Read article and write essay

case #11: america in Black and White: the celebrity trial of O. J. Simpson On June 17, 1994, roughly ninety-five million Americans watched the spectacle of a white Ford Bronco traveling slowly down the Los Angeles freeway followed by dozens of law enforcement vehicles. Three days earlier, shortly after midnight on June 12, the bodies of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman were discovered just outside her upscale home. Both victims had been viciously stabbed and beaten. Every- one knew who was inside the Ford Bronco as televi- sion crews filmed the bizarre slow-speed chase from over twenty helicopters hovering above the freeway. In the backseat of the Bronco sat the main sus- pect in the double murder: Orenthal James Simpson, estranged husband of Nicole Simpson and well-known football legend, television personality, movie actor, and corporate spokesperson. Handsome, wealthy, and famous, O. J. or “The Juice” was a national celebrity whose face and nickname was known and beloved across America. With a warrant out for his arrest, O. J. Simpson had agreed to voluntarily turn himself in to the LAPD that day at 11 a.m. A crowd of over one thousand reporters awaited his arrival at the police station. When he failed to show up, the news instantly hit the airways. The drama intensified further when he was spotted in the backseat of a car driving south on Interstate 405. When approached by law enforcement, the driver Al Cowlings yelled that Simpson had a gun to his own head and was threatening to kill himself. So, for five hours of live coverage, the Bronco slowly made its way back to Simpson’s estates at 35 mph as pleas for him to turn himself in were broadcast over the radio. Cars, spectators, and camera crews lined the route and watched in wonder as Simpson was arrested by the waiting LAPD. It was one of the largest television audi- ences in American history. So began one of the most celebrated and media- driven trials in American history. For nine months, cameras in the courtroom televised 134 days of tes- timony replayed and rehashed endlessly by “talking heads” on news and radio programs. Print media in newspapers and magazines, and eventually books covered the trial from every conceivable angle. Pub- lic opinion on the trial, its outcomes, and its many players was tracked by polls which parsed the views of whites, blacks, men and women, young and old. On October 3, 1995, sixteen months after the murder, much of America stopped what it was doing to lis- ten to the verdict announced on television. After less than four hours of deliberation, a jury of nine blacks, two whites, and one Latino acquitted Simpson of the charge of double homicide. An estimated 150 million Americans heard these verdicts read live on national television. The case Begins A team of twenty-five prosecutors, twelve full-time and thirteen part-time, under the leadership of Marcia Clark, a short, no-nonsense white woman with years of experience, faced an equally large defense team composed of a set of attorneys the media dubbed the “Dream Team.” Costing Simpson an estimated six mil- lion dollars, this set of attorneys, many celebrities in their own right, succeeded in raising reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. By the end of the trial the prosecution had outspent the defense, mounting a nine-million-dollar prosecution at taxpayer expense.

