Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Bark louder, little dog.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

We’re not going back!

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / OJ

OJ

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This post is in: 

Dead at 76:

OJ Simpson, an NFL star turned suspected murderer, has died, according to a statement by his family. He was 76.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Simpson’s account carried a simple message from his family.

“On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace,” the statement said.

I’ve guess this merits a post, so have at it in the comments if you have anything to say.  Personally, I was done with this whole topic in the mid-90s.

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    TaMara

    Since I have nothing nice to say about him, I shall refrain. But I will sure enjoy the hell out of all of your comments….flame on…

  3. 3.

    Butch

    The quote is attributed to so many different people but is essentially “I was taught to say only good of the dead.  He’s dead.  Good.”

  6. 6.

    trollhattan

    surrounded by his children and grandchildren

    Presumably at slightly greater than arm’s length.

  8. 8.

    Chris

    OJ finally got the short straw?  My relief is pulpable.  Some people will say this is in poor taste, but it’s how I feel and I just don’t want to bottle it up.

  9. 9.

    brendancalling

    Stolen from elsewhere:

    “Bette Davis once said, ‘You should never say anything bad about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford OJ is dead. Good.'”

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OJ is currently sharing a sulfur hot tub with Rush Limbaugh and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

  12. 12.

    UncleEbeneezer

    If you’ve never seen it, “OJ Simpson: Made In America” is truly one of the best, true-crime documentaries ever made. Not only does it show the incredible story of the tragic murder and the circus of a trial, but the first episode is one of the best primers of the story of racist policing in America and racial tensions in Los Angeles from the Watts Rebellion, Rodney King/LA Uprising, the Rampart Scandal etc., that set the stage for the Trial of the Century.  ESPN really knocked it out of the park with this mini-series and showed that they can make documentaries as good as anyone.

    Today is a good day to send positive thoughts to the Brown and Perlman families.

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

     In 1995 the tag-team of Wealth & Celebrity got in the ring with longtime rivals Racism & Revenge for a no holds barred bout to decide which was more important in late 20th century America.

    Wealth & Celebrity won by a technical knock-out, but their victory was entirely pyrrhic. Racism & Revenge would go on to dominate the new century and eventually co-opt the now ailing Wealth & Celebrity to form the Trump Presidential Campaign of 2016…

    Extract from ‘The Shit That Happened – 1980 to 2030’ – Harpers Post-Apocalyptic Press

  16. 16.

    Ruckus

    This really is enlightening. I mean I didn’t think he had a lot of supporters but in less than 15 minutes (8) 15 people have given memorial regards that do not reflect well upon his character. Good job.

  23. 23.

    CaseyL

    @Jackie: Ooh, that’s good.  I’ll have to remember it – there will many opportunities to trot it out as the years go on.

    OJ: first of a very long list of “too bad they didn’t die sooner…”

  27. 27.

    JPL

    @japa21: We know!

    I remember when I first heard of the murder and mentioning to a neighbor that it wasn’t the first time he attacked her.    sad

  28. 28.

    JoyceH

    I think OJ was the first really high profile illustration that someone can have a universally accepted persona for geniality and affability and turn out to be a monster.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @UncleEbeneezer: I responded to you downstairs:

    Co-sign. That documentary was equal parts fantastic and devastating. Be aware that the filmmakers show a picture of Nicole Brown Simpson’s body that had never been publicly exhibited before and it absolutely made me gasp aloud.

    Marian Wright Edelman’s son Ezra Edelman was the director.

  31. 31.

    Suzanne

    I will note that the only times I have thought of O.J. Simpson in the last decade was when I ran through an airport (fuck the Detroit airport, BTW). He deserves to be forgotten.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    O.J’s oldest son is/was a chef at St. Cecilia in Atlanta.   I do hope that Nicole’s children moved on from the legacy of their father.

