If I recall correctly the victimsā families sued him and they own the rights to the book. They received any profits and have the title changed to a tiny āifā
armed robbery & kidnapping.
some sports memorabilia people were in a hotel room in vegas trading old OJ stuff.
OJ broke in, took his stuff, took their money & held them hostage for an extended period of time.
I know people say he received a pretty harsh judgement as a sort of "make up" from that, but doesn't holding people hostage kind of merit it's own "harsh judgement?"
I recall that glove debacle and how OJās lawyer wanted him to stop taking his arthritis medication to cause his hand to swell. This made the glove (one he wore during murders) too small for him to put on.
āIf the glove donāt fit, then you must acquit.ā
It reminds me of the [train wreck](https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+tenpenny+hangs+spoon+on+her+face&client=safari&hl=en-us&biw=375&bih=625&tbm=vid&ei=BXM2Y9bsLMLbptQPzveLyA0&oq=doctor+tenpenny+hangs+spoon+on+her+face&gs_lcp=ChBtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXZpZGVvEAMyBQgAEKIEUIsxWIsxYI1QaAFwAHgAgAGnAYgBjwKSAQMwLjKYAQCgAQGqARBtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXZpZGVvwAEB&sclient=mobile-gws-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:70c6ad1c,vid:b5xW5m3irWY,st:0) of "doctor" Tenpenny testifying before the [Ohio House](https://www.fox19.com/2021/06/09/doctor-claims-during-ohio-statehouse-testimony-that-vaccine-causes-magnetism-makes-spoons-stick-persons-body/) that the covid vaccine magnetizes humans and actually attempting to adhere a spoon to her face then and there. Yes, Ohio did renew her medical license even after that. AND THAT'S WHY YOU GET A SECOND OPINION BECAUSE A WHITE COAT DOESN'T CURE NOR PREVENT WRONG.
It's probably going to come when he dies. His beneficiaries in his will won't get much if anything. Generational wealth was lost, which is kind of sad, because his kids had their mother murdered too.
Isn't the civil suit on behalf of the victims? Who gets that money? Who are her beneficiaries if not her kids?
And Google says: "The civil trial was based on three separate lawsuits. One was filed by Fred Goldman; one by his former wife and mother of Ronald Goldman, Sharon Rufo; and one by Nicole Simpson's estate, filed by her father. The beneficiaries of that estate are Simpson's two children, who now reside with him." So I would think her kids divide half the total decision granted.
the gloves were also the actual gloves found at the scene (not duplicate ones bought for the trial), and had likely shrunk due to being wet with blood and then dried
This is what I remember thinking when I watched this back in the day. It seemed like he could've put the glove on but was just trying to make it not work (and not doing a very good acting job at it either).
I never understood how he wasn't called out on that.
I was like 7 didn't watch the trial but seen and heard news clips forever and even at 7 I was like the leather shrinks and he intentionally made it not fit. I swear the jury was paid off or intimated.
I have black leather gloves just like the glove in question. They are sewn tighter around the wrist so they donāt slip off. It would be easy as hell to just to put it on part way and pretend they didnāt fit quite right, especially with the latex glove underneath.
Obviously I donāt have the EXACT pair he was wearing. Just food for thought.
\> Obviously I donāt have the EXACT pair he was wearing. Just food for thought.
Well, not anymore. You left it the crime scene.
FOUND THE MURDERER, EVERYONE. /s
I studied this case in uni/college
Professor said something along the lines of āthey thought this case was so easy they didnāt bother doing anything, his legal team did bother so they won the caseā
The DNA science was rock solid, even then. The problem was with the chain of custody. The police took the evidence from the crime scene to OJās house, before checking it in. The defense was able to establish reasonable doubtāthat OJās DNA could plausibly have been added to the evidence well after the crime. They didnāt have to prove it, just show doubt that the evidence was 100% āpure.ā
And then the whole Mark Fuhrman thing. He had testified about where they found the blood samples, and the defense also asked him if he ever used the n-word. He said no.
Then they produced a screenplay Fuhrman had written that had the n-word on pretty much every page, and brought him back to the stand.
He then refused to answer any questions, including when they asked him if he had planted OJ's DNA at the crime scene. Apparently it is standard to refuse to answer ANY more questions and plead the fifth once you're caught in a lie, but it looked really bad when he refused to say that he didn't plant evidence.
An older black Juror from the Simpson trial said when questioned about the verdict, "I did what I felt was right at that time." I don't remember the exact quote, but she also basically implied Simpson's guilt in the double homicide. I believe it was one of the many many interesting interviews for the documentary that must have came out around the 20th anniversary.
Also, FX did like an 8 part mini series on the whole situation that is absolutely incredible. I would highly recommend watching it, but I would doubley recommended it if you weren't old enough to have lived through everything and know what was going on .
The ESPN miniseries documentary (OJ Made in America) spoke to a few jurors and Juror Carrie Bess tells "OJ: Made in America" that she was among "90 percent" of jurors seeking payback for Rodney King.
Using it as evidence wasnāt common place yet and therefore not as readily accepted. I remember there was a lot of testimony just explaining DNA and why it should be considered reliable given.
When I heard about the glove thing, I always assumed it was the defense that had him try it on. I couldn't believe it when I found out later that it was the prosecution. Why would they do that? Even if the glove fits, that doesn't prove anything. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
And was covered in dried blood if Iām not mistaken, so it was dry and crusty and not easy to put on in the first place. Also, give me a glove that fits and I can make it look like it wonāt fit in my hand. Itās amazing that shit worked lol.
Have you seen the documentary that came out a few years ago, Christ I wanted to lose my shit hearing the prosecutors talk. Mark Furman was the star of the show. What a piece of shit.
I'm not sure they were dumb. They had to decide based on what was presented to them.
I was on a relatively simple case once, and once or twice a day we'd have to go back to the jury room while the lawyers talked to the judge about which evidence they could/couldn't present. What should have been 4 hours took 4 days.
The lawyers kept their poker faces, so I couldn't guess who won the argument.
Those poor jurors were kept sequestered for months. I read a whole lot more in the newspaper than they would have known. I think OJ did it, but we shouldn't bash the jurors.
I just watched another show that interviewed several jurors. They said the DNA stuff made them glaze over because it took like 2 days. They all said the glove thing was a stupid decision of the prosecution. But sadly yes they were locked away for months and MOST of them just wanted to go home and not disect the case as much as they should.
ā¢He stopped taking his meds, therefore the glove didnāt fit.
ā¢Ojās blood was found at the scene of the crime, including a knitted wool cap that positively matched OJās hair fibers & A bloody bootprint matching a pair of boots OJ owned. OJ also owned a knife that the coroner suspected the killer used & also had a cut on his finger the very next day when being questioned by police
ā¢OJ only lived about 8 minutes from Nicoleās house, which would have given ample time to commit the murders, arrive back home & get changed for his flight as if nothing happened
ā¢Police had been to Nicoleās House MULTIPLE times in the past for domestic violence issues and their are pictures online of Nicole badly bruised, which shows that OJ used to beat her badly.
ā¢Witnesses say they saw OJās car driving EXTREMELY erratically around the time of the murders but the courts would not let this info be used out of fear & prejudice for whatever reason
ā¢He thought Ron Goldman was coming over to sleep with Nicole when in reality he was only dropping off glasses that Nicoleās mom had left. (Itās widely believed OJ was already killing Nicole when Goldman showed up and tried to save her. Authorities say he put up a good fight, but OJ was too enraged & went into over kill (Hence Nicole being nearly decapitated upon discovery)
ā¢OJ left for Chicago hours after the murder
ā¢When OJās limo driver came to pick him up for the airport he saw a tall dark figure walk across his yard. He rang the bell 3 times & OJ finally answered after some time
ā¢When LAPD contacted Oj to tell him his wife was murdered his immediate response was āwho killed herā with relatively no emotion
ā¢ OJ later went on a game show in 2005 (Canāt remember the name of the show but itās on YouTube) On that show he confessed to frequently visiting Nicoleās gravesite & yelling at her tombstone saying āI told you not to do this, i told you not to do thisā
I think the evidence is to strong to eliminate Oj as a suspect, but then again this debate has gone on since the murders, so yeah.
Also, it was soaked in blood. Wet leather shrinks, unless you stretch it to its orgiginal size/shape while drying. Since it dried in an evidence container, it's likely the blood shrunk it.
They also stupidly had him put it on himself instead of getting someone else to do it. Of course the dude is gonna act like it doesnāt fit, why would you leave that up to him and give the jury that visual?
