You know I think Mark Fuhrman was treated unjustly. The fact that he lied on the stand about saying the N word was not material to the case.
Everybody who worked with the Detective not one came forward and said that he was disrespectful to the black community. On the Contrary.
During the trial I tried to be objective. I think the preliminary hearing was more impactful to me. The Prosecution could have put on the best case including OJ in the act and the jury would have let him walk. I blame this fiasco solely at the fee of Judge Ito.
Good post.
It's what you do, not what you say, that makes you a racist or not.
My recollection, and anyone who knows different please correct me if I’m wrong, is that Fuhrman’s use of the word “n****r” was in the context of helping a writer develop dialog for a book.
Therefore not racist. Fuhrman did get caught in the old “do you still beat your wife?” trap, but the truth is that generations of kids who have had to read passages of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and a host of other books aloud are guilty of just as much “racism” as Fuhrman was. And Hollywood actors like Leo diCaprio (Django Unchained) might as well be members of the Klan.
The primary mistake in the prosecution was changing the jurisdiction from a criminal court on the West Side of Los Angeles (where a jury pool would have been from more affluent areas) to a Downtown court (where the jury pool was impoverished and had a higher percentage of minorities).
The choice was made by a DA who wanted his staff to be able to work closer to their offices, or in other words in a city known for its road traffic, for greater convenience.
The jury pool chosen saw it as they wanted to see it, and never deviated even when evidence to the contrary was presented. The DA lost his next election, as I recall.
I love Mark Furman.
In my opinion, and I watched almost all of the case, the prosecution, whatever its real or imagined shortcomings, proved its case beyond any reasonable doubt.
Oh, hell, yes. The man was badly treated, by Marcia Clarke, among others, who said she wished he’d never been born, or some such.