Tonight on Frontline, the OJ Verdict and its lasting impact on the American legal system.
I can’t believe it has been ten years since the bastard got off, and yes, he is guilty. Or, as Marilyn vos Savant calls him, he is an acquitted murderer.
And, as an aside, here is a sports trivia question for you. When OJ did the slo-mo getaway in the Bronco, the NBA and NHL finals were going on. Both series featured a NY team. Who was playing?
norbizness
Rockets v. Knicks, Game 5(?). The Houstonians hungry for a sports championship of some type who were gathered at my friend’s apartment almost went absolutely fucking apeshit. No wait, we all did go absolutely fucking apeshit.
jobiuspublius
I still don’t know.
Bob
And the timeline that Kato Kaelin gave for the night of the murders didn’t match the time of the game.
Simpson didn’t kill anyone that night.
When a body is retrieved from the ocean, one of the things that a coroner must check for is whether the victim had aspirated, or inhaled water into his lungs. If not, or if there is fresh water in the lungs of the victim, that is proof that the victim did not die by drowning in the ocean. There was a scene in the movie “Chinatown” with just this kind of problem of evidence for those of you interested interested in fictional corruption in Los Angeles.
This line of investigation is a fundamental one for a coroner, and the theory behind it not only shows that the prosecution’s theory of the case against O.J. Simpson was wrong, but also strongly suggests that there was something other than justice being pursued in those courts in Southern California a decade ago.
The prosecution claimed that Nicole Simpson’s ex-husband, football star and actor O.J. Simpson, attacked and killed her by cutting her throat on the steps of her condomium on the night of June 12, 1994. As he was doing this, or soon after or immediately prior to her death, he was surprised by a waiter from the Mezzaluna Restaurant, Ron Goldman, whom Simpson killed by stabbing him in the back fatally.
The prosecution’s theory fails in the deaths of both victims.
Nicole Simpson suffered a throat cut so deep that it nicked a bone in the spinal column. All major arteries and veins to and from the head were severed. She was almost completely “bled out” (most of the blood in her system was out of her) when she was found by police. Even her epiglottis, the flap of skin that covers the windpipe when someone swallows, had been cut. It was a devastating wound that could have killed her. But it wasn’t cause of her death.
There was no aspiration of blood into her lungs. Simply, she was not breathing when her throat was cut. Even if she were unconscious when her throat was cut, she would still be breathing. More telling, there was no blood found in her mouth or sinuses. If she had been alive when her throat was cut, blood would have spurted out of her neck under great pressure, some of it going into her mouth and sinuses. The wound to the epiglottis alone should have produced blood in the mouth. She had already “bled out” when her throat was cut.
The ghastly throat wound was delivered to Nicole Simpson after she had stopped breathing and bleeding.
The wound that bled out Nicole Simpson was a puncture of the right common carotid artery on the side of her neck. It wasn’t as dramatic as the throat wound, but because it was the only other potentially fatal wound that would have caused so much loss of blood, it is the only wound that could have killed her.
Ron Goldman’s cause of death has similar problems. The wound that was supposed to have killed him was the stab in his back that cut his abdominal aorta, which carries blood from the heart to the lower torso and extremities. If that had been the death wound, Goldman’s pleural (chest) cavity would have filled up with much of the blood in his system until he weakened and the heart stopped pumping. About a half cup of blood (100 to 200 milliliters), or the amount that drained from his heart, was found in his chest cavity. In short, that wound, like Nicole Simpson’s throat wound, had been delivered after his death.
Goldman’s body was found in a sitting position, slumped against a tree stump. Someone would have had to have lifted up the dead Goldman in order to deliver the back wound, and then place him against the tree stump.
Goldman also had a wound on the side of the neck that punctured his carotid artery.
Neither of the victims’ wounds on the sides of their necks, the only wounds which could have killed them, would have produced death immediately. The victims could have continued to struggle, could have moved, could have vocalized shouts of help, with the fatal wound at the side of their necks.
Even if both victims had immediately gone into shock, it would have taken time for them to bleed to death, somewhere from five to ten minutes. This would require the killer to wait around the crime scene of his double homicide for precious minutes until both victims had bled to death, and then deliver ghastly but meaningless wounds to the dead bodies.
