Thank you for taking note of our O.J. post, Seb! Glad someone did …

Ok, I just bookmarked Hairy, but geez, the name makes me cringe every time.

OT: Check this out. The 4th paragraph is the best.

I almost choked on my Capri Sun when I read that statement by the Bushman, Robert. You’re right about the 4th paragraph. Here’s my favorite line:

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.

SullyWatch is out of his/her fucking mind. What an idiot. Bugliosi demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Simpson is guilty as hell. SullyWatch has no response to the merits of Bugliosi’s showing, so he just engages in ad hominem attacks against him. Daniel Petrocelli (the lawyer who destroyed Simpson in the civil trial) also demonstrates that O.J. is guilty as hell, but SullyWatch conveniently ignores his book. And that slur on atheists really pissed me off:

The long passages about God and why he?s an atheist are the only place we?ve ever read such sentiments that tend to make one understand why 41 percent of the American population says they?d never vote for one. When people do not believe in God, Chesteron said, they will believe in anything.

What an asshole. My blogroll is too long — I’m taking SullyWatch off it. Keep believing in your fairy tales, SullyWatch: your invisible friend in the sky, and O.J.’s innocence.

The thing that especially bothered me about SullyWatch’s OJ piece was that it insinuates people who believe OJ’s guilt are morons/racists. I think he did it, and it’s not because I hate blacks or believe everything the media says. A lot of it has to do with OJ himself.

I haven’t read any of these books, so I can’t comment on those, but like a lot of Americans followed the trial with great interest. There were A LOT of reasons to believe the Juice did this. Starting with the damn Bronco chase. That surreal event, prompted by OJ, was that catalyst that set off the media feeding frenzy. And let’s face it, when you run, it implies guilt. The gloves, the blood, the hair and fiber samples…plus the jurors own admitted disinterest in the DNA evidence…this isn’t some media generated lynching. Not to mention OJ has never, ever acted like an innocent man throughout the whole process.

OJ benefitted from a solid defense team, a crapalicious prosecution, and a post-Rodney King environment where people would believe the LAPD was both too incompetent to handle evidence yet efficient enough to manufacture a vast racist conspiracy faster than you can get a pizza delivered.

My blogroll is too long ? I?m taking SullyWatch off it.

Didn?t know we were on it and probably won?t miss it.

Anyway, perhaps we did overreach by implying Bugliosi was exemplary of all atheists, and we should have made clearer that we believe Bugliosi?s atheism (like Gene Roddenberry?s, for that matter) to be more an outward manifestation of a fundamental inner character flaw than a rational position. Basically, Vince is a megalomaniac who hates the idea of competition.

We?ll believe Bosco, who sat through the whole damn thing, before we believe a thing Bugliosi says, since all he did was watch on TV and go on Hard Copy every day afterwards. And there is a world of difference between what you saw on TV and what actually happened. And, to us, the response to this here is proof that many people still haven?t realized that.

Take just one thing; Bugliosi was the one, as Bosco notes, who shouted the loudest after the trial that the reason Vanatter rode around with that vial of O.J.?s blood in his car instead of taking it over to booking when he had the chance was because it would screw up the evidence numbering system. But why hadn?t that ever happened before? Or since … everyone from the chief on down said that was against procedure, both in the book and as it was actually done.

OK, now for the thoughtful response …

The thing that especially bothered me about SullyWatch’s OJ piece was that it insinuates people who believe OJ’s guilt are morons/racists. I think he did it, and it’s not because I hate blacks or believe everything the media says.

That was not our intent to insinuate that, and we apologize. We just believe that the media disinformation offensive was so thorough and so damaging that it ill-prepared the country for the verdict that had been foreordained, probably, since the day the glove didn?t fit. As the example of Julie Frederikse?s book that we linked to shows, the consequences of such truth manipulation can be far worse.

You?d be surprised what people still believe about the case today that just wasn?t so (such as, none of the lights at Rockingham were on, even though O.J. showed on his post-trial video (which more people boycotted than actually saw) that the house could be well-lit inside and yet appear dark from the front).

A lot of it has to do with OJ himself

We should have added that you don?t have to like O.J. or believe he walks on water to believe he was innocent and framed (Just as you shouldn?t believe that Nicole was some saint, either … even Faye Resnick?s book makes that clear).

I haven’t read any of these books

You should; there?s a lot of interesting stuff in them. Especially when the authors on the police/prosecution side don?t realize what they?re giving away.

Example #1: In In Contempt, Darden recounts at one point late in the trial when Fuhrman was about to be recalled that Fuhrman went to him and said something like, either do X or I?m telling everything I know. Just what was Fuhrman talking about?

Example #2: In Fuhrman?s own book, he deals with the issue of Andy Purdys, the partner whose defaced locker (Purdys? wife was Jewish and he found swastikas painted all over it; the fingerprints came back to Fuhrman) got him his tongue-lashing and 22-day suspension from Judge Ito’s wife (who had to lie about this in her affidavit). He says that Purdys was so unpopular with his coworkers at the time that quite a few of them could have done that. But what does it say about the mid-?90s LAPD that there were so many cops who felt comfortable painting swastikas on the locker of a man married to a Jew (mind you, not Jewish himself) that a guy whose career ended when he perjured himself over racial issues feels comfortable offhandedly mentioning this in a book?