From the outset, the celebrityhood of the defendant and the media spotlight on every aspect of this trial presented enormous challenges for the legal proceed- ings. The grand jury that heard evidence to produce an indictment was dismissed due to excessive media coverage of the case. Two key witnesses who testified at that hearing, the only eyewitness to place Simpson at the scene and a witness who testified that he had sold Simpson a knife three weeks earlier, both undermined their credibility by selling their stories to the tabloid press for a hefty fee. Neither was ever called to testify in the criminal trial. In the end, the DA’s office filed criminal charges in California Superior Court where a judge agreed that there was sufficient evidence to charge Simpson with double homicide. the Defense Strategy: It’s all about race The defendant was a celebrity but he was also a black celebrity. From the early stages of the trial, Johnny Cochran, one of the lead defense attorneys, recognized the potential to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury likely to be sympathetic to the plight of a black man on trial in racist America. Almost immediately, public opinion about Simpson divided along racial lines. A nationwide survey conducted one month after the murders showed a glaring discrepancy between blacks and whites on the subject of Simpson’s guilt. While persons of both races admitted that they did not know enough to comment on the case, 34 percent of white respondents believed Simpson was “proba- bly guilty” (versus 18 percent who felt he was “prob- ably not guilty”) while the reverse was true for black respondents. Among blacks 33 percent felt Simpson was “probably not-guilty” versus 11 percent who felt he was “probably guilty.” Sympathy for Simpson was also racially divided: 39 percent of blacks felt a great deal of sympathy for O. J. compared to only 8 percent of whites. Given these widely reported public opinion polls and the more broadly recognized discrepancy in atti- tudes about the fairness of the criminal justice system (blacks are more than twice as likely to believe the criminal justice system is unfair toward blacks while whites are three times more likely than blacks to think the system is fair to all races), the decision on the part of the prosecution to hold the trial in downtown LA was seen as one of the most significant strategic mis- takes in the trial. According to the Constitution, defendants are entitled to be tried within the district in which crime was committed. It is possible to file a motion for a change of venue, and in this case, the natural party to request such a change would have been the defense. The crime was committed in the nearly all-white wealthy neighborhood where O. J. Simpson and Nicole Brown-Simpson lived. For the prosecution, a jury pool with relatively few black potential jurors reduced the likelihood of jurors with racial sympathies for Simp- son. Yet it was the prosecution who decided to change the venue from the very white Santa Monica to the nearly all-minority district of downtown Los Angeles. According to the prosecution, the decision was admin- istratively pragmatic; to critics, it was a huge blunder that gave the defense the opportunity to go on the offensive and “play the race card.” Jury selection is a key element in any trial and is especially important in a trial fraught with the loaded issues of race, gender, and class. Simpson was a black man who grew up poor in the projects. But his lifestyle no longer reflected that background. Rich, famous, and well-heeled, O. J. Simpson moved in pre- dominantly white social circles. He divorced his first African American wife and married Nicole Brown, a glamorous blonde. The defense made ample use of the highly

skilled jury consultants who use targeted mar- ket research to help select jurors likely to be sympa- thetic to their arguments. For this trial, the most sympathetic jurors to O. J. Simpson were, surprisingly, black women. Contrary to the assumption that women would be sympathetic to Nicole as a victim of domestic violence, the data indicated that women were more likely to accept and forgive this behavior than would men, white or black. Prosecutor Marcia Clark, however, did not agree with the advice of the jury consultants, preferring to follow her gut belief that women of color would be outraged by the violence Simpson committed against his former wife. The jury that returned the verdict had ten women and two men: eight were black, two Hispanic, one was half Native American, and one was white. the case against O. J. For many in the legal community, this case was a slam dunk. O. J. Simpson’s blood was found at the scene of the crime and the blood of his ex-wife and her male companion, Ron Goldman, were found in Simp- son’s car, driveway, and home. The motive was simple: Simpson had been a violent husband who beat and threatened his wife repeatedly over the course of their seventeen-year relationship. The prosecution opened its case by playing a 911 tape from January 1, 1989 in which a terrified Nicole Brown-Simpson can be heard expressing her fear of an angry Simpson yelling in the background. The prosecution claimed that O. J., acting in a violent rage, slashed Nicole’s throat and shortly afterward killed Goldman, the only eyewitness to the murder. A bloody shoeprint matching the size and make of Simpson’s exclusive footwear was found inside his car and a bloody left-hand glove was also found at the scene. The match to this glove was later found at Simpson’s home, the same exclusive brand and color purchased for him by Nicole years earlier at Bloomingdales in New York City. In the end the case rested on the scientific analysis of the blood samples found at the scene, which estab- lished a DNA match with a sample of blood drawn from Simpson shortly after he was taken into custody by the LAPD. Prosecution experts testified that the like- lihood the blood found at the scene belonged to some- one other than Simpson was one in 170 million. These experts also testified that the odds the blood found on Simpson’s socks inside his home belonged to someone other than Nicole Brown was one in 9.7 billion. DNA analysis was relatively new at the time of the trials. It had been used for the first time in the United States in 1987. And it was certainly new to the jury. While DNA evidence is specific to individuals, uniquely identifying single persons, it was easy for the jury to confuse this type of evidence with the classifica- tion of blood type, which consists of broad categories inclusive of many individuals. What the prosecution relied on as its most powerful evidence would become the greatest source of doubt for the jury. The key strat- egy for the defense was to challenge the competence and honesty of the police investigators and detectives, who handled the evidence and provided the analysis. These doubts once raised outweighed the scientific tes- timony presented by the prosecution. putting the LapD on trial