The autopsies do not make sense in the context of the crime scene, and they do not fit the prosecution’s theory of the case or any imagined theory of a double homicide. Killers in the middle of Los Angeles do not stand around a crime scene waiting for people to bleed to death in order to inflict meaningless wounds. They don’t lift up a dead body to stab it in the back.
This had to have been evident to the coroner when the bodies were first examined.
Dr. Irwin Golden, the coroner who examined the two victims, was nervous when he testified at a pre-trial hearing. By the time of the trial the prosecution replaced him with another doctor in the coroner’s office.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Ahem…
How could OJ have possibly been guilty? The chewbacca defense always works!
Bob
If Marilyn vos Savant was so brilliant, why does she write a column for Parade?
ppGaz
She enjoys it?
jg
Rangers. Knicks.
Walker
While I won’t pick a side on OJ, us mathematicians continue to make fun of Marilyn to this day. When Andrew Wiles solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, she wrote in her article in parade that this was not a valid proof becuase he used non-Euclidean geometry (as opposed to Euclidean) geometry to solve it.
Go back to solving your brain-teasers Marilyn. You are out of your league when you talk about mathematics.
demimondian
uhhh…it is accurate to say that “Wiles proved that the Fermat Conjecture was correct”. There’s no “solution” to a theorem; only problems have solutions.
guyermo
I heard an urban legend that after the acquittal, a surveilance tape surfaced showing OJ committing the murders. I’m guessing that tape is now with Elvis, and JFK in Area 51
Walker
That phrasing is common among mathematicians. Whether or not it is correct. We consider the problem of discovering a proof to a theorem as one that is “solved”.
Bill Seitz
The Canucks. No one had mentioned them yet.
jobiuspublius
I still don’t know wether OJ killed Nichole or Goldman. Bob, source?
demimondian
Really? Then terminology has changed since I got my Ph.D.
In mathematics.
jobiuspublius
Oh please! You mathematicians don’t know how to name each others theories when your not stealing them and the only time you care about terminology is when it’s some other profession’s language.
Otto Man
How’s that search for the real killers working out, Juice? Have you cleared all the golf course employees in California yet?
demimondian
Hush! You’ll spoil the fun!
Zzyzx
I know exactly where I was that night. This was the infamous “Run OJ Run” Phish show at the Eagles Auditorium in Milwaukee. I was doing a large chunk of summer tour and so it took me days to learn exactly why the band was screaming that all throughout the set. Still though, I could tell you the date of the slow-mo car chase (6/17/94) immediately due to the show.
Mike
Yep,
Ole OJ, still out on the Golf Course looking for the kilers.
Only an idiot would think this guy’s innocent.
Sam
Murderer or no, he lost all positive reputation he once had. With that in mind, I hope he’s suffering as he plays on the golf course of life.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Geez, demi, how do at least two PhD mathematicians show up in the same random comment thread?
I would split the difference: in general your terminology would be correct, but no one other than the most pedantic or jocular talks about the Fermat Conjecture. Everyone else talked about “proving” Fermat’s Last Theorem (which was not, of course, a theorem until recently). I didn’t hear “solving” Fermat’s Last Theorem.
In any case, I suggest we quickly rename the result that x^n + y^n = z^n has no non-trivial solution in integers x,y,z for n>2 to “Fermat’s Last Fact” before the Intelligent Design crew get their hands on number theory. Oooops. Number fact. Old habits die hard.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Autoformat really whacked my version of FL
TF. Not my fault.DougJ
Demi and Walker, are you guys actually mathematicians.
DougJ
Cause me too. I’ve bee posting so much because I’ve been going crazy doing my NSF grant proposal the past few weeks.
demimondian
DougJ asks–
I can’t speak for Walker, but my Ph.D. in in Set Theory, so I was once a matemativian. I’m not sure I’m a mathematician any more — these days, I don’t prove theorems for a living.
I’m posting so much because I need to finish up the design of a particularly heinous API…it’s more fun than writing grant proposals. What’re you writing on?
jobiuspublius
Would Iran hanging two gay teens in violation of international treaty, to which it is a signatory, be what finally brings the MOABs down on it?
