O J Simpson passed away from prostate cancer on April 15. The papers and TV were full of rehashing his guilt so I sent the following to the Letters to the Editor of our local paper. It was printed by them on Wednesday Apr. 17.
In the OJ Simpson case, the prosecution was unable to establish exactly when the murders took place. Even if either of their guesses were true, OJ still could not possibly have done everything the prosecution said in the time he was said to have done it. Timelines matter. The best book on the crime that I would recommend is KILLING TIME by Freed and Briggs. They help the readers work with the timelines.
The other thing they do is include the autopsies of the victims. The autopsies show four different knives were used. It took four guys, not one, to take down the two athletic victims.
What makes this case so hard is that the media played up everything about the case they got, which was mostly from the prosecution, and the general public saw and heard what they wanted to hear. The European-American folks heard and saw all the terrible stuff about OJ and the African-American folks heard and saw all the racist gimmicks they had experienced.What the general population did not experience was sitting in the courtroom for months on end as the prosecution talked down to the jury of mixed races and the jury having hours to study the photos and other visuals left by the prosecution. That experience was put into a book MADAM FOREMAN, A RUSH TO JUDGMENT by Amanda Cooley. It was not Johnny Cochran's theatrics that pursuaded the jury. It was the lousy DNA work done by the police and pictures of the bloody gloves rolled up in balls. Read the book to see why.