Two individuals claimed the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination during this trial. The first was the defendant himself. O. J. Simpson did not take the stand in his own defense. By claiming this privi- lege, Simpson was never subject to cross-examination. But there was another person who later claimed the Fifth during the trial. Mark Fuhrman was the LAPD detective who found the highly incriminating evi- dence of blood on the driveway at Simpson’s home and Simpson’s right-hand glove that found to have traces of blood belonging to both victims. Fuhrman became the lightning rod for charges of racism in the investigation and for the central defense claim that Fuhrman had planted the evidence against Simpson, who was being framed by a racist LAPD. In a pretrial hearing, the issue of whether or not it was admissible to ask Fuhrman on cross-examination if he had ever used the term “nigger” to refer to African Americans came before the presiding judge. The defense was arguing that it was relevant to show that Fuhrman was racist in order to show that he had a motive for framing Simpson by removing the bloody glove from the crime scene and planting the highly incriminating evidence in Simpson’s home. Christopher Darden, argu- ing for the prosecution, said introducing the term “nig- ger” was highly inflammatory and likely to prejudice the jury against the prosecution in a way that would affect the entire case, not only their attitudes toward a partic- ular witness. Even though it was a relatively slim reed upon which to tie a motive for framing Simpson, Judge Ito allowed the line of questioning to occur. What transformed the charge from slim reed to a strong allegation was the failure of Fuhrman to answer truthfully when asked if he had used the term “nigger” to refer to black criminals at least once in the last ten years. When asked this question, on cross-examina- tion by F. Lee Bailey, Fuhrman replied no. The defense then entered into evidence an hour-long audio tape made ten years earlier by a young reporter from North Carolina who interviewed Fuhrman and caught him using the term to refer to blacks thirty-nine times. By lying on the stand, Fuhrman destroyed his own cred- ibility, and with it the credibility of the entire police investigation. Although most African Americans did not believe that Simpson had been framed at the start of the trial, by the end, polls showed that the majority of African Americans in the nation, Los Angeles, and, most significantly, on the jury, believed Simpson had been framed by the LAPD because of his race. The heart of the defense’s case, therefore, was to raise reasonable doubt through the possibility that the LAPD had planted evidence against him. This com- bined with aggressive cross-examination of all DNA experts raising doubts about the timing of evidence and the extent to which it might have been tampered with or contaminated through malicious intent or incompetence. The final doubt was to suggest that blood evidence was inconclusive regarding the possi- bility that there might have been another individual at the scene that night. the civil trial In the wake of the acquittal, the Brown and Goldman families had another legal recourse. They sued O. J. Simpson in a wrongful death suit for damages through the civil system. In the civil trial, the standard of proof is lower than in the criminal trial because what is at stake is merely money rather than a defendant’s life or liberty. Instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt” stan- dard in criminal trials, the civil verdict depends on the “preponderance of the evidence” or “clear and con- vincing” evidence. This generally means that jurors are instructed to return a guilty verdict if they feel there is a 50 percent probability that the defendant is guilty of the charge. Nor

