivated?
How did you take that from what I wrote? I said that white people were dumb and naiive in trusting the evidence from an overtly racist, corrupt, and incompetent lapd.
While I totally agree that the rich (regardless of color) are not treated the same by our system of justice, he was so beyond all doubt guilty that it actually hurt the Black community. Whites and other peoples of color were disappointed that any person regardless of the tint of their skin was not held accountable for the obvious brutal murder of 2 people. And how sad that at this point we still make judgements based on how light or how dark a person's skin is.
That sounds like white racist people being racist because they were racist.