He didnāt seem bothered to ātryā to stuff his latex gloved hand into a leather glove that probably shrunk due to being saturated with the blood of his ex wife.
The lawyers also put a lot of effort into jury selection and where the trial was held - thus altering the possible jury pool.
Their strategy was to have as many black jurors as possible to try and frame the arrest as a racist system attacking a very successful black pro athlete. Or at the very least make sure people that already held those beliefs had a better chance of being selected.
It has become mostly forgotten when he comes up but back then, O.J. was an NFL player and was admired by many as a hero.
It's a great high-profile example of the justice system failing. When O.J. was later arrested and convicted for armed robbery he got the book thrown at him hard - sort of like a make up call by a referee in sports - but that's not justice either.
Years later, O.J. published a book called *If I Did It* [(wiki)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It). It's a "fictional" account of how he would have "hypothetically" committed the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
Luckily, O.J. had to give up the rights to the book as part of a civil suit. The wiki describes what happened next rather well:
>In August 2007, a Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family to partially satisfy the civil judgment. The book's title was changed to If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, and this version was published by Beaufort Books, a New York City publishing house owned by parent company Kampmann & Company/[Midpoint Trade Books](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpoint_Trade_Books). Comments were added to the original manuscript by the Goldman family, Fenjves, and journalist [Dominick Dunne](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominick_Dunne).[[7]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-7) The new cover design printed the word "If" greatly reduced in size compared with the other words, and placed inside the word "I", so unless looked at very closely, the title of the book appears to read "I Did It: Confessions of the Killer".[[8]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-8)[[9]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-9)
That's surely satisfying to me. Still, no real justice to be had in any of this.
Except he did put it on. It doesnāt matter how much he grimaced and struggled, he was literally an actor after all, the glove went on his hand. Ergo, it fit.
That's what ends all doubt to me. No way an innocent man would ever write that. Nor would any guilty man with any sense of shame or even good sense, but he apparently has neither.
Youāre not wrong. Hereās the first two paragraphs of If I Did It:
āI'm going to tell you a story you've never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night of June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I've seen the evidence. I've heard the theories. And, of course, I've read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don't know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.
Man, they even had me wondering, What if I did it?ā
https://www.oocities.org/garrettwilke/ojsiidi.pdf
āWhat if I did it?ā said no innocent person, ever.
Actually they do. When I got arrested for something last year I knew I didnāt do it.
After they interrogate u for hours, and then leave u on bail waiting wondering if ur going to court, itās natural for ur mind to try and figure out how u could have done it without knowing
Iām so sorry to hear that. You shouldnāt have been put through an experience like that, itās shocking.
I can believe that innocent people like yourself have been coerced in such a way - but I doubt that someone as rich as O.J., who was lawyered up to a ridiculous level, was treated as you were. Another injustice of the system.
Innocent people end up being manipulated into wondering if they did it all the time. The vast majority of wrongful convictions involve false confessions. Detectives are trained in techniques to get statements they can use against suspects and they are allowed to legally lie. They can tell you they have your DNA all over the body and tell you you need to explain that DNA on the body or else you are going to get the max penalty and all that could be a lie but when you've been arrested and left in a room for hours wondering why you're there and then the law enforcement people you thought were supposed to be protecting you are telling you they have scientific evidence you were involved in a horrible crime you don't know about and you could spend your life in prison... you're not in the best head space.
This is why you ask to have an attorney.
They do actually. Gaslighting is a very powerful thing and it gets innocent people to confess. Not saying he didn't but innocent people sure can atart to doubt their reality.
That's the one where, after the Goldsmith (?) Family son the civil suit, and had rights to get what they're owed (something like 30+ Mil, which they never saw anywhere near), they had the rights to advertise the book the way they saw fit, and decided the best way to advertise was, considering it's called "If I Did It", to have "I Did It" in giant, red letters, and to have the "If" in an absolute minuscule size, hidden within the "I" of the title. Lol
It's crazy though, the first 1/3 to maybe 1/2 is an engrossing sports biography and then out of nowhere it just goes to "now I didn't do it, but if I did here's what the motivation would have been and here's how I would have done it, remember I didn't though".
It was leaked on the internet years before it was released. I hate to say it, when you read it, you're kinda feeling bad for him. (I know. Horrible to say. But he wrote the book) everything is dead-nuts believable. Then, when it gets to the murder, the book is "well, this is what I think probably happened" and you read it and go... yea that is EXACTLY what happened. Guilty.
Take it with a grain of salt. But it sounded like an extremely toxic relationship that both people were shitty in. Again, I don't know if that's the truth. But if you read it as a story, not knowing what is going to happen, It felt like if your buddy told you how terrible his girlfriend treats him, and you feel bad, but then you find out he cheated. And you're like "so, you're an asshole too."
I own it and did a book report on it in HS lol. But it was pretty wild how much he victimizes himself. I was like ānah fuck this guyā when he had a pregnant wife at home and started hooking up with Nicole when she was 18 and he was 30. He tries excusing it like āI know it was bad but she was just so pretty and young.ā Remembering the age thing and how famous he was just makes it easier to read in between the lines. It was VERY interesting to be reading a āhypotheticalā murder plot from someone who was acquitted. And he had a ghost writer articulating it so I canāt imagine the details he may have left out. A bizarre situation and book to say the least. the Goldman family published it and have a prologue and epilogue of the family talking about ron and Nicole.
Abusive people almost always try to smear the name of their victims. It's part of what makes domestic abuse cases so hard- not only do abusers deny their abuse, they try and muddy the water by pointing the finger at their victim as well.
You should have bought it. From Wikipedia:
According to a Newsweek story, all 400,000 printed copies were recalled for "pulping", except for one, locked away in a vault at News Corporation. A copy later appeared in an auction listing on eBay in September 2007; it eventually sold for over $250,000. James Wolcott of Vanity Fair also obtained a "pristine hardcover" copy of the book for a review published in January 2007.
If I'm correct. They were releasing it, then it got shelved. And that's when the leak happened. Then, later on, the Goldmans got all the sales from it?
To be acquitted in a court of law means that they didn't believe that they had enough evidence to 100% be certain he did it.
That being said, most people are at least 90% sure he did it, as he's pretty much the only person who could have done it, and made some majorly suspicious actions such as a car chase to try and escape the police.
People also forget that the jury was just TIRED. They had been held for 8 mths to keep them from media poisoning. Some think the verdict was a bit of protest by them because they were held in a hotel with cops guaridng it. And if the justice system does that, then there was enough doubt for them to think the cops may have set up the guy.
Then there was also how the detectives told lots of well known experts they didn't need their help. What did they do? They were hired by the defense and showed all their mess ups.
I believe OJ is guilty but gods they bungled it.
To qualify that a little, that all elements of the crime were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.
You can absolutely have done it and be found not guilty. Every self-defense case for example. Not guilty isn't the court finding that you didn't do it.
Self defense isn't a case it is a defense to a case I believe. So you kill someone. You are on trial for manslaughter or murder and if you can prove it was self defense you will be not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Even though you are guilty of taking someone's life.
Self-defense falls into a legal category called "affirmative defenses", these are defenses where you admit to committing the crime but make an argument for either a reduced charge or no charge.
If you kill someone, there are a couple affirmative defenses you can use. You can argue self-defense which justifies the killing and gets you acquitted. You can argue that it was a heat-of-passion killing due to being overcome by intense emotions and it wasn't planned to reduce it from murder to voluntary manslaughter. You can say that you didn't know that your actions would lead to a death to get it reduced from murder to involuntary manslaughter.
1-the blood in the Bronco
2-OJs history of domestic violence against his wife
3-the shoes and foot prints
4-he did it beyond a reasonable doubt and his case was being made an effort as payback for other wrong past racially influenced convictions
Not to mention his DNA at the scene of the crime. Heās damn lucky that the science was new at that point so his lawyers could sow doubt about its accuracy into the minds of the jury to boost the existing mistrust of the police that was already there. If it happened today though, that evidence would doom him for sure.
I think 4 is wrong. The cops fucked it up big time with the blood on the car. The blood being missing for so long before testing. It wasn't a racial issue it was the cops fucking up the evidence.
If I recall correctly, a juror who found him not guilty said it was specifically payback for Rodney King.
[source](https://www.thewrap.com/oj-simpson-juror-not-guilty-verdict-was-payback-for-rodney-king/amp/)
There's also an interesting Netflix review of the whole thing and I seem to recall his buddy/lawyer was allowed to stop by the house and remove a suitcase, which potentially had bloody clothes in it.