  34. 34.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @schrodingers_cat: Watch the ESPN documentary.  OJ was an absolute legend on the football field then became even more of a cultural icon in his funny commercials for a rental car company and then the two Naked Gun films (where he was surprisingly good as a comedic actor).  His relationship with Black America was complicated as he was often big on Respectability Politics.  But there were times when his incredible achievements at USC and then the Buffalo Bills were a source of pride for the Black community.  His trial was very much about the racist history of policing in Los Angeles (and America) and many people were happy to see him acquitted solely as a big “fuck you” to the system that had let the police officers who beat Rodney King and the Korean women who killed Latasha Harlins, go completely unpunished.  It was a result of decades of LAPD/Sheriffs abusing Black People and getting away with it while local politicians (and police) continually pushed racist dog-whistle justifications for it all.  So OJ (and his trial) became about all of that, combined.  In addition to the fact that it was one of the first, major, criminal trials to be broadcast on tv.

  35. 35.

    Chris

    @Suzanne:

    He deserves to be forgotten.

    That’s generally how I feel about terrorists, too.  (Terrorists in particular, in fact, since that entire category of murder is to quite an extent a PR stunt in the first place).

  38. 38.

    Old Man Shadow

    He was a person who had everything at one point and destroyed it all because he was an abusive narcissist.

    Sounds familiar. If he had been white and waited until now to murder someone, he’d be a rising GOP star.

  39. 39.

    Chris

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    His trial was very much about the racist history of policing in Los Angeles (and America) and many people were happy to see him acquitted solely as a big “fuck you” to the system that had let the police officers who beat Rodney King and the Korean women who killed Latasha Harlins, go completely unpunished.  It was a result of decades of LAPD/Sheriffs abusing Black People and getting away with it while local politicians (and police) continually pushed racist dog-whistle justifications for it all.  So OJ (and his trial) became about all of that, combined.  In addition to the fact that it was one of the first, major, criminal trials to be broadcast on tv.

    My limited understanding (I was too young to care at the time, also out of the country) is that the issue is also that the police and prosecution fucked up their part of the job so thoroughly that OJ Simpson could’ve been Jack the Ripper and the evidence would still have been too thin for any reasonable juror to convict.  And that they evidently did this with the reasoning in mind of “who the fuck cares if the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed, he’s black, we’re cops, it’ll be open and shut just like always.”

    And, well.

  42. 42.

    raven

    @UncleEbeneezer: My buddy was playing tennis on the UGA courts when the verdict came down. There was a huge cheer from the predominately African-American athletic dorm.

  45. 45.

    The Red Pen

    The LAPD framed a guilty man.

    I went to LA to join friends for the opening day of “The Phantom Menace.” The highlight of the day was obviously not the shitty prequel movie, but OJ showing up to take his kids to see it. All these people had been waiting in line, literally for weeks and he just goes to the head, like rules didn’t apply to him.

    Anyway, I saw “The Phantom Menace” with OJ.

    I have a photo of OJ signing an autograph for a guy with a toy lightsaber which is really great out of context.

  49. 49.

    raven

    @karen marie: “O.J. Simpson is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason, from his first marriage, and Sydney and Justin, from his marriage to Nicole Brown Simpson.”

  51. 51.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chris:

    Pretty close, yeah.  The racist cops tried to frame OJ, who was already obviously guilty, and screwed the whole thing up so badly he got to walk.  They could have nailed him on the evidence, but they just had to fuck around.

  52. 52.

    karen marie

    @Suzanne: Back in  the late ’80s, when I was flying a lot, I wanted to start a T shirt line. “Delayed in Detroit” kicked it off. “I slept on the floor in the Minneapolis airport and all I got was this lousty T shirt” was too long.

  54. 54.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Chris: That too.  The trial also highlighted the extreme racism of the LAPD with stories and audio of Detective Mark Furman.  There were many reasons why it became the Trial of the Century, for sure. But in my view, it was as much (or even more) about Racism in America as it was about the horrible crimes.

    I know Black People who absolutely loathe OJ for his crime and his generally being a p.o.s., as a person and will admit that of course he was guilty.  Nevertheless, they were glad to see him acquitted just to make White People feel the injustice of racist, jury nullification allowing someone who was clearly guilty, go free.  Something they saw with the acquittal of the officers that beat Rodney King and the woman who killed Latasha Harlins and Emmett Till and so many others throughout US history.  The documentary does an excellent job of helping the viewer understand that sentiment that so many Black Americans felt during the OJ trial.

