The People V. . . . Episode Five

This episode sets the two main themes, battered women and racism, into juxtaposition.  For Jeffrey Toobin, from whose book this series was adapted, and practically all of those who believe OJ was guilty, the presumption that a spouse abuser can take the step up to murder settled the question of guilt, and the "race card" was a strategy to blind the jury to the "mountain of evidence" against OJ.  

Is it possible that racism was the actual dynamic for the accusing of and arrest of OJ and evidence manufactured to point at him and that the spouse abuse issue was used to blind the jury to the facts and in the process justify the racism?  My unsolicited opinion is that both are heinous and need to be set aside as we try to find the evidence that leads us to what really happened.  Unfortunately, drama lends itself to bringing in emotion and this series is good drama, no matter what the truth of the case was.  Also unfortunately, this episode makes the defense look like the racism defense was contrived simply for the sake of winning.  

Fortunately, this episode also shows some sensitivity to just how scary it is to be a black man in a white society.  Johnny Cochran was harassed by the police when he was an assistant DA early in his career.  Chris Darden saw he was being used because he was African American.  It was quite a moment when he persuaded Marcia Clark to take over questioning of Mark Fuhrman.  The drama of that moment was right on: she really had no clue what putting Fuhrman on the stand would do to her case.

The view of the series' writers is that every move by the defense was contrived.  That was illustrated in three ways.  First, it showed the way Cochran staged OJ's mansion.  That was really driven home by the fact that the condo was left unfurnished while OJ's mansion was gussied up.  I want to remind you that the condo was an empty commercial property, was on the market not long after the murders in June of 1994, and the jurors did not get to see the two sites until nearly a year later.  The prosecution had not anticipated that the condo would be empty and made no effort to bring in the very things that would have shown Nicole being a mother and a human being with a life.  

Did you notice that there were no scenes of the outside where the murders occurred?  Neither was there an effort to show the walkway at Rockingham where the bloody glove was found and how it related to the entrance to OJ's house. 

The second effort to show Cochran contrived the defense was in the conversation between Cochran and Darden about Darden's concern to show respect to one another.  Cochran looked bad in the scene because he said respect didn't matter.  Winning was all that mattered.  That conversation was not shown to be nuanced.  All lawyers by the nature of our adversarial trial processes are out to win.  And respect does not require one side to agree with the other.  Disagreeing cannot always be agreeable in the courtroom.

I liked how the argument between Darden and Cochran about the use of the "N" word was shown.  Don't forget the argument occurred before the jury was brought in.  Darden urged Judge Ito to prohibit the use the racial epithets on the grounds that they would enflame the jury and blind them to the evidence.  Cochran forcefully countered that the African American members of the jury heard that word and worse every day and were grown up enough to look past them in considering the evidence.

The third effort to show Cochran was a manipulator was the discussion about how juries accepted the best story and that the Defense would just have to tell a better one.  One key line may have gone unnoticed because it was set amidst the emotional discussion: "They will accept the story that covers the facts best."  In my experience working on defense of accused pastors, I saw how the prosecution's narrative, especially when it could use a very emotionally loaded cause to enrich its telling, like victimizing women, became very hard to overcome with a narrative that better accounted for the facts.  Cochran must have been very good at neutralizing the prosecution's story in the other cases he won fighting for justice for African American victims of police brutality.  

This episode brings up several other interesting things but let me touch on only one more, the dinner party of Judge Ito's friend, Dominic Dunn, at which the battered woman issue is brought up.  The host said that Nicole's parents were the ones who insisted that Nicole stay with OJ after the incidents of alleged abuse occurred.  Earlier in this episode, Marcia Clark had said there were 62 such incidents.  Somehow I find it hard to believe that even the loving grandparents would force her back into a violent relationship 62 times.  In the reading that I did, I saw only five.  One is too many, of course, but what actually happened in each and why are important.  While most battered women are victims of bad men and too many are killed upon separation from those men, there are rare situations where the woman is the violent one.  There are also instances where the woman contrives or makes up situations as a way of setting up a very lucrative divorce.  Being OJ's spouse was a very lucrative spot to be in.  To be divorced from him could also be very lucrative.  

We can examine that possibility just like we can the possibility that Cochran was only using the race card to manipulate the jury.  But neither will lead us to a meaningful conclusion about OJ's guilt or innocence.  Only legitimate evidence will do that.

We need to see what evidence is brought up by the series writers, which is inaccurate or inadequate, and which is ignored.  "Just the facts, Ma'am."

The People V. . . . Episode Two

The writers of the series for "American Crime Story" showed several important elements about the trial of OJ Simpson.  At the beginning of this episode, they showed how OJ thought he transcended race.  He was not Black or White.  He was OJ!  That was not just arrogance on his part.  Other athletes like Labron James seem to have achieved non-racial status.  But suddenly, knowing he was on the verge of being arrested, having been in the sites of snipers as he arrived home from Chicago, OJ knew he was just another Black man, subject to the unwritten rules of the LAPD.

The second episode included reference to police officers being his guests to use his pool and tennis court for exercise.  OJ had made it a point to have great relations with the precinct nearest Rockingham.  Other sources add that he was also generous with the things his sponsors gave him.  Slacks, shoes and socks, shirts, underwear, gloves, jackets, whatever, all were sent by the dozen to him by sponsors and there was no way he could use them all.  Many found their way to police guests, not as direct bribes, but as gifts to anyone who happened to be around.  Other guests received the same treatment whenever OJ wanted to pass along all the extras.

With the murders, OJ’s world collapsed.  This episode showed just how upsetting that was.  Cuba Gooding Jr. has observed that OJ may have been showing symptoms of head trauma from football, something he had not considered while making the series.  Either way, the OJ portrayed was what I saw in the combined readings about him as he left with his friend Al Cowling before his lawyers could turn him in.

The letters he wrote to his family and friends before he slipped away from his lawyers with Cowling sought forgiveness for what he had done.  The episode left it up to us to decide if he was referring to the murders or if he was sure before he got into the white Bronco, that he would kill himself rather than be gunned down by the SWAT team.

And why would he be quoted as saying he felt like an abused husband?  Is there a possibility that one of Nicole’s qualities that he really loved was that she had the strength of mind and body to compete with him?  Was she really terrified of him, as the Faye Reznick character says at the funeral?  Was there something else Nicole may have been worried about, such as having OJ stop alimony because of her friendship with Reznick who had a major drug problem?

I liked the second episode very much.  It was accurate as far as it went and showed vividly the way things were that day, snipers, police cars, fans cheering him on, the embarrassment for both prosecution and defense lawyers, the pain of his friend Al Cowling trying to keep OJ alive as long as possible considering how fragile OJ’s state of mind was.  

Watchers might have understood that the sincerity of OJ’s apology, as he arrived at home to be arrested, was for causing the officers all this trouble, officers who he thought of as friends that had been to his house and received gifts because of his sponsors’ over-enthusiastic generosity.