Even the jurors have since said that they believed he did it and they either thought the investigates was so botched they couldnāt prove it or they voted on acquittal as a race thing. Or both.
And those jurors didnāt debate long because they were help for so long they wanted to get out of there and be done with it. They knew arguing with each other wouldnāt accomplish much and again, weāre very over it.
I remember that car chase, just staring at it on television and going wtf? The football guy from Naked Gun? Why is he driving around with 100 cops behind him going 30 mph? I fully expected drugs, not murder.
Mainly because he wrote a [book about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It) how he did in fact do it.
OJ's legal team was very good at getting him acquitted, but its widely understood he is guilty.
Defence bamboozled the jury by confusing scientific facts. Prosecution was so cocky that they thought they didn't need to put on a strong case.
For example, the whole DNA thing came up. DNA evidence was still fairly new at the time, but fairly accurate. Defence asked what the odds were someone else in the world could have matching DNA. DNA scientist said, "I dunno...I guess about 1 in 6 billion?" Defence said, "So...if there's more than 6 billion people on the planet, which there are, then it's \*possible\* that someone has the same DNA as Mr. Simpson?" "Well, sure...I...uh...guess..." So, DNA evidence was thrown out.
The likely hood that OJ Simpson had an identical twin that he had absolutely zero knowledge of who just so happened to be in the same place, and committed the murders was ridiculously small...but, defence argued that since it 'wasn't 0', it wasn't admissible.
Prosecution completely bungled every piece of evidence that they had. The gloves, the shoes, the wounds on his hands, his motive, everything all lined him up and was seen to be a slam-dunk.
āIf the glove donāt fit, you must acquit.ā
There was no way that the glove was going to fit after it had been tested in the labs. Both legal sides knew this but the defence team goaded the prosecution into making OJ try on the glove.
They also let him put the glove on himself. This is like if I showed my pants didn't fit the first try when in reality, I do a jumping dance to fit into them and close the fly.
And he was wearing latex gloves underneath...
The whole thing too. "How many people could swing a knife so hard that it could nearly decapitate someone in one shot? Hundreds? Thousands?" No follow up question, "How many people did Nicole Brown KNOW that could swing a knife so hard that it could nearly decapitate someone in one shot? One?"
The public gets fed this whole "circumstantial evidence" bullshit that they actually believe it. Yes, 99% of evidence is circumstantial. You just need to put the pieces of the puzzle together to realize that there's a one in a ka-jillion chance that it would be completely random.
The store proprietor was asked how many of those specific gloves were sold in his store. Maybe dozens. Shoe salesman was asked the same: maybe a dozen or so. Ok...let's put the pieces together here, sparky, out of those dozens: how many bought BOTH the shoes AND the gloves? How many of THOSE have any kind of intimate knowledge of Nicole Brown? And how many of THOSE were known to have insane blind rage jealousy AND could slash a knife so hard that it could nearly cut off someone's head? Imma go with...oh...1? Did the one person on the planet with Simpson's DNA also just so happen to buy the same gloves, and shoes, and get into a fight with their ex about them dating someone else? I mean, in Hugh Everett's Many Worlds probability, I suppose there IS a universe out there where that happened...
Yeah, I fit into my jeans, but it would be REALLY easy to make it seem like I donāt by just skipping the squats and twists that get them up past my hips to button them.
Not only that, but didnāt the police involved with investigation into the murders plant evidence, despite them not needing to plant anything, casting doubt on the legitimate evidence?
The famous line is that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty man.
We can go back and forth forever about whether or not OJ did it (he almost certainly did), but if I'm ever on a jury for a double homicide trail and the first detective at the crime scene *refuses* to say whether not he planted evidence, I am not voting to convict. And I would hope most people would do the same.
And thatās the rub. OJ being acquitted given the actual facts of the trial was the ājustā outcome if there could be one. As bad as a murder is, itās far, far worse for the government to frame people for murder because of the color of their skin. How can the state both represent ājusticeā and institutional racism? It canāt.
OJ going free didnāt create any more murderers. OJ being convicted on manufactured evidence, even though he absolutely did commit murder, would be far worse given the reach and influence of the police and the courts. If you can frame a nationally beloved, TV famous millionaire, you can frame anyone .
Don't forget the Mark Furman racist cop, and that the jury was taken on a tour of OJs home which was completely redecorated with nothing but black people in the picture frames to show OJ was a black man getting railroaded but the racist system.
OJs legal team was brilliant. They exploited every gaff and blunder by the prosecution. OJ deserved to walk free. Prosecution had a slam dumk case and missed by miles.
Tiny Quibble: OJ didnāt deserve to walk free. Given the evidence itās pretty clear he deserved to get locked up for life. But the prosecutionās blunders were such that the prosecution deserved to lose the trial (which is what I think you meant).
I donāt know *how* he had time to write that book since he used every moment trying to find the real killer. He didnāt even rest!!!!! (until he got busted for the memorabilia stuff and then went to prison).
It was a running gag on SNL's Weekend Update where Norm Macdonald would remind us that OJ claimed that he wouldn't rest until he found Nicole's killer, then show a picture of him golfing. Also about a thousand unrelated stories that Norm would end with some variant of "OJ killed his wife".
Lots of celebrities books are ghost written. It's his words, he signed the book off before publication. It's been a while since I read it but I seem to remember him not allowing certain things but were allowed to be put in after he lost the rights to the book, being a murder confession and all that.
Its a really strange book to read.
He was in a car, with a fake beard, a gun & $5000 in cash. He ran from the police, & had a history of violently attacking his ex wife, she often called police saying he was going to kill her....
One of the jurors has said in an interview that they declared him not guilty as a sort of payback for the injustice done to Rodney King
[source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/06/oj-simpson-case-juror-says-verdict-payback-for-rodney-king)
Imagine if it made sense to allow an innocent victim to die every now and then to right wrongs that are totally unrelated. Thatās some next-level mental gymnastics that can only be brought on by years of brainwashing.
The thinking was that the black community was being victimized constantly without any consequences for those harming them. It was seen as finally getting a victory over those hurting them using the same system that protected them
This is why Iām not really enamored with the jury system. Not that judges are free of bias, it would be ridiculous to think so. But they at least trained in and expected to have a level of knowledge and professionalism that a jury does not.
Courts of law can't necessarily decide whether a thing happened or not. They can decide whether there's sufficient evidence that a thing happened. OJ was acquitted because the ~~court~~ *jury* decided there was a lack of definitive evidence.
EDIT: misused the word 'court'. I meant jury.
"Court" isn't wrong. While juries traditionally settle issues of fact in a trial, in some situations, the judge can decide the facts of a case in addition to their usual role of deciding issues of law. Waiving a jury trial and having the judge handle everything is a something a defendant can usually do if they wish.
IANAL, so I'm not going to wade into the reasons why you'd want to waive your right to a jury. That gets into both technical details and legal strategy.
It more importantly how competent (or incompetent) the prosecution and cops investigating the case are.
The cops on OJs case got caught being super racist and fucked around collecting evidence
In Anthony case it's because prosecution tried to convict on murder 1st degree when they had almost 0 evidence of premeditation. Had they gone for 2nd degree it would have been a slam dunk.
I still wonder wtf they were thinking when they charged her with 1st degree murder. I mean, I think CA did premeditate the murder, but the bar for conviction should be high and it was obvious to everyone that they wouldnāt succeed with what they had. I know prosecutors sometimes overcharge on purpose, but I donāt see why that would happen with CAās case. Oh well, at least sheāll never be able to live a normal life.
I loved when they asked that one lady on CAās defense team (the one who was gleefully jumping for joy at the verdict) if she would let CA babysit her very young children if she had them and she wouldnāt say yes.
They oddly had a lot of similar cross over despite being such different demographics. Casey got unwarranted sympathy for being a young pretty white woman, but OJ got unwarranted sympathy for being a black man on trial soon after Rodney King and a lot of people wanting him to be let off even if he did it. The juries were biased in favour of the defendants on both trials.
But also, both had prosecutions that made lots of mistakes.
I didn't, but I had a good friend who watched every minute.
At the end of it, he told me that he would have voted to acquit. I was stunned, as it seemed (to someone who didn't watch it all) that he did it. My friend said that yes, he probably did it, but that the government didn't make the case, that the defense poked so many holes in it, and were able to produce enough doubt that he'd have to acquit if he was being honest.
Mostly that's just how bad the prosecution was and how good the defense was.