does the verdict need to be unanimous in the civil trial. Only nine of the twelve jurors must agree in order for a verdict to be reached. In the civil trial, the verdict of the all-white jury was unanimous: Simpson was responsible for the deaths and therefore owed damages to compensate for their loss. They awarded the Goldman family 8.5 million dollars in compensatory damages. The defense case presented in the civil trial was the same as that presented by the “Dream Team” in the crim- inal trial three years earlier. Simpson had been framed by a corrupt and racist police department, which ignored other potential killers to focus exclusively on Simpson. The defense again presented the arguments that the evidence had been contaminated, tampered with, or planted by police to build a case against Simpson. This time, however, there were significant differ- ences in the key elements of the legal proceedings. The first difference was the composition of the jury and the location of the trial. The civil case was tried in Santa Monica and the jury, drawn from that judicial district, was nearly all-white in composition. Another impor- tant difference was the absence of cameras. Unlike the criminal trial, the judge in the civil trial banned cam- eras and even photographers from his courtroom. He ordered lawyers and witnesses not to discuss the case with the media. The plaintiff’s case in the civil trial focused more attention on the history of domestic abuse between Simpson and Nicole. Key pieces of evidence not pre- sented at the criminal trial were entered in at the civil trial. Foremost among these was the letter that Simpson wrote after the murders, which many believe to be a suicide note more or less admitting his guilt. The pros- ecution also focused on the lack of an alibi for Simp- son during the crucial time in which the murders were committed. Both Simpson’s housemate and limousine driver testified that they did not see Simpson between the hours of 9:30 and 11:00 p.m. The driver buzzed the intercom at 10:30 for over fifteen minutes with no response until he saw someone that looked like Simp- son entering his front door. Both witnesses testified that Simpson appeared agitated as they helped him put his suitcases in the limo to catch a flight to Chicago. On February 5, 1997, an all-white jury found Simp- son liable for damages and he was ordered to pay an additional 25 million in punitive damages for a total of 33.5 million to the Goldman family. Collecting this money, however, was another issue. California law for- bids the use of pensions for punitive damages; so Simp- son continued to receive his $22,000/month pension. In the years following the case, Simpson continued to seek media attention to restore his public image and tell his side of the story. In 2006, the Goldman family took Simpson back to court to prevent him from reap- ing financial reward from a book and TV deal allegedly confessing to the crime. The book, which was highly controversial, provided a hypothetical account in which Simpson claimed to explain why he did it if he did it. A Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family as partial payment for the mostly unpaid civil judgment in the 1997 lawsuit. Whose Story Do We Believe and Why? What is the truth of the Simpson case? That is not possible to say. Do we “know” what really happened? People have different beliefs about what happened and what we believe to be true tells us a great deal about ourselves. The narratives we find convincing about the Simpson case

tells us a great deal about who we are within the social structure of American society. For many within white America, the acquittal of O. J. Simpson was a travesty of justice. They believed that he was guilty according to two dominant narratives or theories. The first is domestic violence narrative. One-third of female homicide victims killed within the United States are victims of their intimate partners: husbands and boyfriends who regularly beat, stalk, and too often, eventually kill them. This narrative is especially convincing given the highly macho world of American football stars. The second narrative concerns racialized images of the black male sexuality. For many white Americans, it was highly plausible to imagine a black man to be a violent predator of a white woman. This image taps into powerful racial stereotypes of the black man as hyper-sexualized and physically dangerous. Under- neath the calm and smiling face Simpson presented to the public lurked a monster. The acquittal by a predominantly black jury also fit the stereotype held by whites that blacks are intel- lectually and morally inferior to whites. Many whites believed that the jury was not intelligent enough to comprehend the scientific evidence presented to them and that they substituted emotion for reason when they responded to the “race card” played by the defense. For black Americans who thought the acquittal was a just decision, there was a different narrative, in which this verdict made sense. Blacks and whites have very different views about the ongoing fairness of American society. For whites, egregious racism is an historical fact eradicated by the civil rights movement and other changes within American society. For blacks, the pic- ture is not so rosy. Quite simply, there is a strong belief that the institutions of American society continue to be highly racist. This is especially true of the institu- tions of the criminal justice system. Blacks are only 12 percent of the population but comprise 30 percent of all arrests and 45 percent of all people incarcerated. Police are one of the most visible and notorious institutions that treat minority citizens differently from white citizens. The Los Angeles police department was infamous for routinely disregarding the law in its treatment of black citizens. The phrase “testilying” was coined to refer to the habit of police to lie on the wit- ness stand. Police were widely believed to routinely lie and manipulate in order to win a conviction. Fur- thermore, the “code of silence” among police officers, white and non white alike, was seen as a shield for unethical and zealous officers like Fuhrman who were willing to plant evidence. It is also widely believed that police officers are unwilling to publicly condemn a fel- low officer for fear of swift and often severe retaliation from their peers. Given this context it is not surprising that it was highly credible for black Americans on the jury to believe that the case against Simpson had been manu- factured through the illegal conduct of the LAPD. The evidence presented at trial showed detectives entering Simpson’s home the night of the murders without a search warrant; it showed them violating procedures by bringing Simpson’s blood with them to his house giv- ing them the opportunity to plant the evidence. These suspicious practices combined with the trace chem- icals from police labs found in the blood supposedly from the crime scene added up to a picture of police misconduct that black Americans find highly plausible. Of course, the crowning blow was the testimony of Mark Fuhrman who pleaded the Fifth in response to a series of questions, including the all-important one about whether he manufactured and planted evidence at Simpson’s home on the night of the murders.