  57. 57.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @twbrandt: I think it’s a coin flip as to whether it was intentional attempts to frame him or just sloppy police work with a boatload of arrogance and racism.  Or a mixture of all three…

    Also, the prosecution made some really big blunders that hurt the case immensely.  At the end of the day it was quite easy to reach the conclusion that 1.) OJ did the crimes but 2.) the Prosecution failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

  60. 60.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @JPL: That first (or maybe second) episode about the history of LAPD and racial tensions in LA is really classroom-level history done in a very easily understood and digestible way.  It would even work as a stand-alone episode for anyone who doesn’t want to commit to the rest of the nearly 8-hour series.  It’s really one of the finest single episodes of a documentary I’ve ever seen.

  61. 61.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Pretty close, yeah.  The racist cops tried to frame OJ, who was already obviously guilty, and screwed the whole thing up so badly he got to walk.  They could have nailed him on the evidence, but they just had to fuck around.

    And of course the story much, possible most of the country took away from this was “the justice system just has too many loopholes for criminals, and also Johnny Cochrane is a sleazy asshole with mad lawyer ninja skills!”  As opposed to “maybe it shouldn’t be SOP for cops to build cases so shoddily that they disintegrate the first time they run into someone who can afford a decent attorney.”

    (TBF, I do believe the LAPD underwent some significant reforms in the late nineties that were largely for the better.  More because of the Rodney King and LAPD Rampart scandals, but I’m sure this didn’t hurt either).

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    is that the issue is also that the police

    One of the many, many contradictions here, however, is that Simpson got favorable treatment by the LAPD regarding the ten years of domestic violence reports prior to the murders. OJ was a big fan of the police. Police regularly went to his home to party, sometimes while on duty – which they admitted on the stand in the trial. That’s why they winked and let him off every time he beat the shit out of his wife.
    The police may have done a lousy job on the murder but OJ Simpson absolutely benefitted from police worshiping the rich football star as far as domestic violence.
    It was kind of the last betrayal of Nicole Brown Simpson by law enforcement. They protected OJ when he was abusing her and then their fucks ups and racism let him off when he murdered her.

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne: ​
     

    fuck the Detroit airport, BTW

    Having just flown into and out of the Detroit airport for the first time in ~45 years*, I want to second this sentiment.

    *Might as well be the first time, I don’t remember the earlier time.

  64. 64.

    mrmoshpotato

    Basically the only reason I know his name is that shitshow of a ratings trial back in the 90’s.

    I hope Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman have been resting in peace.

  65. 65.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @geg6: Oh me too.  Fuck him.  But I can still be honest about the fact that like Michael Jackson and Kanye, there was valid admiration, love and pride for him in his community, before the killings and everything after.

  66. 66.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: This too.  And that’s another thing the documentary highlights rather well.  Nicole was failed multiple times by our system of justice and LAPD.  It was another tragic truth about our policing.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    She’d call police – you can hear the absolute terror in her voice on the calls, she knows he will kill her- and they’d blow it off because they were all OJ’s buddies:

    O.J. Simpson’s long and usually friendly relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department snapped into sharper focus Wednesday, as a former officer testified that he often played tennis at Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate and had introduced a parade of 40 awe-struck and autograph-seeking colleagues to the former football great.

    Former Officer Ronald G. Shipp, taking the stand during Simpson’s murder trial, offered the latest and most specific examples of the closeness that existed between Simpson and police officers at the West Los Angeles Division, charged with patrolling his neighborhood.

    Prosecutors have alleged that such a pattern of contacts made Nicole Simpson feel powerless to call on police to protect her from an abusive spouse whose physical attacks, they assert, escalated to murder on June 12. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered his ex-wife and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman.

     

  72. 72.

    skyweaver

    @UncleEbeneezer: Totally agree. I understood much more after watching that documentary. Very objective and straightforward – it did a great job of giving much great historical context.

  75. 75.

    skyweaver

    @JoyceH: I was raised by a parent who was quite educated, was a museum docent, delivered Meals on Wheels and built houses for Habitat for Humanity. He was also terribly psychologically abusive and I doubt many people will be at his funeral. Watching OJ was a young adult was the first hint that people can appear one way in public and have a very different private side.

  76. 76.

    Ohio Mom

    Ah, the trial that introduced me to Alan Dershowitz.

    If only that had been the last time I’d heard of him but he keeps popping up in my (metaphorical) feed.

  77. 77.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Ohio Mom: Another horrible aftereffect of that trial.  He’s never really gone away since and kind of became the model for the smarmy, toxic, legal pundit on tv.