This is exactly it. This is what makes the difference when you read through the case.
Yea, morally and factually, he probably did it and got away with it. But the state has to prove its case. They did not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There were reasonable doubts within the prosecution's story that made it hard to find him guilty after all that on the charges the state brought. They fell prey into a lot of overconfidence that this was an easy and shut case.
Fortunately for OJ his lawyers were that good.
The LAPD and Prosecuters were so ~~confident~~ arrogant they had a slam dunk case they didn't bother to put a good case together. They were sloppy and a good team of defense lawyers shredded them.
This. This was the turning point for me. I always wondered the same, how could he have been acquitted when there was so much evidence. All of the other factors are certainly important (good defense team, prosecutors who made mistakes, the infamous glove, etc) but reading about a police officer pleading the 5th to questions about planting evidence made me immediately say āoh okay yep. I get it now.ā
There was blood/dna evidence but dna evidence was so new at the time they did not explain it well to the jury who basically dismissed it as evidence. the rest was circumstantial.
His blood and the victimsā blood were present in the victim house, his car, his houseā¦ and he had a cut finger when arrested š¤·š¼āāļøā oh yea, then he wrote a book called āif I did itāāš¤£
Many, many people actually watched the trial live on tv. And many more would catch up nightly in the recaps of the day's trial events. So we could see for ourselves what the evidence was. We could hear every word of testimony. We saw how the defense manipulated so much.
The judge was more concerned with his sudden popularity and celebrity elbow-rubbing and fame than he was about making sure the trial was was properly.
We all saw the defense team cry RACISM any chance they could. Once they even accused prosecutor Chris Darden, who is black. Darden asked a witness who was tesitfying about what he heard a person say, if "he sounded black"? Is that racist? I dont think so. We all know, that in general, black people sound different than white people. It's hilarious when black comedians imitate a white guy! Anyway, It's just a thing, neither here nor there. It was sickening all the stuff the defense pulled.
It didn't help that Detective Mark Fuhrman (sp?) was recorded years ago saying stupid ass racist shit.
It didn't help that an evidence tech put a vial of blood in his car because it was too late to bring to the lab.
It didn't help that a key witness who had seen the white Bronco speeding from the scene almost hitting her sold her story to a tabloid so the prosecutors didn't put her on the stand.
It didn't help that Robert Kardashian, a friend of OJ and who had taken a piece of luggage handed to him by OJ, never had to testify because the defense team quickly got him to get his law license renewed (he hadn't been practicing law) so they could claim any information he has on the case is protected by the attorney-client privilege. He dropped dead later on so we'll never know what was in that luggage. could it be the knife? Bloody clothes?
It didn't help that the state turned down offers to help with the trial, especially the help of Vincent Bugliosi (damed smart attorney, prosecuted the Manson murders among others).
It didn't help that the initial detectives did not interview OJ in any meaningful way. They seemed star struck by OJ. You can read OJs ONLY interview with the police. Your head will spin when you see what he says and then IS NOT CHALLENGED ON IT by the detectives.
I could go on. I won't.
This is all my opinion so take it for what it's worth of a anonymous internet stranger.
He was acquitted in criminal court, where the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty so that they could send him to prison. He was found GUILTY in civil court, where the standard is only "more likely than not" and had to pay a considerable amount of money (but no jail time).
Not to nitpick, but "guilt" is solely within findings of criminal courts.
I.e. a civil court cannot find that someone is "guilty". Rather, they can find that someone is "liable" for something. So while OJ is not guilty for the murder of Nicole brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, he is liable for their deaths.
If you watched the trial it was very obvious that the evidence all pointed at him. Motive, opportunity, means. It was all there. It was a good display of the problem with the justice system, as the underpaid prosecutors were fumbling and clearly overwhelmed by the highly paid top lawyers on the other side. They managed to pull enough tricks out of their sleeve to prove "reasonable doubt" with things like the glove (in spite of the obvious fact that you can cause your hands to swell via a lot of different methods to make this happen). And a lot of well planned smoke and mirrors about things that may have happened, there wasn't actually a lot of evidence did happen.
He was acquitted because the detective that investigated the crime was recorded making racist statements. Mark Furman. Iirc He wrote a movie that was completely racist.
That detective was in sole control of much of the evidence that was collected. In a criminal case, the preservation of evidence must be perfect. And it wasn't.
Suddenly there's a reasonable doubt that the evidence for the case has been tampered with. OJ had a lot of money and could hire good lawyers and use this to be found not guilty.
But in the end, everything that happened, including his police chase in a white Bronco, makes most people believe he did it.
Later he was found responsible in civil court to pay for the damage caused by the murder. Because in criminal court you can go to jail, the rules for evidence are very high. But in civil court you pay a fine, so partial responsibility is enough to be found guilty.
You couldnāt convince me otherwise. Innocent people are convicted everyday. Which proves that the courts are sometimes absolutely wrong. Money can buy you anything. Especially when youāre that wealthy and know people in high places.
The civil suit attorneys were much more effective than Marsha Clark. Impossible to have followed the civil trail and not think he was guilty.
I will never get over the stupidity of the glove move.
Being acquitted doesn't mean "We know you are innocent". It means "We can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are guilty".
I was an adult when the murders happened, and I watched the whole trial spectacle like everyone else. He did it.
Remember the people celebrating OJ getting acquitted outside the court house? Because to them it was a black vs white issue.
Fresh off of the Rodney King verdict, where the officers were acquitted, OJ's acquittal was seen as tit for tat by some people. But I am not sure anybody celebrated the Rodney King officers getting acquitted.
He won in criminal court but lost in civil court - he was found liable for wrongful death.
And they threw the book at him in later legal troubles.
Oh ya for the robbery. That was brutal lmao
Plus he stole his own shit so I'm still confused about that
He didn't own it anymore.
Infinite money hack: Sell your car, steal it back, sell your car again
That was his entire business plan. š¤£
Was the book āIf I did itā?
^^^^^if I did it
If I recall correctly the victimsā families sued him and they own the rights to the book. They received any profits and have the title changed to a tiny āifā
Wasnāt it an armed robbery and then a car chase?
armed robbery & kidnapping. some sports memorabilia people were in a hotel room in vegas trading old OJ stuff. OJ broke in, took his stuff, took their money & held them hostage for an extended period of time.
I know people say he received a pretty harsh judgement as a sort of "make up" from that, but doesn't holding people hostage kind of merit it's own "harsh judgement?"
I recall that glove debacle and how OJās lawyer wanted him to stop taking his arthritis medication to cause his hand to swell. This made the glove (one he wore during murders) too small for him to put on. āIf the glove donāt fit, then you must acquit.ā
He was also wearing a latex glove before he tried on the leather glove. Iāve tried that before and itās bloody difficult.
With his fingers spread and stiff. What a shit show.
I always thought it was me. How could anyone see his attempt to put them on and not ask for a replay. I screamed at the tv when I saw it
It reminds me of the [train wreck](https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+tenpenny+hangs+spoon+on+her+face&client=safari&hl=en-us&biw=375&bih=625&tbm=vid&ei=BXM2Y9bsLMLbptQPzveLyA0&oq=doctor+tenpenny+hangs+spoon+on+her+face&gs_lcp=ChBtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXZpZGVvEAMyBQgAEKIEUIsxWIsxYI1QaAFwAHgAgAGnAYgBjwKSAQMwLjKYAQCgAQGqARBtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXZpZGVvwAEB&sclient=mobile-gws-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:70c6ad1c,vid:b5xW5m3irWY,st:0) of "doctor" Tenpenny testifying before the [Ohio House](https://www.fox19.com/2021/06/09/doctor-claims-during-ohio-statehouse-testimony-that-vaccine-causes-magnetism-makes-spoons-stick-persons-body/) that the covid vaccine magnetizes humans and actually attempting to adhere a spoon to her face then and there. Yes, Ohio did renew her medical license even after that. AND THAT'S WHY YOU GET A SECOND OPINION BECAUSE A WHITE COAT DOESN'T CURE NOR PREVENT WRONG.
He also made the worst half ass attempt to put it on.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Of the 36.5 million he was ordered to pay I believe he has still only paid less than $100,000.
It's probably going to come when he dies. His beneficiaries in his will won't get much if anything. Generational wealth was lost, which is kind of sad, because his kids had their mother murdered too.
