Posted on 11/21/2006 9:29:15 PM PST by RWR8189
Rupert Murdoch has just canceled the O.J. Simpson book and TV special in which Simpson (presumably) describes how he would have half-decapitated Nicole Simpson and stabbed Ron Goldman had "the real killers" not done it first. The cancellation is certainly justified on grounds of decency, sensitivity and, given the universal public revulsion, commercial good sense. But I would have done differently. I would have let O.J. speak.
I thought the outrage was misdirected and misplaced. The attention and money Simpson (and Fox) would have garnered from the deal are not half as outrageous as the fact that every day he walks free. The real outrage is the trial that declared him not guilty: the judge, a fool and incompetent whose love of publicity turned the trial into a circus; the defense lawyers, not one of whom could have doubted the man's guilt yet who cynically played on the jury's ignorance and latent racism to win a disgraceful verdict; the prosecutors, total incompetents who bungled a gimmie, then shamelessly cashed in afterwards; the media that turned the brutal deaths of two innocents into TV's first reality-show soap opera.
Worst of all was the jury, whose perverse verdict was the most brazen and lawless act of nullification since the heyday of Strom Thurmond. Sworn to uphold law, they decided instead to hold a private referendum on racism in the L.A. Police Department.
The result was a grotesque miscarriage of justice. And there it rested, frozen and irreversible. I wanted to hear O.J. speak because that was the one way to, in effect, reopen the case, unfreeze the travesty and get us some way back to justice. Not tangible throw-the-thug-in-jail justice. But the psychological justice of establishing Simpson's guilt with perfect finality.
This is especially important because so many people believed — or perhaps more accurately, made themselves believe — in O.J.'s innocence. Everyone remembers gathering around the television at work to watch the verdict, and then the endless national self-searching over the shocking climax: not the verdict, but the visceral response to the verdict — the white employees gasping while the black employees burst into spontaneous applause.
Pollsters found that nearly 90% of African-Americans agreed with the verdict. Almost a third of whites did too. What better way to eliminate this lingering and widespread doubt about Simpson's guilt than to have the man himself admit it. But for that you need his confession. The fact that he prefaced his "I did it" with the word "if" is irrelevant. Simpson will always avoid unqualified admission if only to avoid further legal jeopardy for, say, perjury.
But has there ever been someone who responds to the murder of an ex-wife — a death he publicly mourned and pretended to be so aggrieved by that he would spend the rest of his days looking for "the real killers" — to engage in the exercise of telling how he would have cut her throat?
No survivor of a murdered spouse who is innocent could do anything so grotesque. Can you imagine Daniel Pearl's widow writing a book about how she would have conducted the beheading of her husband? Or Jehan Sadat going on television to describe how she would have engineered her husband's assassination? Such things are impossible. The mere act of engaging in so unimaginably repulsive an exercise is the ultimate proof of Simpson's guilt.
Who cares if O.J. profits financially? There is nothing in that injustice — and a further injustice it undeniably is — that compares to the supreme injustice of the verdict. And exposing the verdict's falsity — from the killer's mouth no less — is worth whatever price we as a society would have paid in the sordidness of the TV spectacle and the book.
After such an event, anyone persisting in maintaining Simpson's innocence would have been exposed as a fool or a knave. The interview and book would have been valuable public assets to rub in the face of those who carried out the original travesty — Simpson's lawyers, his defenders and, above all, the jury — and those who continue to believe it.
Here's the television I really will miss now: the cameras taken into the homes of every one of those twelve willful jurists who sprung O.J. free 12 years ago and made a mockery of the law by trying to turn a brutal murderer of two into a racial victim/hero. I wanted to see their faces as the man they declared innocent described to the world how he would have taken—nonsense: how he did take—the knife to Nicole's throat.
Full disclosure: Charles Krauthammer is a Fox News contributor, among other affiliations.
[::Nodding::] Yup. Yup. And yup.
Once again Charles the K has hit the nail on the head.
Thanks Charles, now, is it OK if we never hear about OJ again? One of the best things Rush ever did was "No OJ, none of the time"!
Krauthammer is probably right. The idea that we would have then been subjected to months of OJ is disturbing and tiring, but the number of people who believe he is innocent is also disturbing.
Great writing! I saw this as a crass book promotion, but maybe Charlie is right.
Wrong, what's next, cooking with John Wayne Gacey?
If OJ had admitted his guilt and said he killed her because she was playing the whore with all of california in front of his kids, I would have had sympathy for him. He still would've been jailed for murder, but at least I would have understood.
He's never said that, so my guess is that it wasn't the case.
Krauthammer's right. OJ doing this "if" thing is conclusive about his guilt.
I still remember all the 'students' at GWU jumping up and cheering when the verdict was announced.
OJ still can speak - let him put a video up on YouTube.
The jurors came to the correct verdict. It's become rather obvious that the blood evidence was tainted and that establishes reasonable doubt. He could be guilty as sin but it's very hard to prove that using tampered blood.
The jury may have not have reached the correct verdict with the correct reasoning but they did, nonetheless. get the verdict right.
FWIW, the civil jury got it right too. There are separate standards for the two types of law. In the civil case, the prosecutors just needs to prove a preponderance of the evidence while a criminal trial requires guilt be on a reasonable doubt. The civil jury also heard about the Bruno Magli shoes which the criminal jury did not hear.
Don't blame the jurors. They did their jobs correctly. Instead, blame the LAPD who, in their rush to nab O.J. Simpson, planted his blood at the crime scene in order to throw the case their way and were caught (pardon the pun) red-handed.
bttt
"Machete Sharpening Tips" by Jason Voorhees.
The possibilities are endless.
I'm getting ready to dump television, this would have made it that much faster.
Picnicking in Fort Marcy park
"
Krauthammer's right. OJ doing this "if" thing is conclusive about his guilt."
The guy giving police a long chase and ending up with (iirc) holding a gun to his own head was pretty conclusive, but that was often ignored in what followed.
Slam dunk without the blood.
Jury nullilfication means just that.
Since O.J.'s victims were a different race (and one was also Jewish), why couldn't he be tried as a "hate crime" or denying Ron and Nicole their "civil rights"?
It worked against southern racists who killed blacks, so why not blacks who kill whites?
This is silly. Does Krauthammer expect them to show remorse, regret, embarrassment? Sorry to burst your bubble, Charles, but all you'd see on the faces of these "willful jurists" is a laugh-in-your-face leer. Simpson is a hero to these folks because they know he's guilty and they got him off, not because he's innocent and they protected him from an unjust conviction. The applause was for sticking it in The Man's eye, and the applause will be even louder when OJ himself tells the world it's true.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.