OJ was found criminally “not guilty”, not necessarily because he deserved to win, but because the police had so badly screwed up the case that they deserved to lose. On the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty”, OJ was not guilty in that particular trial.

On the other hand, in the civil trial, OJ was shown by a preponderance of the evidence to have done the crime. Which is also quite correct.

“If it is true, as Robert Shapiro says, that the race card was dealt from the bottom of the deck all during the proceedings that freed his client, it is also clear that the race card was played long before the trial began and Mark Fuhrman became the shadow defendant. From the outset, white officials in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office behaved like the character in The Manchurian Candidate who enters a state of mesmerized suggestibility whenever a Soviet control agent gets out a deck of cards. In the movie it was the Queen of Hearts that triggers this response, but in the Simpson trial it was the race card.”

For the entire article go here.
http://tinyurl.com/yy7e89

Don’t blame Cochran because of the injustice of this particular case.

If what somebody has to say is of so little value and so contemptuous, why should we act as if we fear it?

On Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld was put in the unenviable position of asking people not to laugh. It’s similarly strange when a writer asks that someone not speak.

Then again that someone did kill two people. The least we can summon from each other is for him not to be allowed to continue in the limelight he so brazenly craves.

Decency still matters. I think I’m with Roger on this one.

It’s the prosecution’s job to prove that the defendant is guilty. The defense attorney’s job is to demonstrate that the prosecution failed to do so.

Justice isn’t the job of the defense attorney. That’s the job of the judge and jury. The system depends on the fact that the defense attorney does his best to get his client off even if the client is guilty. If he doesn’t, then the system fails.

If defense attorneys acted otherwise, they’d be substituting their own judgment for that of the judge and jury. I don’t want a criminal justice system in which defense attorneys decide who should be convicted, before any trials take place.

Too bad every woman isn’t as sensible. But there will always be those who are willing to gamble their lives for publicity. Selling oneself may be the oldest profession, it can also so easily be the last one a person ever practices.

I agree with you on Alcee Hastings.

The Alcee issue is off point to OJ which for most Americans is a settled matter [disgraceful racist acquittal], Alcee is more important now and politicially charged since it involves national security. Once Pelosi commits to the corruptible Hastings in December or January, it is probably the perogative of the Speaker to appoint the committee chairs. So there may be no vote.

The GOP and the president should make it a major issue by challenging his top secret clearance.
Or, the president and Negroponte should simply refuse to turn over classified information to Alcee.
They should, but they won’t because I am not convinced that the administration is committed to confrontation. It is only through an intense media generating confrontation pitting Alcee’s utter lack of probity against the national security interests of the nation can the GOP take the issue of national security to a higher level. The key to take back the Congress starts now and everyday for the next two years and while the media may focus on the presidential race, the real long term interest lies in trench warfare in the Congres with Pelosi.