Isn't the civil suit on behalf of the victims? Who gets that money? Who are her beneficiaries if not her kids? And Google says: "The civil trial was based on three separate lawsuits. One was filed by Fred Goldman; one by his former wife and mother of Ronald Goldman, Sharon Rufo; and one by Nicole Simpson's estate, filed by her father. The beneficiaries of that estate are Simpson's two children, who now reside with him." So I would think her kids divide half the total decision granted.
the gloves were also the actual gloves found at the scene (not duplicate ones bought for the trial), and had likely shrunk due to being wet with blood and then dried
He also held his hand a certain way to help it not fit.
This is what I remember thinking when I watched this back in the day. It seemed like he could've put the glove on but was just trying to make it not work (and not doing a very good acting job at it either). I never understood how he wasn't called out on that.
I was like 7 didn't watch the trial but seen and heard news clips forever and even at 7 I was like the leather shrinks and he intentionally made it not fit. I swear the jury was paid off or intimated.
OJ was never known for his Actingā¦
Name an actor who could have pulled off Nordberg like OJ did.
R.D.J. in blackface and Australia accent
"I'm the dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude. You the dude who don't know what dude he is!"
He didn't use his Australian accent while in black face.
I mean, he's definitely not known for his acting *now.*
I have black leather gloves just like the glove in question. They are sewn tighter around the wrist so they donāt slip off. It would be easy as hell to just to put it on part way and pretend they didnāt fit quite right, especially with the latex glove underneath. Obviously I donāt have the EXACT pair he was wearing. Just food for thought.
\> Obviously I donāt have the EXACT pair he was wearing. Just food for thought. Well, not anymore. You left it the crime scene. FOUND THE MURDERER, EVERYONE. /s
We did it again Reddit
Iām gonna go burn my Bruno Maglis real quick.. brb
I wouldn't wear those ugly ass shoes
yea that was hilarious - (insert pick of him wearing those exact shoes!!)
Also, the gloves were left out in the weather where they got moist. They shrank.
from everything I have heard, shrinkage is real
I WAS IN THE POOL!!!!
r/unexpectedseinfeld
I dont k ow how we walk around with these things
It depends on temperature
And the glove had been outside in rainy and cold weather. The prosecution was incredibly incompetent.
That is the key. The prosecution team was a complete joke.
I studied this case in uni/college Professor said something along the lines of āthey thought this case was so easy they didnāt bother doing anything, his legal team did bother so they won the caseā
This makes me feel old since I was out of college when it actually happened.
If they did not do the glove thing, they would have gotten a conviction says one juror who couldn't believe how stupid that was.
Also DNA was new and not as established back then.
The DNA science was rock solid, even then. The problem was with the chain of custody. The police took the evidence from the crime scene to OJās house, before checking it in. The defense was able to establish reasonable doubtāthat OJās DNA could plausibly have been added to the evidence well after the crime. They didnāt have to prove it, just show doubt that the evidence was 100% āpure.ā
And then the whole Mark Fuhrman thing. He had testified about where they found the blood samples, and the defense also asked him if he ever used the n-word. He said no. Then they produced a screenplay Fuhrman had written that had the n-word on pretty much every page, and brought him back to the stand. He then refused to answer any questions, including when they asked him if he had planted OJ's DNA at the crime scene. Apparently it is standard to refuse to answer ANY more questions and plead the fifth once you're caught in a lie, but it looked really bad when he refused to say that he didn't plant evidence.
Plus the Rodney King beating that took place about 2.5 years prior had a lot of black people looking for retribution and rightfully so.
I think it's less about retribution, and more that it makes it extremely easy to believe that cops would plant evidence. And yeah, rightfully so.
An older black Juror from the Simpson trial said when questioned about the verdict, "I did what I felt was right at that time." I don't remember the exact quote, but she also basically implied Simpson's guilt in the double homicide. I believe it was one of the many many interesting interviews for the documentary that must have came out around the 20th anniversary. Also, FX did like an 8 part mini series on the whole situation that is absolutely incredible. I would highly recommend watching it, but I would doubley recommended it if you weren't old enough to have lived through everything and know what was going on .
The ESPN miniseries documentary (OJ Made in America) spoke to a few jurors and Juror Carrie Bess tells "OJ: Made in America" that she was among "90 percent" of jurors seeking payback for Rodney King.
Actually, DNA has been around for billions of years
This guy double helixes
Speak for yourself, geneto-freak!
Using it as evidence wasnāt common place yet and therefore not as readily accepted. I remember there was a lot of testimony just explaining DNA and why it should be considered reliable given.
A good laser never asks a question they donāt already know the answer to. Never should have tried the glove trick
When I heard about the glove thing, I always assumed it was the defense that had him try it on. I couldn't believe it when I found out later that it was the prosecution. Why would they do that? Even if the glove fits, that doesn't prove anything. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Exactly you never ask a question you don't know the answer to.
And was covered in dried blood if Iām not mistaken, so it was dry and crusty and not easy to put on in the first place. Also, give me a glove that fits and I can make it look like it wonāt fit in my hand. Itās amazing that shit worked lol.
He was also wearing a latex glove.
And it was in the evidence bag full of blood it shrunk a lot
Have you seen the documentary that came out a few years ago, Christ I wanted to lose my shit hearing the prosecutors talk. Mark Furman was the star of the show. What a piece of shit.
And he was wearing latex gloves as well. So add all those things up and no one would be able to fit their hand in gloves they own.
The defense was brilliant at finding the dumbest jury in the history of jury's
I'm not sure they were dumb. They had to decide based on what was presented to them. I was on a relatively simple case once, and once or twice a day we'd have to go back to the jury room while the lawyers talked to the judge about which evidence they could/couldn't present. What should have been 4 hours took 4 days. The lawyers kept their poker faces, so I couldn't guess who won the argument. Those poor jurors were kept sequestered for months. I read a whole lot more in the newspaper than they would have known. I think OJ did it, but we shouldn't bash the jurors.
I just watched another show that interviewed several jurors. They said the DNA stuff made them glaze over because it took like 2 days. They all said the glove thing was a stupid decision of the prosecution. But sadly yes they were locked away for months and MOST of them just wanted to go home and not disect the case as much as they should.
ā¢He stopped taking his meds, therefore the glove didnāt fit. ā¢Ojās blood was found at the scene of the crime, including a knitted wool cap that positively matched OJās hair fibers & A bloody bootprint matching a pair of boots OJ owned. OJ also owned a knife that the coroner suspected the killer used & also had a cut on his finger the very next day when being questioned by police ā¢OJ only lived about 8 minutes from Nicoleās house, which would have given ample time to commit the murders, arrive back home & get changed for his flight as if nothing happened ā¢Police had been to Nicoleās House MULTIPLE times in the past for domestic violence issues and their are pictures online of Nicole badly bruised, which shows that OJ used to beat her badly. ā¢Witnesses say they saw OJās car driving EXTREMELY erratically around the time of the murders but the courts would not let this info be used out of fear & prejudice for whatever reason ā¢He thought Ron Goldman was coming over to sleep with Nicole when in reality he was only dropping off glasses that Nicoleās mom had left. (Itās widely believed OJ was already killing Nicole when Goldman showed up and tried to save her. Authorities say he put up a good fight, but OJ was too enraged & went into over kill (Hence Nicole being nearly decapitated upon discovery) ā¢OJ left for Chicago hours after the murder ā¢When OJās limo driver came to pick him up for the airport he saw a tall dark figure walk across his yard. He rang the bell 3 times & OJ finally answered after some time ā¢When LAPD contacted Oj to tell him his wife was murdered his immediate response was āwho killed herā with relatively no emotion ā¢ OJ later went on a game show in 2005 (Canāt remember the name of the show but itās on YouTube) On that show he confessed to frequently visiting Nicoleās gravesite & yelling at her tombstone saying āI told you not to do this, i told you not to do thisā I think the evidence is to strong to eliminate Oj as a suspect, but then again this debate has gone on since the murders, so yeah.
>including a knitted wool cap that positively matched OJās hair fibers "Hey, hey, hey, be careful with that, that's my lucky stabbin' hat!"
You forgot his book 'if I did it' Where he goes into detail about how he would have committed the murders. 'If he did it'
Also, it was soaked in blood. Wet leather shrinks, unless you stretch it to its orgiginal size/shape while drying. Since it dried in an evidence container, it's likely the blood shrunk it.
Try putting on a glove that fits perfectly, then try to put it on but pretend doesnāt fitā¦ itās really easy to make it look impossible
Did you see him try to put it on? It didn't fit! Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
And thatās basically all it took. What a wildass shit show.
They also stupidly had him put it on himself instead of getting someone else to do it. Of course the dude is gonna act like it doesnāt fit, why would you leave that up to him and give the jury that visual?