Bob
jobiuspublius,
The autopsies can probably be found on the web. The testimony of all the defense and prosecution coroner witnesses were available on the web the last time I looked a few years ago. My guess is that those websites are still there. The autopsies were also printed in the appendix of one of the OJ books, TIME TO KILL, I think the name was, although the authors in their main text don’t seem to notice what was in the autopsies and how it reflected in the timelines. The lack of aspiration was discussed during the testimony of Dr. Lakshmanian (sic) and/or the defense’s guy, Dr. Baden. By the way, Baden and the plaintiff’s coroner expert witness (name escapes me) in the civil case worked together during the House Select Committee of Assassinations in the 1970s to promote the “magic bullet” theory, for all you conspiracy buffs.
Another interesting point: within 12 hours of the murders the investigator from the coroner’s office (named Ratcliffe) talked with the Browns who said that they talked with Nicole at 11 p.m. after they got home from dining at the Mezzaluna. That document (the Coroner’s Investigator’s Report) is also in the appendix of KILLING TIME, although the prosecution successfully fought to keep it out of the trial. It took a week or two for Mr. Brown to remember that he’d actually talked with Nicole an hour and a half earlier. As anyone who followed the case knows, at 11 p.m. OJ was loading up his stuff into the limo. In other words, Mr. Brown conveniently changed his story about when he talked with his daughter in order for the prosecution to create a window of time for OJ to have been available to commit the murders. Much of the prosecution’s case was gandy-dancing up and down the timeline to try and make it work. People whose testimony didn’t fit the scenario were pilloried, those who changed their timeline (like the fellow who found the dog) were embraced. As I mentioned above, Kato apparently fudged his timeline regarding when the Knicks-Rockets game ended that night. Also, one of the Brown’s daughter’s recollections of the time that the recital ended conflicted with Steve Garvey’s ex’s recollection. Finally, remember all the horseshit about none of the clocks in the Mezzaluna being set to the right time?
At first I assumed that Simpson was guilty, but having listened to the trial it was clear to me that there was something very rotten down in LA. I am amazed that any thinking person who followed the trial has any faith in any of the evidence offered against Simpson.
Now that I’ve retired maybe I’ll go back and write that book about the case, although I guess that Marcia Clark and Fuhrman have milked all the advances for that puppy.
demimondian
Andrew — “Fermat’s Last Fact” might be taken over by the ID crowd? How…ungodly of you. Don’t you think that the Platonic ideal of the number shows the hand of God at work?
Bob
Mike, what do you think about the lack of aspiration? Or do only idiots look at the evidence?
DougJ
Demi, I work in arithmetic geometry. (Not so far from the Fermat/Wiles stuff, in fact, but I don’t really know enough about modular forms to understand that proof)
demimondian
Unfortunately, the only combinatorics I ever did involved infinite cardinals, and the finite powers of infinite cardinals are…dull. I’ve long since accepted that I’ll never understand Wiles’ work.
Good luck on the grant. FDD Demimondian always said that the worst part of writing the proposal was getting the first few paragraphs written. After that, she always felt that she’d proven to everyone that she was a wretched writer, and the rest came easy.
jobiuspublius
jobiuspublius
Look at the list of targets:
jobiuspublius
Worst-POTUS-Ever stalks Roberts
jobiuspublius
Bob, what you post is very interesting. I never followed the OJ trial. All the racism and sensationalism made me want to puke. The question is, who killed them before they got mutilated and how?
ppGaz
Information that Parade Magazine readers would find fascinating.
Which is why so many mathematicians go into entertainment.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
[ voice of Homer Simpson: Fermaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ]
demomondian
I always imagined Kirk howling “Wiiiles!” in frustration as the girl ran off and the USS Boobyprize was, once again, reduced to a highly entropic state.
DougJ
Ppgaz, a friend of mine from math grad school (he dropped out after a year) now writes for the Simpson’s.
DougJ
Meant to write “Simpsons”.
Andrew J. Lazarus
It looks like four Math PhDs on the thread and counting [pun intended].
Berkeley, 1989, in Number
TheoryFact. But my last academic job is 12 years back; the tenure process was not kind to me (or, rather, I seem to have bungled it).Aside to ppgaz: Ever heard of Tom Lehrer? Art Garfunkel? Danica McKellar (a/k/a Winnie of the Wonder Years)?
