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 Four

The opening exchange between Johnny Cochran and OJ gave Jeffrey Toobin the title of his book, THE RUN OF HIS LIFE.  Cochran found OJ to be desperately depressed and did what he could to boost his morale.  Cochran had already told him he believed in his innocence.  Cochran then told of his own experience with depression.  Some years before, his work was going badly.  He was in divorce.  And he only had a football game against the Packers to watch.  The Packers were in steep decline at the time.  But they played a great game that day, winning and keeping OJ to only one touchdown.  Cochran said that what helped him overcome his own depression was that despite how that game was going, OJ had gotten up after every tackle and went back at it again the next play.  Thanking OJ, he described this trial as the run of his life and challenged him to get up and get after it every time he was knocked down.

This episode offered some information about Ron and Nicole.  The Goldmans described to Marcia Clark what a good guy Ron was and how he had been stabbed so terribly.  (More on the stabbing another time.)  I waited to see if the series writers would include Ron’s excellent athleticism.  But instead of saying Ron was helping coach his brother’s high school tennis team, they only touched on Ron’s volunteering for some children’s program.  That implied that Ron was a weak and helpless victim, a very inaccurate impression to give.

Nicole’s character got no specific information from the writers but they brought up how Black women tended to perceive her as a gold-digger.  And they had the Reznick character talk about cocaine parties and fights with OJ as signs of Nicole’s strength.  But Reznick herself was portrayed as a flake hooked on cocaine.

From my reading on the case, I learned that Faye Reznick indeed was a coke-head.  She stayed at Bundy in Nicole’s condo until a few days before the murders.  The only reason Reznick was not at the condo was that she finally took her friends’ advice and went into residential rehab treatment.   There was a possibility that Reznick had a stash of cocaine for which she had not paid the cartel and it may have been at Bundy the night of the murders.

Nicole and Ron Goldman were considering opening a restaurant together with Reznick.  Many Brentwood area restaurants were financially viable because they were selling cocaine on the side.  But Reznick had to clean up her act or there could have been no deal.  I hope the writers show that it was pure coincidence that Ron showed up when he did and did what he could to save Nicole.

This episode portrays the conflict within the dream team.  Egos were involved.  Shapiro was sometimes condescending as was shown in the scene with F. Lee Bailey.  But probably the telling moment in the conflict was when Shapiro made up a scenario that OJ would admit guilt and plea bargain.  When Cochran and Bailey pushed back, Shapiro asked who believed OJ was guilty.  No one raised a hand, not even Alan Derschowitz.

By this time, the defense had a pretty good idea about the quality of the evidence against OJ and what they could do to show its inadequacy.  They also had something else, a timeline which they felt proved OJ could not have done the murders.  The series writers did not either want to share that information or they did not know of it.  But that the dream team showed unanimous disagreement with Shapiro said a lot.

In a recent article in the papers, family members of the victims complained that no one talked with them before the series was televised.  But no one from the series consulted with anyone but the writer of the book on which the series is based.  OJ was not consulted.  I doubt Shapiro was either!

The writers of the series are writing for drama and not a documentary.  They are taking some license with the story and there seems to be a bias toward the side of the victims’ families and the LAPD.  The closing moments of this episode point to a conflict between Cochran and Chris Darden.  That particular drama will be one subplot to watch for sure but let us not lose sight of the evidence that slips in around the edge of the drama.  That is why I am here.