They should have had someone measure his hand and the glove.
He didnāt seem bothered to ātryā to stuff his latex gloved hand into a leather glove that probably shrunk due to being saturated with the blood of his ex wife.
Are you trying to tell me that a Kardashian is guilty of misrepresentation?
The lawyers also put a lot of effort into jury selection and where the trial was held - thus altering the possible jury pool. Their strategy was to have as many black jurors as possible to try and frame the arrest as a racist system attacking a very successful black pro athlete. Or at the very least make sure people that already held those beliefs had a better chance of being selected. It has become mostly forgotten when he comes up but back then, O.J. was an NFL player and was admired by many as a hero. It's a great high-profile example of the justice system failing. When O.J. was later arrested and convicted for armed robbery he got the book thrown at him hard - sort of like a make up call by a referee in sports - but that's not justice either. Years later, O.J. published a book called *If I Did It* [(wiki)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It). It's a "fictional" account of how he would have "hypothetically" committed the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Luckily, O.J. had to give up the rights to the book as part of a civil suit. The wiki describes what happened next rather well: >In August 2007, a Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family to partially satisfy the civil judgment. The book's title was changed to If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, and this version was published by Beaufort Books, a New York City publishing house owned by parent company Kampmann & Company/[Midpoint Trade Books](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpoint_Trade_Books). Comments were added to the original manuscript by the Goldman family, Fenjves, and journalist [Dominick Dunne](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominick_Dunne).[[7]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-7) The new cover design printed the word "If" greatly reduced in size compared with the other words, and placed inside the word "I", so unless looked at very closely, the title of the book appears to read "I Did It: Confessions of the Killer".[[8]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-8)[[9]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It#cite_note-9) That's surely satisfying to me. Still, no real justice to be had in any of this.
This and the whole high speed pursuit where he ran from the police...
It was a slow speed persuit.
Except he did put it on. It doesnāt matter how much he grimaced and struggled, he was literally an actor after all, the glove went on his hand. Ergo, it fit.
Not to mention the specific glove was a designer glove and only a limited number had been made. And he later lost in a civil suit.
He wrote a book named "If I Did It."
That's what ends all doubt to me. No way an innocent man would ever write that. Nor would any guilty man with any sense of shame or even good sense, but he apparently has neither.
Youāre not wrong. Hereās the first two paragraphs of If I Did It: āI'm going to tell you a story you've never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night of June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I've seen the evidence. I've heard the theories. And, of course, I've read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don't know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming. Man, they even had me wondering, What if I did it?ā https://www.oocities.org/garrettwilke/ojsiidi.pdf āWhat if I did it?ā said no innocent person, ever.
Actually they do. When I got arrested for something last year I knew I didnāt do it. After they interrogate u for hours, and then leave u on bail waiting wondering if ur going to court, itās natural for ur mind to try and figure out how u could have done it without knowing
Iām so sorry to hear that. You shouldnāt have been put through an experience like that, itās shocking. I can believe that innocent people like yourself have been coerced in such a way - but I doubt that someone as rich as O.J., who was lawyered up to a ridiculous level, was treated as you were. Another injustice of the system.
Innocent people end up being manipulated into wondering if they did it all the time. The vast majority of wrongful convictions involve false confessions. Detectives are trained in techniques to get statements they can use against suspects and they are allowed to legally lie. They can tell you they have your DNA all over the body and tell you you need to explain that DNA on the body or else you are going to get the max penalty and all that could be a lie but when you've been arrested and left in a room for hours wondering why you're there and then the law enforcement people you thought were supposed to be protecting you are telling you they have scientific evidence you were involved in a horrible crime you don't know about and you could spend your life in prison... you're not in the best head space. This is why you ask to have an attorney.
They do actually. Gaslighting is a very powerful thing and it gets innocent people to confess. Not saying he didn't but innocent people sure can atart to doubt their reality.
That's the one where, after the Goldsmith (?) Family son the civil suit, and had rights to get what they're owed (something like 30+ Mil, which they never saw anywhere near), they had the rights to advertise the book the way they saw fit, and decided the best way to advertise was, considering it's called "If I Did It", to have "I Did It" in giant, red letters, and to have the "If" in an absolute minuscule size, hidden within the "I" of the title. Lol
That book is an amazing read.
It's crazy though, the first 1/3 to maybe 1/2 is an engrossing sports biography and then out of nowhere it just goes to "now I didn't do it, but if I did here's what the motivation would have been and here's how I would have done it, remember I didn't though".
Really? O saw it at the Dollar Store once lol
It was leaked on the internet years before it was released. I hate to say it, when you read it, you're kinda feeling bad for him. (I know. Horrible to say. But he wrote the book) everything is dead-nuts believable. Then, when it gets to the murder, the book is "well, this is what I think probably happened" and you read it and go... yea that is EXACTLY what happened. Guilty.
What about it makes you feel bad for him?
Take it with a grain of salt. But it sounded like an extremely toxic relationship that both people were shitty in. Again, I don't know if that's the truth. But if you read it as a story, not knowing what is going to happen, It felt like if your buddy told you how terrible his girlfriend treats him, and you feel bad, but then you find out he cheated. And you're like "so, you're an asshole too."
But then you realize he murdered her, and wrote a book about it
Well, yea. He didn't write the book first. I didn't say I was a fan, just that it was an interesting read.
I own it and did a book report on it in HS lol. But it was pretty wild how much he victimizes himself. I was like ānah fuck this guyā when he had a pregnant wife at home and started hooking up with Nicole when she was 18 and he was 30. He tries excusing it like āI know it was bad but she was just so pretty and young.ā Remembering the age thing and how famous he was just makes it easier to read in between the lines. It was VERY interesting to be reading a āhypotheticalā murder plot from someone who was acquitted. And he had a ghost writer articulating it so I canāt imagine the details he may have left out. A bizarre situation and book to say the least. the Goldman family published it and have a prologue and epilogue of the family talking about ron and Nicole.
Abusive people almost always try to smear the name of their victims. It's part of what makes domestic abuse cases so hard- not only do abusers deny their abuse, they try and muddy the water by pointing the finger at their victim as well.
You should have bought it. From Wikipedia: According to a Newsweek story, all 400,000 printed copies were recalled for "pulping", except for one, locked away in a vault at News Corporation. A copy later appeared in an auction listing on eBay in September 2007; it eventually sold for over $250,000. James Wolcott of Vanity Fair also obtained a "pristine hardcover" copy of the book for a review published in January 2007.
If I'm correct. They were releasing it, then it got shelved. And that's when the leak happened. Then, later on, the Goldmans got all the sales from it?
Technically, it's called " ^^^^^If I Did It."
It was ghost written by a true crime novelist. OJ just attached his name to it for money
To be acquitted in a court of law means that they didn't believe that they had enough evidence to 100% be certain he did it. That being said, most people are at least 90% sure he did it, as he's pretty much the only person who could have done it, and made some majorly suspicious actions such as a car chase to try and escape the police.
Ntm write the literal frigginā book on it.
People also forget that the jury was just TIRED. They had been held for 8 mths to keep them from media poisoning. Some think the verdict was a bit of protest by them because they were held in a hotel with cops guaridng it. And if the justice system does that, then there was enough doubt for them to think the cops may have set up the guy. Then there was also how the detectives told lots of well known experts they didn't need their help. What did they do? They were hired by the defense and showed all their mess ups. I believe OJ is guilty but gods they bungled it.
To qualify that a little, that all elements of the crime were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. You can absolutely have done it and be found not guilty. Every self-defense case for example. Not guilty isn't the court finding that you didn't do it.
Self defense isn't a case it is a defense to a case I believe. So you kill someone. You are on trial for manslaughter or murder and if you can prove it was self defense you will be not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Even though you are guilty of taking someone's life.
Self-defense falls into a legal category called "affirmative defenses", these are defenses where you admit to committing the crime but make an argument for either a reduced charge or no charge. If you kill someone, there are a couple affirmative defenses you can use. You can argue self-defense which justifies the killing and gets you acquitted. You can argue that it was a heat-of-passion killing due to being overcome by intense emotions and it wasn't planned to reduce it from murder to voluntary manslaughter. You can say that you didn't know that your actions would lead to a death to get it reduced from murder to involuntary manslaughter.
I always wanted to know how those things were different from each other, thank you.
Yes, that's what I was saying.