Andrew J. Lazarus
{Further aside to demi: Hmmm. I’ve ended up coding, too. And no small amount of API, UI, you name it. Mostly in financial analysis.]
Mike S
I was visiting my father at UCLA Medical Center the night of the “chase.” I went up on the roof of the hospital for a smoke when the chase was coming up the freeway. There had to be 20 news copters. It looked like a scene right out of Apocalypse Now.
The did the box screen with the NBA game and the chase. The friggin game was in the small box while the
killerdumb ass was full screen.Stormy70
Oh my God! It’s a mathmatical smackdown. Figures.
Get it? FIGURES? Get it?!
Oh, ok.
Math is hard.
Tractarian
Knicks vs. Houston in the NBA Finals, Rangers vs. Vancouver for the Stanley Cup. If Hakeem Olajuwon had cut his fingernails, John Starks would have sunk the game-winning 3 in Game 6 and it would have been the greatest month in NY sporting history.
Also on that day, the World Cup opened in Chicago – Germany vs. Bolivia. Here’s a real trivia question: who scored at Soldier Field that day and later went on to coach his national team?
zzyzx
For the record, I have a Masters in mathematics and one year towards PhD work before I decided that it meant more to me to get out of Las Cruces than to get the PhD.
Nikki
Wow! A Stormy post I actually enjoyed.
Bob
jobiuspublius:
Who killed them? Have no idea. Would have been nice if the cops had looked for the killers.
When I smoke the real strong stuff and put on the tin foil hat I think that it was all some kind of trial run for the kind of cable-tv punditry that befell the wires and that it was part of the secret side of the Contract On America. It was all 1994: Newt, Susan Smith and OJ. Don’t forget that Lucianne Goldberg got Mark Fuhrman his book deal at Regnery. Nothing like a scary black man to push the voters to the right.
What’s clear is that Simpson didn’t do it, and he wouldn’t have hired someone to have done it while he was in town without an alibi.
The trial was also a good primer for how digital photography and DNA aren’t necessarily the end-all that they were supposed to be.
Alas.
tzs
Is this just for mathematicians, or can us lowly Physics Ph.Ds jump in as well? Those of us that worked with Fibre Bundles, homotopy groups and all the rest of that jazz?
Do have to say trying to visualize 5-D non-trivial SO(3) fields gave me a headache….
DougJ
Andrew J, I’m Berkeley 1998, number theory.
PrivatePyle
Sigh, Bob, Bob, Bob…for freakin crying out loud…
1. HE HAD A MOTIVE: The day of her death Nicole Simpson told O.J. that the relationship was over, saying, “I don’t love you any more and I don’t need you any more.” The night of the murders O.J. told Ron Fishman, “I’m going to get her. I’m going to kill her.”
2. NICOLE KNEW HE WAS AFTER HER: A week before the murders, Nicole called a battered women’s shelter for help, claiming that O.J. was stalking her. That same week, Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson called 911 to report a prowler “a black man wearing black” in her back yard. That same week, Nicole told three friends, including Faye Resnick, that O.J. was going to kill her. Nicole had expressed her fears to her therapist, Susan Forward, that she was afraid O.J. was going to off her. In her diary, she expressed similar fears of being murdered by him because he told her, “If I can’t have you, nobody can.” Her fear was so intense, she made out her will five weeks before she was murdered.
3. SIMPSON HAD PHYSICALLY HARMED AND THREATENED NICOLE IN THE PAST: Simpson had a history of beating Nicole and she made more than 30 911-calls to the police. In 1977, neighbors overheard O.J. beating Nicole. In 1982, he threw her against a wall, smashing pictures of her and her family. In 1987, he hit her and threw her to the ground. In 1988, O.J. beat Nicole on a New York street corner and also beat her in a separate incident for letting a gay man kiss their son. In 1989, O.J. slapped Nicole and pushed her out of a slow-moving car. The same year, the police found Nicole hiding in the bushes outside their home wearing only a bra and sweatpants and O.J. was arrested and convicted for battery. After this incident, Nicole had her sister Denise take pictures of her bruises and locked the photos in a safety deposit box “as proof that O.J. beat me. Without proof no one will ever believe me. The public thinks he’s a crazed hero who can do no wrong.” In 1993, Nicole called 911 again…
4. HE TRIED TO FLEE THE CRIME SCENE: According to Al Cowling’s lover, Jennifer Peace, the chase was an attempt to flee to Mexico and $8,000 was found inside the Bronco as opposed to the $60 that O.J. claimed he had on him at the time. Police also found a fake beard, moustache and passport in the car. Although O.J. also claimed he was on his way to commit suicide at Nicole’s grave, Al Cowling drove on past the gravesite… in the direction of Mexico.