  79. 79.

    catclub

    @Paul in KY: ummm, unless the defense makes a credible case that the LA police are well known for planting evidence against black defendants.

    Enough to generate reasonable doubt of said evidence.

  81. 81.

    Bart

    As a European, I didn’t know OJ until the Naked Gun movies. And then the murders of course, and everything that followed.

    But it didn’t hit home with me why this was such a big thing until that multi-part documentary series a couple of years ago, when I realized this man was not just some talented sports dude who had managed to use that fame and prolong it through one successful acting job. Sure, that Bronco pursuit and the trial etc. was insane, but I thought it was a case of “this just happened at a time when there was an emerging 24/7 news cycle and they needed ‘content’ and this just hit all the buttons”. But apparently OJ was actually something of a massive celebrity.

    I found the recent multi-part documentary about Cosby equally revealing: I already knew about the Cosby Show and his career as a stand-up comedian and Fat Albert, but that documentary just kept showing me things I didn’t know about. He was omni-present, and was a way bigger figure than I ever imagined. And boy, did some of his old routines etc. take on new meaning.

  84. 84.

    Shalimar

    @Old School: Why did you stop watching The Naked Gun?  OJ’s entire role is getting physically assaulted by various people.  It’s cathartic.

  89. 89.

    Chris

    @Shalimar:

    The best part of it is when he’s getting every possible mishap, banging his head, leaning on the hot stove, slamming the window on his hands…  and then leans on the wall, then sees it has a “wet paint” warning, and goes “oh no!” in horror.

  90. 90.

    Old School

    @Shalimar:

    Why did you stop watching The Naked Gun?

    Probably more because networks stopped airing it more than anything else.  I don’t have a copy.

    Looks like it’s streaming on Max these days.

  91. 91.

    JoyceH

    @Ohio Mom:

    Ah, the trial that introduced me to Alan Dershowitz.

    Now see, I went into the OJ era with a pretty high opinion of Dershowitz. I was stationed in Newport during the von Bulow trial, and you thought it got a lot of national coverage? The local coverage was MILES above that.

    One lunch hour I was running errands, and I was in a K-Mart when the verdict for the first trial came down. The whole bank of televisions were set to the coverage and when the guilty verdict was announced, these K-Mart employees in their red smocks were SOBBING. It’s not so much that von Bulow was popular, he was a pretty chilly guy, but among the locals, by which I mean the year-round residents, AKA the servant class, Sunny von Bulow’s drug issue was widely known, and they were watching an innocent man get railroaded.

    Dershowitz came in for the appeal and got the verdict overturned on fairly obvious problems. The state decided to retry – the Attorney General at the time was a pretty ambitious nun, Sister Arlene Violet, AKA Attila The Nun. The second trial acquitted, and Sister Arlene’s political career stalled out there.

  92. 92.

    Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)

    One less SUV and one less distracted driver on Los Angeles freeways.

  93. 93.

    Xenos

    To think, thousands of miles away, I was listening to “Dogs” by Pink Floyd ashe passed.

    Lonely old man, dying of cancer, dragged down by the stone

  94. 94.

    Matt McIrvin

    I blamed the LAPD for this obviously guilty murderer getting an arguably legit acquittal, and I still do.

  95. 95.

    Betty Cracker

    I was in Vienna when the verdict came down, and in the days that followed, every time I revealed myself as an American by speaking, strangers asked me to explain what happened. I didn’t know what to tell them. Anyway, good riddance to the murdering prick.

  96. 96.

    vbreakwater

    My OJ story – a couple of years ago I produced and directed a documentary for A&E, ‘OJ:Guilty In Vegas,’ about his arrest and conviction in Las Vegas for armed robbery. It was told mainly through the eyes of law enforcement including the detective who arrested him, the DA who prosecuted him and the Judge who convicted him. In many ways they saw this as a re-do of the LA trial and prosecuted it vigorously.

    Then more recently, I was attending a performance of Nick Kroll & John Mulaney’s show ‘Oh Hello’ in LA. I was seated behind Marcia Clark. They brought her up on stage, telling her that, ‘this is probably the 2nd most surprising thing to happen to you.’ She and the entire audience had a good laugh over that one.

  97. 97.