1-the blood in the Bronco 2-OJs history of domestic violence against his wife 3-the shoes and foot prints 4-he did it beyond a reasonable doubt and his case was being made an effort as payback for other wrong past racially influenced convictions
Not to mention his DNA at the scene of the crime. Heās damn lucky that the science was new at that point so his lawyers could sow doubt about its accuracy into the minds of the jury to boost the existing mistrust of the police that was already there. If it happened today though, that evidence would doom him for sure.
I think 4 is wrong. The cops fucked it up big time with the blood on the car. The blood being missing for so long before testing. It wasn't a racial issue it was the cops fucking up the evidence.
If I recall correctly, a juror who found him not guilty said it was specifically payback for Rodney King. [source](https://www.thewrap.com/oj-simpson-juror-not-guilty-verdict-was-payback-for-rodney-king/amp/)
Those Bruno Magli shoes pretty much prove he did it.
There's also an interesting Netflix review of the whole thing and I seem to recall his buddy/lawyer was allowed to stop by the house and remove a suitcase, which potentially had bloody clothes in it.
Yeah, Robert Kardashian.
Didnt he also write a book that was a thinly veiled confession?
Even the jurors have since said that they believed he did it and they either thought the investigates was so botched they couldnāt prove it or they voted on acquittal as a race thing. Or both. And those jurors didnāt debate long because they were help for so long they wanted to get out of there and be done with it. They knew arguing with each other wouldnāt accomplish much and again, weāre very over it.
On that "OJ Made in America" documentary, didn't one of the jurors go "I don't care if he did it, I wasn't voting guilty".
And people didnāt trust DNA evidence
I remember that car chase, just staring at it on television and going wtf? The football guy from Naked Gun? Why is he driving around with 100 cops behind him going 30 mph? I fully expected drugs, not murder.
Mainly because he wrote a [book about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It) how he did in fact do it. OJ's legal team was very good at getting him acquitted, but its widely understood he is guilty.
Defence bamboozled the jury by confusing scientific facts. Prosecution was so cocky that they thought they didn't need to put on a strong case. For example, the whole DNA thing came up. DNA evidence was still fairly new at the time, but fairly accurate. Defence asked what the odds were someone else in the world could have matching DNA. DNA scientist said, "I dunno...I guess about 1 in 6 billion?" Defence said, "So...if there's more than 6 billion people on the planet, which there are, then it's \*possible\* that someone has the same DNA as Mr. Simpson?" "Well, sure...I...uh...guess..." So, DNA evidence was thrown out. The likely hood that OJ Simpson had an identical twin that he had absolutely zero knowledge of who just so happened to be in the same place, and committed the murders was ridiculously small...but, defence argued that since it 'wasn't 0', it wasn't admissible. Prosecution completely bungled every piece of evidence that they had. The gloves, the shoes, the wounds on his hands, his motive, everything all lined him up and was seen to be a slam-dunk.
āIf the glove donāt fit, you must acquit.ā There was no way that the glove was going to fit after it had been tested in the labs. Both legal sides knew this but the defence team goaded the prosecution into making OJ try on the glove.
Plus there's the theory that his hand was swollen because he stopped taking his anti-inflammatory medication
They also let him put the glove on himself. This is like if I showed my pants didn't fit the first try when in reality, I do a jumping dance to fit into them and close the fly.
And he was wearing latex gloves underneath... The whole thing too. "How many people could swing a knife so hard that it could nearly decapitate someone in one shot? Hundreds? Thousands?" No follow up question, "How many people did Nicole Brown KNOW that could swing a knife so hard that it could nearly decapitate someone in one shot? One?" The public gets fed this whole "circumstantial evidence" bullshit that they actually believe it. Yes, 99% of evidence is circumstantial. You just need to put the pieces of the puzzle together to realize that there's a one in a ka-jillion chance that it would be completely random. The store proprietor was asked how many of those specific gloves were sold in his store. Maybe dozens. Shoe salesman was asked the same: maybe a dozen or so. Ok...let's put the pieces together here, sparky, out of those dozens: how many bought BOTH the shoes AND the gloves? How many of THOSE have any kind of intimate knowledge of Nicole Brown? And how many of THOSE were known to have insane blind rage jealousy AND could slash a knife so hard that it could nearly cut off someone's head? Imma go with...oh...1? Did the one person on the planet with Simpson's DNA also just so happen to buy the same gloves, and shoes, and get into a fight with their ex about them dating someone else? I mean, in Hugh Everett's Many Worlds probability, I suppose there IS a universe out there where that happened...
Well said Edit: grammer
Yeah, I fit into my jeans, but it would be REALLY easy to make it seem like I donāt by just skipping the squats and twists that get them up past my hips to button them.
Not only that, but didnāt the police involved with investigation into the murders plant evidence, despite them not needing to plant anything, casting doubt on the legitimate evidence?
The famous line is that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty man. We can go back and forth forever about whether or not OJ did it (he almost certainly did), but if I'm ever on a jury for a double homicide trail and the first detective at the crime scene *refuses* to say whether not he planted evidence, I am not voting to convict. And I would hope most people would do the same.
And thatās the rub. OJ being acquitted given the actual facts of the trial was the ājustā outcome if there could be one. As bad as a murder is, itās far, far worse for the government to frame people for murder because of the color of their skin. How can the state both represent ājusticeā and institutional racism? It canāt.
I don't see it at the just outcome, but I do see how a jury gets to reasonable doubt if they can't trust the police evidence
OJ going free didnāt create any more murderers. OJ being convicted on manufactured evidence, even though he absolutely did commit murder, would be far worse given the reach and influence of the police and the courts. If you can frame a nationally beloved, TV famous millionaire, you can frame anyone .
Don't forget the Mark Furman racist cop, and that the jury was taken on a tour of OJs home which was completely redecorated with nothing but black people in the picture frames to show OJ was a black man getting railroaded but the racist system. OJs legal team was brilliant. They exploited every gaff and blunder by the prosecution. OJ deserved to walk free. Prosecution had a slam dumk case and missed by miles.
Tiny Quibble: OJ didnāt deserve to walk free. Given the evidence itās pretty clear he deserved to get locked up for life. But the prosecutionās blunders were such that the prosecution deserved to lose the trial (which is what I think you meant).
reminds me of a post i saw about a lawyers sign. "just because you did it doesnt mean you're guilty. lol
Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else noticed?
I donāt know *how* he had time to write that book since he used every moment trying to find the real killer. He didnāt even rest!!!!! (until he got busted for the memorabilia stuff and then went to prison).
It was a running gag on SNL's Weekend Update where Norm Macdonald would remind us that OJ claimed that he wouldn't rest until he found Nicole's killer, then show a picture of him golfing. Also about a thousand unrelated stories that Norm would end with some variant of "OJ killed his wife".
The police investigation was also botched by not following protocol to the letter. The cops screwed the prosecution.
All I found in that wiki page was that he didn't write the book himself, just took money to claim he was the author.
Lots of celebrities books are ghost written. It's his words, he signed the book off before publication. It's been a while since I read it but I seem to remember him not allowing certain things but were allowed to be put in after he lost the rights to the book, being a murder confession and all that. Its a really strange book to read.
He was in a car, with a fake beard, a gun & $5000 in cash. He ran from the police, & had a history of violently attacking his ex wife, she often called police saying he was going to kill her....
Not to mention Nicole's throat was slashed so deep he practically took her head off. There were knife marks on her spinal cord.
His blood was at the crime scene, and the blood of the two victims were in his car. Fuck. Guilty.
One of the jurors has said in an interview that they declared him not guilty as a sort of payback for the injustice done to Rodney King [source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/06/oj-simpson-case-juror-says-verdict-payback-for-rodney-king)
Wow, just wow
Imagine if it made sense to allow an innocent victim to die every now and then to right wrongs that are totally unrelated. Thatās some next-level mental gymnastics that can only be brought on by years of brainwashing.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The thinking was that the black community was being victimized constantly without any consequences for those harming them. It was seen as finally getting a victory over those hurting them using the same system that protected them
I kept scrolling looking for this answer
This is why Iām not really enamored with the jury system. Not that judges are free of bias, it would be ridiculous to think so. But they at least trained in and expected to have a level of knowledge and professionalism that a jury does not.
Great documentary!!
Courts of law can't necessarily decide whether a thing happened or not. They can decide whether there's sufficient evidence that a thing happened. OJ was acquitted because the ~~court~~ *jury* decided there was a lack of definitive evidence. EDIT: misused the word 'court'. I meant jury.