a Sorry Legacy Exactly thirteen years after his acquittal, a jury found O. J. Simpson guilty of twelve counts of robbery, con- spiracy to commit a crime, assault, and kidnapping with a deadly weapon. He and a co-conspirator kid- napped two sports memorabilia dealers and robbed them at gunpoint. Simpson was sentenced to nine years in state prison. KEY TERMS

bail hearing - the first interaction with the court, where terms of interim release are established. pretrial motions -a written or oral request to a judge by the prosecution or defense before the trial begins. change of venue- a written request to the judge to change the jurisdiction from the loca- tion where the crime was committed to a different jurisdiction. motion to suppress -a pretrial motion that requests the judge to deny that certain evidence be used in the trial. motion for discovery- a written or oral request to the opposing side to inform their oppo- nent about evidence that will be produced during the trial. motion for continuance -a written or oral request to the judge by the defense or prosecution to delay trial proceedings. motion to dismiss - a written or oral request to the judge to dismiss the charges against the accused. trial by jury -the examination of the facts and law in a court before a jury authorized to give the verdict according to the evidence as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. impaneling the jury -the process of selecting individuals to serve on a jury from the jury pool. opening statement - introduction to the jury by the prosecution and the defense of the evi- dence and arguments that will be presented in the trial. direct evidence -firsthand accounts of relevant facts of the case. circumstantial evidence - evidence that requires a jury or judge to infer a fact about the case. demonstrative evidence - evidence such as a photograph or physical object which demonstrates a fact about the case for the judge or jury. testimonial evidence - statements offered under oath as to what a witness saw or heard. hearsay evidence -testimonial regarding what another person saw or heard which is gener- ally not permissible as a criminal evidence.

dying declaration - the last words of a dying witness which may be entered as hearsay evi- dence in a criminal trial. eyewitness testimony - upon direct observation. a testimony based expert witness - a person with specialized education, training, or qualifications in a particular field who testifies on behalf of the prosecution or defense. character witness -persons who offer tes- timony regarding the defendant unrelated to the facts of the case. direct examination - when counsel questions its own witnesses during the trial. cross-examination - when counsel ques- tions witnesses called by the opposing side. closing statement -a summary statement made by each attorney to the judge and the jury reviewing the main arguments and facts of the case. jury instructions -the judicial responsibil- ity to lay out the law which the jury should follow in making its verdict. hung jury - a jury unable to come to a unanimous decision for a legal verdict. mistrial -judicial ruling that the trial was invalid because it was terminated without a ver- dict or because of substantial error in due process proceedings. grand jury - a group of, usually twenty- three, citizens assembled to determine whether suf- ficient evidence exists to support the prosecution of the accused. petit jury -a panel of citizens charged with determining the defendant’s guilt or innocence in a trial. deliberative - as with juries, individuals come to an agreement with each other about what is just through a process of discussion, argument, and debate. jury nullification - a jury verdict that is made without regard to the evidence or the law. key-man system -an eligibility process for serving on jury, based on recommendations from key persons of high character and reputation within the community. voir dire -a process by which lawyers and judge question potential jurors for a given case. challenge for cause - removal of jurors for stated reasons. peremptory challenges -removal of a cer- tain number of jurors by counsel for each side without reason.