Starting with the damn Bronco chase

And why do you think the prosecution never brought that up at the trial? They all have their excuses, but they had a tacit agreement with the defense not to bring it up ? because it would have hurt a lot more than it helped, as the defense would have been able to prove with cell records that Cowlings and O.J. had indeed gone to Nicole?s grave; that they had cell intercepts where O.J. keeps telling his mother he?s been framed (in other words, they would have gotten the defendant?s own voice in front of the jury without the possibility of cross-examination, similar to the blunder Brian Kelberg made when, while cross-examining Dr. Baden, he allowed Baden to tell O.J.?s story about how he got the cut on his hand ? thereby getting in front of the jury in a way in which O.J. couldn?t be cross-examined about it) and that the cash was meant for O.J.?s older children to take care of immediate needs should O.J. have killed himself, and friends would have testified the disguises had been used by the two before when visiting Disneyland and that they were routinely kept in the Bronco. They also would have played the video of where Cowling pulls over and attempts to surrender, but the police come out with their guns drawn, don?t stand down and so the chase continues.

And let’s face it, when you run, it implies guilt

Which, of course, is why the defense didn?t bring it up, because that?s a valid legal argument to make. But, as we just pointed out, the defense had quite a bit to show that it was an aborted suicide attempt (You think all those people holding up signs wanted him to go plead guilty? No, they wanted him to not kill himself).

The gloves

Referred to by Fuhrman (alone when he found both gloves) in the plural (at Bundy) in his preliminary hearing testimony. Not cut where they should be. Blood on Rockingham glove is awfully wet for having been out in the open air for seven hours on a warm summer night before being found.

the blood

So much of it is untrustworthy. We dealt with the Bundy drops in our original post; if you want specifics on the socks (absolutely the most unquestionably tampered evidence in the trial) or the Bronco, we?ll go into that.

There?s also the famous mistake Bruce Weir, the prosecution statistician (one of the big post-trial myths is that DNA in criminal cases is always an exact match … it has to be proved statistically), had to admit to on the stand when Bob Blasier found it out, a screwup as important to the outcome of the case as the glove demonstration yet underreported at the time.

the hair and fiber samples

Marcia Clark has cried a river about these because they were excluded due to failure to provide proper discovery. But an LAPD evidence technician had also admitted that carpet samples from the Bronco were stored together with the glove … hmm, just like Yamauchi and the blood vial, why is an index sample and key evidence being stored together? (In any event, consider also what O.J. testified to during the civil trial, that he routinely left the Bronco unlocked because, well, it wasn?t his, just a perk from Hertz. Anyone could have taken that glove in, rubbed it on the carpet, and gotten fiber evidence on it; and we know the LAPD had entered the Bronco because the report on it said the battery and alternator were in good working order)

plus the jurors own admitted disinterest in the DNA evidence

To whom? The jury followed the DNA presentations much more closely than people liked to believe at the time. When Weir had to confess his masked-allele mistake on the stand, they understood. And according to Bosco, a moment the media missed occurred during Dr. Cotton?s testimony, when she admitted to Peter Neufeld that the most comprehensive database against which Simpson?s blood was typed for comparative purposes included samples from just two other African-American males. He writes that several of the black jurors did a major double-take at what had to seem like ?they all look alike.? For ?the jurors? disinterest in the DNA evidence,? substitute ?the media wanting to get more tabloid gossip items at that point and didn?t really try to understand the evidence themselves.?

Not to mention OJ has never, ever acted like an innocent man throughout the whole process.

Yeah, innocent people always assert their own innocence whenever anyone asks them about it. Not like OJ.

Just how is an innocent person supposed to behave, anyway? The whole thing about that is basically witch-trial justice ? if she floats, she?s guilty and will be put to death; if she drowns, she was innocent. If you were falsely accused of something and later cleared legally, there would always be someone who could and would interpret the way you got out of bed in the morning as evidence of guilt. O.J. isn?t and wasn?t perfect. No one is.

OJ benefitted from a solid defense team, a crapalicious prosecution

On that we can easily agree.

and a post-Rodney King environment where people would believe the LAPD was both too incompetent to handle evidence yet efficient enough to manufacture a vast racist conspiracy faster than you can get a pizza delivered

The incompetence was demonstrated many times during the trial (Rule one: If you are going to put your head coroner, not the guy who actually did the autopsy mind you, on the stand for several days, don?t keep his people away from the crime scene for ten hours). The supposedly vast conspiracy … that?s a post-trial media exaggeration of what the defense actually argued. All it would have taken was a few detectives, all of them convinced that if they stack the deck enough, the defendant will take a plea like s/he has so many times before, and a few lab techs as useful idiots. Or co-conspirators. A couple of years after the trial, we seem to recall, it turned out that there was indeed widespread evidence tampering going on.

(We also think that there were at least two separate efforts to ?sweeten the pot,? Fuhrman’s freelancing with the glove being one and the lab hanky-panky being the other (and maybe some later efforts by freelancers growing out of that) and that may have been what tripped the effort up … perhaps the blood in the Bronco alone might have made the case, but when all this evidence began to cause a lot of internal contradictions the game was given away).

Anyway, glad to see people are still passionate about this.