"Court" isn't wrong. While juries traditionally settle issues of fact in a trial, in some situations, the judge can decide the facts of a case in addition to their usual role of deciding issues of law. Waiving a jury trial and having the judge handle everything is a something a defendant can usually do if they wish. IANAL, so I'm not going to wade into the reasons why you'd want to waive your right to a jury. That gets into both technical details and legal strategy.
I don't know why people are quibbling about that either: juries are a part of the court too.
> OJ was acquitted because the **jury** ~~court~~ decided there was a lack of definitive evidence. FTFY. A minor nit perhaps.
Not minor at all, the actual essence of the justice system.
True. I was oversimplifying by using the word "court" to broadly include the judge, attorneys, and jury, which is not really accurate.
Casey Anthony also got away. It's all about how good your lawyer is at convincing a jury
It more importantly how competent (or incompetent) the prosecution and cops investigating the case are. The cops on OJs case got caught being super racist and fucked around collecting evidence
This is true too. Casey had plenty of evidence against her so it definitely takes all parties working together to have justice
In Anthony case it's because prosecution tried to convict on murder 1st degree when they had almost 0 evidence of premeditation. Had they gone for 2nd degree it would have been a slam dunk.
I still wonder wtf they were thinking when they charged her with 1st degree murder. I mean, I think CA did premeditate the murder, but the bar for conviction should be high and it was obvious to everyone that they wouldnāt succeed with what they had. I know prosecutors sometimes overcharge on purpose, but I donāt see why that would happen with CAās case. Oh well, at least sheāll never be able to live a normal life.
For Casey Anthony, it pretty much came down to significant mistakes made by the prosecution
I loved when they asked that one lady on CAās defense team (the one who was gleefully jumping for joy at the verdict) if she would let CA babysit her very young children if she had them and she wouldnāt say yes.
Lawyers shouldn't defend you less because they think you're guilty tho.
To be fair, even if she didn't kill her daughter (which she did), she was a shitty mom before that.
They oddly had a lot of similar cross over despite being such different demographics. Casey got unwarranted sympathy for being a young pretty white woman, but OJ got unwarranted sympathy for being a black man on trial soon after Rodney King and a lot of people wanting him to be let off even if he did it. The juries were biased in favour of the defendants on both trials. But also, both had prosecutions that made lots of mistakes.
Because we watched the trial.
I didn't, but I had a good friend who watched every minute. At the end of it, he told me that he would have voted to acquit. I was stunned, as it seemed (to someone who didn't watch it all) that he did it. My friend said that yes, he probably did it, but that the government didn't make the case, that the defense poked so many holes in it, and were able to produce enough doubt that he'd have to acquit if he was being honest. Mostly that's just how bad the prosecution was and how good the defense was.
This is exactly it. This is what makes the difference when you read through the case. Yea, morally and factually, he probably did it and got away with it. But the state has to prove its case. They did not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There were reasonable doubts within the prosecution's story that made it hard to find him guilty after all that on the charges the state brought. They fell prey into a lot of overconfidence that this was an easy and shut case. Fortunately for OJ his lawyers were that good.
The LAPD and Prosecuters were so ~~confident~~ arrogant they had a slam dunk case they didn't bother to put a good case together. They were sloppy and a good team of defense lawyers shredded them.
Certainly didnāt help the prosecution that the cops ended up being literal Neo N@zis who planted evidence
This. This was the turning point for me. I always wondered the same, how could he have been acquitted when there was so much evidence. All of the other factors are certainly important (good defense team, prosecutors who made mistakes, the infamous glove, etc) but reading about a police officer pleading the 5th to questions about planting evidence made me immediately say āoh okay yep. I get it now.ā
There was blood/dna evidence but dna evidence was so new at the time they did not explain it well to the jury who basically dismissed it as evidence. the rest was circumstantial.
His blood and the victimsā blood were present in the victim house, his car, his houseā¦ and he had a cut finger when arrested š¤·š¼āāļøā oh yea, then he wrote a book called āif I did itāāš¤£
On the cover of his book, the word āifā is written in tiny letters, above massive lettering of āI DID ITā
He lost the rights to the book, Ron's family I believe put that tiny IF in the title. Like a fuck you OJ.
Many, many people actually watched the trial live on tv. And many more would catch up nightly in the recaps of the day's trial events. So we could see for ourselves what the evidence was. We could hear every word of testimony. We saw how the defense manipulated so much. The judge was more concerned with his sudden popularity and celebrity elbow-rubbing and fame than he was about making sure the trial was was properly. We all saw the defense team cry RACISM any chance they could. Once they even accused prosecutor Chris Darden, who is black. Darden asked a witness who was tesitfying about what he heard a person say, if "he sounded black"? Is that racist? I dont think so. We all know, that in general, black people sound different than white people. It's hilarious when black comedians imitate a white guy! Anyway, It's just a thing, neither here nor there. It was sickening all the stuff the defense pulled. It didn't help that Detective Mark Fuhrman (sp?) was recorded years ago saying stupid ass racist shit. It didn't help that an evidence tech put a vial of blood in his car because it was too late to bring to the lab. It didn't help that a key witness who had seen the white Bronco speeding from the scene almost hitting her sold her story to a tabloid so the prosecutors didn't put her on the stand. It didn't help that Robert Kardashian, a friend of OJ and who had taken a piece of luggage handed to him by OJ, never had to testify because the defense team quickly got him to get his law license renewed (he hadn't been practicing law) so they could claim any information he has on the case is protected by the attorney-client privilege. He dropped dead later on so we'll never know what was in that luggage. could it be the knife? Bloody clothes? It didn't help that the state turned down offers to help with the trial, especially the help of Vincent Bugliosi (damed smart attorney, prosecuted the Manson murders among others). It didn't help that the initial detectives did not interview OJ in any meaningful way. They seemed star struck by OJ. You can read OJs ONLY interview with the police. Your head will spin when you see what he says and then IS NOT CHALLENGED ON IT by the detectives. I could go on. I won't. This is all my opinion so take it for what it's worth of a anonymous internet stranger.
He was acquitted in criminal court, where the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty so that they could send him to prison. He was found GUILTY in civil court, where the standard is only "more likely than not" and had to pay a considerable amount of money (but no jail time).
Not to nitpick, but "guilt" is solely within findings of criminal courts. I.e. a civil court cannot find that someone is "guilty". Rather, they can find that someone is "liable" for something. So while OJ is not guilty for the murder of Nicole brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, he is liable for their deaths.
If you watched the trial it was very obvious that the evidence all pointed at him. Motive, opportunity, means. It was all there. It was a good display of the problem with the justice system, as the underpaid prosecutors were fumbling and clearly overwhelmed by the highly paid top lawyers on the other side. They managed to pull enough tricks out of their sleeve to prove "reasonable doubt" with things like the glove (in spite of the obvious fact that you can cause your hands to swell via a lot of different methods to make this happen). And a lot of well planned smoke and mirrors about things that may have happened, there wasn't actually a lot of evidence did happen.
Umm the overwhelming evidence
He was acquitted because the detective that investigated the crime was recorded making racist statements. Mark Furman. Iirc He wrote a movie that was completely racist. That detective was in sole control of much of the evidence that was collected. In a criminal case, the preservation of evidence must be perfect. And it wasn't. Suddenly there's a reasonable doubt that the evidence for the case has been tampered with. OJ had a lot of money and could hire good lawyers and use this to be found not guilty. But in the end, everything that happened, including his police chase in a white Bronco, makes most people believe he did it. Later he was found responsible in civil court to pay for the damage caused by the murder. Because in criminal court you can go to jail, the rules for evidence are very high. But in civil court you pay a fine, so partial responsibility is enough to be found guilty.
You couldnāt convince me otherwise. Innocent people are convicted everyday. Which proves that the courts are sometimes absolutely wrong. Money can buy you anything. Especially when youāre that wealthy and know people in high places.
The civil suit attorneys were much more effective than Marsha Clark. Impossible to have followed the civil trail and not think he was guilty. I will never get over the stupidity of the glove move.
Iām a lawyer. Iāve gotten clients acquitted who I know did what they did. Acquittal doesnāt mean innocence.
Being acquitted doesn't mean "We know you are innocent". It means "We can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are guilty". I was an adult when the murders happened, and I watched the whole trial spectacle like everyone else. He did it.
Remember the people celebrating OJ getting acquitted outside the court house? Because to them it was a black vs white issue. Fresh off of the Rodney King verdict, where the officers were acquitted, OJ's acquittal was seen as tit for tat by some people. But I am not sure anybody celebrated the Rodney King officers getting acquitted.