5. HE’S CONFESSED: Using a scanner, police allegedly recorded the phone call O.J. made to his mother, who suggested that he plead temporary insanity rather than deny that he killed Nicole Simpson. O.J.’s response was “It was all her fault, Mom.” His lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, also implied that O.J. was guilty by telling an interviewer that he might consider pleading insanity. Furthermore, a prison guard overheard O.J. confess his guilt to Rosey Grier. The guard signed an affadavit swearing that he heard O.J. shout, “I did it!”
6. THERE IS EVIDENCE, PLENTY OF IT: Even if you believe that Furhman did plant the bloody glove, more than a dozen DNA tests link O.J. to the crime scene. The blood found on Ron Goldman’s boots was found to be a mixture of his and O.J.’s. Blood matching Nicole Simpson’s and O.J.’s was found inside the Bronco. O.J.’s blood was found on the walkway outside the Brentwood mansion and in the shower and sink of his bathroom. During his initial interrogation, Simpson stated he had no recollection of cutting himself. Fibres found on the knit cap left at the crime scene and the notorious bloody glove behind O.J.’s house were unique to the 1994 model Ford Bronco, belonging to O.J. The hair found in the cap matched a reference sample taken from O.J.’s head and the large number of hairs inside the cap suggests that O.J. had worn it. A 12-inch hair with the same characteristics as those of Nicole Simpson was found on the bloody glove found at O.J.’s estate. The killer wore size 12 shoes. O.J. Simpson wore size 12 shoes. Some of the blood stains matching Nicole’s blood found on the bloody sock inside O.J.’s home were microscopic flakes too small to be tampered with. The DNA samples were tested and matched by three independent labs on behalf of the L.A.P.D., the Cellmark Diagnostics laboratory and the California Department of Justice. Also, in the end, a glove matching the bloody glove, one pair of 240 pairs sold by Bloomingdales in 1989, fit Simpson.
7. HE HAS NO ALIBI: According to who you believe — Kato, his limo-driver, the neighbor, or Rosie Lopez — O.J. was sleeping and playing golf at the same time while the murders were committed.
8. HE WAS “PALS” WITH THE L.A.P.D., THE VERY SAME L.A.P.D. THAT WAS “OUT” TO GET HIM: The L.A.P.D. let O.J. beat up Nicole Simpson eight times before they charged him. The gun that Simpson held to his head during the Bronco chase belonged to a friend — a respected L.A.P.D. cop. He played tennis regularly with an L.A.P.D. cop and even held an autograph session for 40 cops. Even though O.J. had fled the cops before, in 1989, after beating Nicole Simpson, by jumping into his Bentley, L.A.P.D. officials agreed to let him turn himself in after the murders, even though he was the sole suspect in the case and had a history of running…
9. THE EVENING OF THE MURDERS HE WAS ALL “JUICED” UP: An L.A. drug dealer came forward and testified under polygraph that he had sold O.J. and Kato $100 worth of crystal meth, a drug known for encouraging violent tendencies. They snorted the drug in O.J.’s Bentley in a Burger King parking lot.
10. O.J. BEHAVED VERY SUSPICIOUSLY BEFORE AND AFTER THE MURDERS: Simpson was obsessed with Nicole. In the weeks leading up to the murders, O.J. still insisted on calling her his wife and rented a pay-per-view porn film called The Genesis Chamber in which a blond woman is raped at knifepoint. When the police called him to identify the body, O.J. was cool and calm and he never at any point asked the police how or where or when Nicole had been killed. It’s like he already knew the circumstances of her death. Also, as she lay in the casket, he apologized to her, saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Steve S
How can OJ simpson be guilty when the Jury did not find him guilty, and our system of justice is based on the premise of innocent until proven guilty?