    Citizen Alan

    @Chris:  The best book I ever read about the law was Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi, in which he explained everything that went wrong in the trial that led to Simpson’s acquittal. A fascinating read which I thought should be required reading for law students interested in criminal law, whether as defense or prosecution.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @JoyceH:

    I always like to remind that we are all animals. Sure we are different from some other animals in that most of us have higher brain functionality (some of course far less….) and a concept that we are mostly in this together (in the long haul if sometimes not in the short haul), and that working/living with others in mind (even if we don’t know them) is a hell of a lot better than struggling on our own and acting as if we are individually superior to all others.

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    I’m not sure he should be forgotten.

    Examples of how NOT to live can be as informing as examples of how to live a decent life. Sure we’d like to put him out of our minds, but he’s sort of like shitforbrains – strong examples of how NOT to be human. Of course OJ was at least good at something so comparing him to shitforbrains may be a bit over the top.

  100. 100.

    Citizen Alan

    @UncleEbeneezer:  To touch on what I said earlier about the Bugliosi book, he claimed that two of the biggest factors in the acquittal both related back to the King verdict. First, they moved the trial from Santa Monica to Downtown LA because they were worried about another riot if he was convicted by an all-white upper-middle class jury, so they moved the trial to a venue where the jury pool would have a higher ratio of black potential jurors. The prosecution compounded that with poor jury selection, going from a pool that was 40% white and 28% black to a jury with 9 blacks, 2 whites, and 1 Hispanic. And because it was Downtown LA, the jurors were less likely to be college educated and thus less likely to be persuaded by the state’s DNA evidence.

  101. 101.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Bart: Exactly.  Back in the day the big debate over NFL GOAT (especially greatest running back) was: Jim Brown or OJ?  OJ was very much on the short list of contenders for greatest football player ever!  He was up in the elite stratus of Black Athlete with Kareem, Ali, Hank Aaron etc.  And his shift into acting was far more successful than Jim Brown’s or that of other former-athletes.  Moreover, because he mostly stayed out of politics and Black Liberation talk (famously saying “I’m not Black, I’m OJ”, he was much beloved by white sports fans and often cited an example of how Black Athletes should act by the Shut-Up-And-Dribble fans who hated Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Jim Brown and other outspoken athletes.  OJ was a very big deal even before the trial.

  102. 102.

    Captain C

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    His trial was very much about the racist history of policing in Los Angeles (and America) and many people were happy to see him acquitted solely as a big “fuck you” to the system

    As Chris Rock said, “If Jerry Seinfeld was on trial for double murder, and the only cop who found the glove just happened to be in the Nation of Islam, he’d be a free man.  He’d be eatin’ cereal right now.”

    Also, am I the only one who thinks of OJ having full Nordberg Panic Face during the White Bronco Chase?

  104. 104.

    Citizen Alan

    @Old School:  The worst was the 3rd one. Aside from it coming out right as the murders hit the news, it also had Fred Ward as the villain, only he was too good an actor to play in a film series that works best when the villain is a second-rate actor instructed to play a complete ham (Ricardo Montalban, Robert Goulet). And Anna Nicole Simpson had the acting skills of a block of wood and her story arc culminated in a tasteless transphobic joke that riffed off The Crying Game. 

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I think it’s a coin flip as to whether it was intentional attempts to frame him or just sloppy police work with a boatload of arrogance and racism.  Or a mixture of all three…

    I think that it was sloppy police work, a sometimes bumbling prosecution and a very good defense team.

    Also, sometimes celebrities get a break when they commit crimes.

    Robert Blake probably murdered his wife and was acquitted.

    ETA. Just seeing the OJ news. Sympathies to the families of the victims.

  107. 107.

    Ruckus

    @Chris:

    I will say this again. We really do not want terrorists in our midst nor in our world but if we forget about them we tend to have them show up more often. We, as the human race will never get rid of all the bad or all the bad people. That’s not how it works. Yes we do have to be very careful when putting someone on the worse than not useful or human side of the aisle because the vast majority of us are, if no more than capable of being on the wrong side of the aisle, we are at least that, capable of it. We all have emotions and sometimes the worst side can/does get the best of us. If we are reasonable, normal we see it coming and don’t let it take us there. But we are, the vast majority of us, capable of going there.

