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.  

The People V. . . . Episode One

Rather than begin with the trial or even the crime scene, the first episode begins with scenes of conflict between the Los Angeles Police and Africa American young men.  Scenes from the riots surrounding the exoneration of the police in the beating of Rodney King show the depth of the racial tension at the time of the murders.  The conversations shown between Johnny Cochran, whose law practice was built on representing some of those young people, and Chris Darden, a young member of the prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles, showed the stress that was going on within the African American community.

The Toobin book on which the series is based does not start there.  Few of the other books about the Simpson case did.  They were all written to discuss the case without taking into account the social context of the case.  Each writer had other purposes.  Another social movement, however, was to take front and center, spousal abuse.  

For the crime itself, what we are shown is the dog getting attention of someone who then sees the blood and the bodies and calls the police.  

For the investigation, we see the police spotting blood drops from OJ's Bronco to the house in Brentwood, and Mark Fuhrman leading detectives Lange and Vannatter along the fence on OJ’s property and finding a glove.  OJ cooperates and talks to the detectives without a lawyer present.  They find a cut on his finger and OJ can’t explain it.  The acting DA, Marcia Clark, is shown interviewing two people, one of whom found the victims and the other who claims to have seen OJ driving away from the scene of the crime and nearly running into her car.  That scene was then dramatized with the actor portraying OJ, Cuba Gooding Jr., shouting at the witness.

The defense also is shown in the first episode to be investigating their client.  They have him physically examined.  The doctors find no sign of any physical nature, not even a bruise.  The sore finger is not mentioned in the scene.   OJ is shown to go through a lie detector test.  It shows that OJ tests out by that particular expert to have a bad score, showing the machine picked up physiological signs as he answered questions which were considered to be signs of being untruthful.

I am not sure how the series will handle any of these scenes when it comes to the trial.  I presume that in those later episodes, the evidence of some of these matters will be argued.  If not, I will try to shed light on each whenever I think it will help.

For now, let me touch on eight things I am sure are not going to be dealt with. 

One, when OJ was interviewed by the police, he allowed them to take a substantial blood sample, only part of which was turned in as possible evidence for the case by the police.

Two, while OJ was with the police, they also gave him a physical.  All they found was the injured finger.  No bruises, bumps, or scrapes.  

Three, the episode would have been more adequate if it had not shown the alleged scene where a witness said OJ nearly ran into her car with his Bronco the night of the crime.  That there was such a witness I do not deny but whether she actually saw OJ was not used by Marcia Clark.  Dramatizing that scene makes the viewer feel as though it must be true.  If I had artistic control, I would have added a couple other witnesses describing what they thought they saw or heard, demonstrating the conflicting nature of testimony with so many witnesses, and leaving in just the verbal statement of the woman driver.  I’m sure that a future episode will go into why that witness was never called.  Update: Episode Three shows the driver sold her story for $5,000 to a TV program so she immediately lost her credibility and was dropped by the DA’s office.  

Four, the lie detector test scene from the first episode will be understood according to the individual viewer’s prejudice about the case.  Lie detector tests are not admissible in a court of law for very good reasons.  One is that false scores occurred far too frequently.  There are several techniques used by various experts and differing results can occur depending on the technique.  The state of mind of the client and the approach of the tester can lead to very different results.  I am asking viewers to take that scene with a grain of salt in terms of helping solve the murders.

Five, the scene where Fuhrman took Vannatter and Lange back to find the glove was inaccurate.  It occurred after sunrise, not before.  Toobin took Fuhrman’s word that it occurred in the dark.  Fuhrman writes fiction since he left the LAPD.  But his police reports show signs he was already doing it before he left.  He included the time of day along with the dramatic moment in the dark in Brentwood when the glove was shown to the detectives, as he described it.  The national observatory sunrise time for that place occurred almost an hour before the time he gave.

Sixth, anyone who watches crime shows knows about the integrity of a crime scene.  According to Fuhrman, he found the glove earlier and led the detectives back to it.  How did the glove get there?  If OJ had come that way and accidentally dropped it, any foot impressions he’d have left were messed up by Fuhrman and, a little later, by the three officers.

Seventh, the glove shown in the scene was the actual glove.  It matched the other glove found at the murder scene on Bundy.  They look like oak leaves that have fallen from the tree, crinkled and mostly flat.  The picture was on a poster screen set up for showing evidence to the jury.  Imagine sitting for eight months staring at such things as the lawyers on both sides went over and over things, especially the DNA arguments.  I’ll leave that to your imagination for now.

Eighth, regarding the location of the white Bronco the night the driver came to pick up OJ (the night of the killings), as the camera panned away from the driver outside OJ’s mansion, there was no Bronco there.  That was the testimony of the driver.  However, other witnesses indicated the Bronco was near the other gate during the whole time and the driver somehow did not see it.  The series showed the Bronco was not there and that biases the telling of the story.

Before I conclude, let me clarify the situation a bit.  For at least two months, OJ was scheduled by one of his sponsors to attend a golf outing in Chicago on June 13.  He scheduled a limo to take him to the airport at 11 am on the 12th.  The murders took place sometime around then.  The prosecution felt that OJ had time between 10 pm and 11 pm to kill his wife and her friend, dispose of the weapon and bloody clothes, and still meet the limo.  The Chicago trip was not a last minute attempt to escape.  In fact, it set a limit on the time during which OJ could have done the crime and led the prosecution to have great difficulty establishing their own narrative of how OJ could have done it. 

It was hard to be accurate but the first episode gave it a good try.  But was it adequate?  Did it put critical things in proper perspective?  Did it misrepresent something of importance?  Did it leave out critical information?  I will try to keep sorting that out as we go along during the series.