I never thought the prosecution did enough to really prove their case. And the Mark Fuhrman blundering really really didn’t help them at all. What’s more amazing is that Fuhrman has gone on to get book deals from Republican wingnuts. Proving once again that when it comes to Law and Order and doing what’s right, Republicans don’t give a shit.
Another Jeff
Um, because it’s possible to believe that the jury was wrong. I mean, if you want to nitpick over semantics, i guess you could say “he obviously did it”, rather than “he was guilty”, but most people don’t need that fact spelled out for them.
Andrew J. Lazarus
DougJ, my advisor was Emery Thomas. I was his last student before he retired. I was working in classical cyclotomy. What Gauss would have done if the computer had existed in his day.
You?
{Aside to main purpose of thread: I long ago decided that Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were killed by a small foreign faction.)
DougJ
Of course OJ was guilty.
Andrew, I remember Emery Thomas. My advisor was Paul Vojta.
Bob
PrivatePyle,
I guess you read the autopsy, right?
1. Motive is in the eye of the beholder, the autopsy is there. Her throat was cut after she was dead. Goldman was stabbed in the back after he was dead. Pretty foolish behavior for someone dripping with blood and having to catch a plane. Stand around for ten minutes while his accomodating victims wait with him to bleed to death, then after they stop bleeding deliver meaningless wounds to the corpses. In the case of Goldman, lifting up the corpse to put a wound in the back and then setting it down against a tree stump. That’s how crazed he was, that he was willing to wait until his victims bled to death and risk discovery at the murder scene instead of, say, delivering more fatal wounds and getting it done with.
2. If you have ever gone through a divorce you wouldn’t be surprised what the other person will say about you. Still, even if he dragged her out to the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and beat her ass at noon every day of the year for fifteen years, you still have the autopsy to deal with.
3. I don’t know where you got your information, perhaps from Denise Simpson’s book. In court there was the New Year’s incident, which, by the way, had a lot of peculiar testimony by the cop (like the cop letting Simpson go back into his house after Nicole allegedly said he had a gun collection and was going to kill her). That cop’s supervisor, I think his name was Farrell, admitted under cross that none of the officers in Brentwood except Fuhrman (who hadn’t filed a contemporaneous report) had any recollection of having to go there on a domestic dispute. Before the New Year’s incident (and no other couples come home drunk on that night of the year) there was NO domestic dispute reported to the cops for the Simpsons. The infamous taped 911 recording was Simpson being upset about her giving blowjobs to the coke dealer Keith Zolomsowich (sic) while the kids were around the house. Which, of course, never ever happens. No divorced couples except OJ & Nicole ever argue about what’s appropriate for the kids, do they? But having said that, even if the allegations were true, it still leaves you with the autopsies, doesn’t it?
4. Except that he was going north. I prefer the alternate universe in Chris Darden’s book, where Simpson was going to take a cruise on the MONKEY BUSINESS. Autopsies.
5. Various Nat. Enquirer things. You left out that Mercury Morris said in the NatEnq that OJ confessed to him that he was head to toe with blood. That should be good enough evidence for Pelican Bay, eh? Don’t forget, though: Autopsies.
6. If anyone learned anything about evidence it’s that DNA is more easy to plant than just about anything besides fibers and hairs. And I presume you watched the trial, so you know the problems with the lab down there. Remember Mr. Fung? Remember the chain of evidence? I can’t argue the whole case here. I wrote a 35,000 word article on the case and if I updated it I could probably triple its size. Let’s keep it simple here. The autopsies say he didn’t do it.
7. When Mr. Brown told the coroner’s investigator the next morning that he and his wife talked with Nicole at 11 p.m. the night before over the phone when they got back home, OJ had an alibi. They changed their story about a week or two later, from 11 to 9:30. You can argue that the Browns were upset that they lost their daughter to murder, but how can they both be an hour and a half off on the time that they got home that night, talking with the investigator (Ratcliffe) only about 12 hours after they got home? Because the LAPD intentionally violated California law in keeping the coroner away from the crime scene so long, until after the bodies had cooled to the ambient temperature, finding out the last time that the victims were alive was very, very important. The Browns said they talked with their daughter at 11 p.m. After talking with the prosecutor they changed the time to 9:30, conveniently for Marcia Clark. So, yeah, OJ had an alibi until the Browns changed their story.