  108. 108.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Citizen Alan: Loved that book.  It was really excellent on just how much the prosecution screwed up.  So many times throughout that book Bugliosi wrote things like “How does a DA not know how to counter this?  I would Fail a first-year law student for missing such easy opportunities.”  And the way he explained them, they did usually seem like fairly simple stuff, even from my non-lawyer perspective.  Bugliosi’s hypothetical Closing Statement to the jury was just devastating and extremely convincing.  When you added up all the things that were required to have “just so happened” to happen, in order for the Defense’s theory to make sense, it quickly became downright laughable.

  109. 109.

    Ruckus

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Yes it was very much about LA law enforcement but the situation was far wider than that. Many, likely most law enforcement organizations were no better and more than a few were worse. Sure it was directed at LA cops, but the exposure was necessary most everywhere. Law enforcement at the time was US (cops) – the LAW VS everyone else.

  110. 110.

    Miss Bianca

    @Old School: I loved those movies when they came out, and then every time I thought about watching them again I thought, “OMG, fuckin’ OJ” and it just killed that impulse stone dead.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    And because it was Downtown LA, the jurors were less likely to be college educated and thus less likely to be persuaded by the state’s DNA evidence.

    I think that Bugliosi was one of the better and most persuasive people who commented about the Simpson trial, but disagree big time about the jury and the DNA evidence.

    People forget that the evaluation of DNA evidence in trials was still relatively new. And one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses bungled his presentation so badly, getting percentages wrong, that he ended up undermining the state’s case. This made it easy for the jury to disregard or downplay the DNA evidence.

    Also, most lay people simply accept DNA because it’s “science,” not because they understand it.

    During the trial, I tried to explain to a coworker that DNA evidence is far more conclusive at excluding a suspect than including or identifying a suspect. They didn’t get it.

  113. 113.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Brachiator: The DNA presentation itself certainly hurt the case.  But when reading Bugliosi’s formulation of the evidence itself, it seemed to me pretty damn strongly implicated it was OJ’s blood (excerpted on page 334 of this DNA lesson):

    DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the genetic material found in all human cells that carries the coded messages of heredity unique (with the exception of identical twins) to each individual. DNA, then, is our genetic fingerprint. Each of the approximately 100 trillion cells in a human body contains twenty-three pairs of chromosomes—one of each pair coming from one’s father, the other from the mother—which contain DNA molecules. In criminal cases, DNA can be extracted from samples of blood, semen, saliva, skin, or hair follicles found at a crime scene and then compared to DNA drawn from a suspect to determine if there is a “match.” DNA testing is a new forensic science, first used in Great Britain in 1985 and in the United States in 1987.

    DNA tests on all five blood drops and on three bloodstains found on the rear gate at the crime scene showed that all of this blood belonged to Simpson. Two DNA tests were used: PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and RFLP (restrictive fragment length polymorphism). The PCR test is less precise than the RFLP, but can be conducted on much smaller blood samples as well as samples that have degenerated (“degraded”) because of bacteria and/or exposure to the elements. PCR tests were conducted on four out of the five blood drops. Three showed that only one out of 240,000 people had DNA with the markers found in the sample. (A marker is a gene that makes up one portion of the DNA molecule, and the more markers in the sample, the more comparison tests can be conducted, and hence the greater the exclusion of other humans.) The fourth blood drop had markers which one out of 5200 people could have. Simpson was one of these people. The fifth blood drop had sufficient markers for an RFLP test, and showed that only one out of 170 million people had DNA with those markers. Again, Simpson’s blood did.

    The richest sample was on the rear gate, and an RFLP test showed that only one out of 57 billion people had those markers. Simpson was one of them. In other words, just on the blood evidence alone, there’s only a one out of 57 billion chance that Simpson is innocent. Fifty-seven billion is approximately ten times the current population of the entire world.

  114. 114.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    But when reading Bugliosi’s formulation of the evidence itself, it seemed to me pretty damn strongly implicated it was OJ’s blood…

    Neither you nor I were on the jury.

    The richest sample was on the rear gate, and an RFLP test showed that only one out of 57 billion people had those markers. Simpson was one of them. In other words, just on the blood evidence alone, there’s only a one out of 57 billion chance that Simpson is innocent.