8. I could never understand this “pals with the LAPD” thing. Was he pals with Lange and Vannatter? Did Fuhrman take him to his Klan rallies? Who were the buddies who were looking out for him? This always struck me as a bogus argument that OJ haters would fall back on when they couldn’t explain cops walking around the crime scene with test tubes of OJ’s blood, or moving gloves around or perjuring themselves under oath. Still, even if OJ was an honorary Grand Dragon and gave a million to the Police Athletic League, you still have the autopsies.
9. He didn’t testify in the trial. Kato never said anything about it. But let’s just say that OJ was loaded up with meth. It doesn’t prove he did those murders. Remember, the autopsies.
10. I always love how people interpret someone’s emotions to suit their prejudices. Cool and calm meant he did it. Getting emotional meant he did it. He was obsessed. He was cold-blooded. He was calculating. He was wild-eyed.
He didn’t do it. Autopsies.
Hey, PrivateP, explain to me how the murders were committed, within the constraints of the autopsy results. All the other crap is just that until you can get past that.
P.S.: Where were you on the night of 6/12/94?
Bob
People believe in God even though His appearances have been rare and His Guiding Hand inconsistent over the last few thousand years. People believe in Creationism over science. People believe in extraterrestials over things like the speed of light. People believed in the Contract With America and they thought that the Republican Party was looking out for their interests.
On the other hand, many Germans believed that the Jews were responsible for most of their problems and thought Hitler’s program sounded reasonable. People in France were sure that Dreyfus the Jew was guilty of treason, and a few decades later were vigorously helping the Germans to empty out their ghettos.
People will believe anything if they’re told it enough. In 1994 people were told over and over that OJ was guilty, and he was painted with the grossest of racial stereotypes resonating just below the surface of the responsible conversation.
Of course most people believe that OJ is guilty. They woke up to shock jocks on the radio making jokes about Simpson’s guilt, they went to bed with Letterman’s top ten about OJ or the other yahoo bringing out the Dancing Itos. In between talk radio and cable television talked about OJ incessantly, but hardly ever discussing the evidence presented in court, never when exculpatory evidence was presented.
OJ was the perfect guy for the year of the Contract With America. He was the most beloved black man in America on June 11th, a sports hero and a comedic actor with a nice guy persona. But you see, you can’t trust ’em, them negroes. They carry knives, they’ll stab ya. They loves them white women, they wanna miscegenate, they takes drugs. They’re crazy.
The OJ Simpson that most people hate is the one made from lies and innuendoes, the one that’s been festering in their heads for the last decade, mixed up with all that good old-fashioned racism that’s made America what it is.
demimondian
FWIW, I’m Wisconsin, 1986, set theory and set theoretic topology.
pmm
This is the most amazing thread ever to grace balloon-juice. I honestly have no idea what issue the next post will address. Arterial bleeding or mathematically-oriented resumes? My only contribution is that, on the night of the OJ chase, I was watching my friend’s band play their smash hit: “R2D2, Mechanical Sex God.” Needless to say, the attention was on the Bronco, not the musicians.
Bob
Around that time my old lead guitarist had a song called “Macho Sex God.” What was in the water back then with all the sex gods?
PrivatePyle
Bob…Shapiro I presume? Or perhaps Dershowitz?
[quote] The OJ Simpson that most people hate is the one made from lies and innuendoes, the one that’s been festering in their heads for the last decade, mixed up with all that good old-fashioned racism that’s made America what it is. [/quote]
That’s right…Simpson made millions of dollars playing football, appearing in commercials, starring in films in this country and when his blood, his footprints, his DNA, and years of motive turn up at a crime scene with two dead people it’s…that’s right…good old fashioned racism to blame.
That would be so laughable if it weren’t tragic…I kind of hate that you wasted 35,000 words defending a murderer…
Bob
PrivatePyle, I’m glad you didn’t even bother talking about evidence presented in the trial. It just proves my point, that you base your opinion on the media coverage and not on the evidence. By the way, if you’d actually read and understood my posts, you would see that it was clear that the Simpson defense team was bad, what appeared to be intentionally bad, in defending Simpson. When a coroner’s document places the victim alive and talking with her parents over the phone at the same time the defendant is in a limo on his way to the airport, and when that document is suppressed by the prosecution and the judge, I would hope that my defense team would make damned sure the media knew about it.
Just to remind you: The swatches that matched OJ’s DNA didn’t match the ones collected at the scene of the crime; the shoeprints turn out not to be size 12s, being Italian shoes, but a European equivalent of about 11 and a third, or 11 and a half,and the weird-ass path of them should suggest a specific attempt of someone in Bruno Maglis walking through blood to create evidence. That is, like a lot of other stuff, including the autopsies, it suggests that there was serious rearranging to the evidence and tampering of the crime scene after the deaths of the victims. Oh, and the gloves didn’t fit either.
The 35,000 words didn’t defend OJ. It criticized the trial and the media coverage, and the numbnuts who have lost their ability to use their brains to take disparate facts and use their reasoning, the numbnuts who allow Geraldo Rivera to lead them around by the rings in their noses.
Reach down there. Can you feel them?
dk
Your conclusion that killers don’t stand around waiting demonstrates that your interpretation of what occurred from the autopsy evidence is flawed. If you think it unlikely that Simpson would stand around, then other killers would be even more unlikely to. Body processes are frought with unknown interactions, so your interpretations are very likely inaccurate.
As for the time when the Browns last spoke with their daughter, it is not surprisng for them to estimate and be confused about the time, when their daughter has just been murdered. Shock affects memory. Further reflection at a later time can lead to remembering a more accurate sequence of events that night.
Old dry leather shrinks when wet.
Who do you believe did the ‘rearranging and tampering at the crime scene’ you believe occurred?
If you believe Fuhrman planted the glove, how did he know when he picked it up in the wee hours of the AM that Simpson didn’t have an alibi for the time of the murders? For all Fuhrman knew, Simpson could have been out of town as he frequently was, or speaking to hundreds of people. And how did Fuhrman know that Simpson’s shoes were the same size as the footprints? And how did he know that the ‘real killer’s’ blood was not on the glove he was going to plant?
And how did the police plant all the cuts and bruises on Simpson’s left hand? The hand that was unblemished in photos taken just a few hours before the murders. The left hand being the one exposed when the left glove was pulled off.
And how is Dr. Lee’s opinion infallible when he concluded from photos that a footprint at the scene was suspicious when a worker who put in the walk demonstrated that the print was IN the concrete itself!
How often do nurses who draw blood thousands of times check the measurement to insure that they draw exactly 8ml of blood?
Exactly what is the deterioration of DNA which has been exposed to a specific surface and climatic condition?
What happens to the inside of slighly damp blood-splattered socks when they are taken off and left on the floor so there is no longer a foot inside them to block transference?
How many blood drops fall to the ground and where do they fall when a cut clots or is reopened?
Did Simpson leave a sizable area of blood in the middle of the bottom sheet in his hotel room (as depicted in the photo) when he cut his finger in the bathroom or when the cut reopened as he slept?
Did Vannater carry Simpson’s blood to Simpson’s house to plant as the cameras were rolling and the collected evidence sat packed in the evidence truck, ready to leave?
Waaaay too much evidence against Simpson and nothing but unfounded suspicions IN THIS CASE (refuted by evidence and logic) due to past racial injustices, which triggered an acquittal. The defense was masterful, the prosecution naive and bungling, and the jurors emotional when they did not know how to connect the dots.
karyn rae
Greatly appreciate your comments/information, Bob. Nice to have someone look at the facts in a rational manner. I don’t have answers, but I do have questions. As a woman in the health field, I’ve dealt with blood quite a bit. Do people realize how difficult it would be to clean up after a rampage? How hard it is to remove blood from kinky hair? How its really strange that there was so little blood found in the white bronco? The limo driver was the only one paid to know what time it was that night when he picked OJ up-how could he clean up so fast that the public who stare at him all the time- wouldn’t see traces? Who was Ron Goldman? Why do people assume he wasn’t the intended target and that Nicole got in the way? Certainly, it would be a lot easier for anyone, but especially OJ, to kill her just inside her door, not on the walkway, where passersby could see. It looks like a drug killing-a smash and grab, grab and slash. Ron may have made someone angry. Why don’t we know more about Ron Goldman?