    One out of 57 billion people is not quite the same thing as a one out of 57 billion chance of innocence. And again, as I noted, one expert witness badly mangled the percentages. And so, the jury heard conflicting information from the prosecution about what the DNA evidence meant. The prosecution may have over-explained DNA and presented varying explanations about how it is evaluated without clearly and simply explaining why DNA evidence is accurate.

    And even here, outside of the Simpson trial, we have seen how the DNA databases can be inadequate and how forensic analysts can lie about the data.

  115. 115.

    Timill

    @UncleEbeneezer: Somebody needs a remedial statistics class, and should pay attention this time to the difference between independent and non-independent variables.

    From that excerpt, I wouldn’t say anything stronger than it was probably from OJ or a close (male?) relative.

  116. 116.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Brachiator: I wish I could find an excerpt about the DNA testimony.  I am not a DNA scientist by any stretch and I haven’t read it in 20 years, but iirc, Bugliosi noted that the Defense repeatedly implied that poor collection/control of the blood samples should cast doubt on the fact that tests suggested it was OJ’s blood.  But that made no sense because contaminating the samples doesn’t magically make somebody else’s blood look like OJ’s.  It was another of the points that he felt the Prosecution should have pushed back on but never did.  My take-away was that the Prosecution definitely bungled the DNA presentation portion of the trial.

  117. 117.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I wish I could find an excerpt about the DNA testimony.  I am not a DNA scientist by any stretch and I haven’t read it in 20 years, but iirc, Bugliosi noted that the Defense repeatedly implied that poor collection/control of the blood samples should cast doubt on the fact that tests suggested it was OJ’s blood.

    No. You’re okay. I heard a number of interviews with Bugliosi and read his book. But even had he been the prosecutor, the ramshackle presentation of two of the expert witnesseses would still have undermined the state’s case.

    The collection issue contributes to reasonable doubt, especially if one is skeptical about the honesty of the cops. A common sense question would be, “if you think that blood evidence is so important, why weren’t you more careful in protecting the chain of custody.” This might make it easier for the jury to dismiss the test results.

    Anyway, as much as I respect Bugliosi, it’s easy for him to claim that a good prosecutor could have won the case. But he wasn’t the prosecutor.

  118. 118.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Brachiator: True.  That said, some of the screw ups he detailed in the book were rather astonishing and seemed like tremendous own-goals (at least based on his framing of them).

  119. 119.

    Jager

    My memories of OJ:

    1. Destroying the Pats, It seemed like he scored a TD every time he carried the ball.

    2. Watching his Football Hall of Fame induction.

    3. Dancing next to OJ and Nicole at a nightclub in Vail, CO.

    I almost forgot this…during the trial, I had my first cornea transplant, my graft came from a black guy killed in a motorcycle accident. When I came back to work I told my co-workers “I was looking at OJ’s trial differently

  120. 120.

    Tehanu

    @Kay: ​  Yes to what you said on the LA police.  Horrifying.

    Other thoughts: The mini-series The People vs. OJ (with Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark) was terrific. I usually don’t watch true crime (either fictionalized or documentary), but what some here are saying about the ESPN documentary sounds good and I may try that.

    I hope the Brown and Goldman families, and Nicole’s kids, can find some peace.

  121. 121.

    Msb

    Nice that Nicole’s abuser and murderer is now facing a higher court.
    Too bad that 17 years of violent physical abuse ended only when he murdered her. And Ron Goldman.
    Andrea Dworkin wrote an excellent memorial to Nicole Brown, very much worth reading.

  122. 122.

    Chris T.

    @japa21:

    Now, we’ll never know who the real murderer was.

    I always say that if the LA cops (Furhman et al) hadn’t framed the guilty, OJ would have been convicted.

  123. 123.

    Paul in KY

    @catclub: They didn’t ‘plant’ the bloody footprints in Bruno Maglis and the kabanging Kato Kaelin heard outside his shack (OJ jumping back on to his property), etc. etc.

    If you wanted to let him off as a fuck you to the LAPD, that could be done & seems to have been done. IMO, there was enough ‘legit’ evidence to show it was him.

  124. 124.

    Paul in KY

    @UncleEbeneezer: OJ was a hell of a running back when he was young. One of the best ever. He was one dimensional (not a good receiver at all), but that one dimension was whack. Tremendous speed when young. Great track athlete too.

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