OJ Simpson is proof that the American justice system is fair and just when the defendant has the money to pay for the best legal minds in the country. I once hated his dream team for manipulating the jury into letting a murderer go free. But, since then I’ve gone to school and taken some legal courses and eventually I reluctantly agreed, that OJ was not even close to being guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I truly doubt that a black man with a white ex-wife and her white friend that ended up cut up, could have hoped for the same justice OJ got, with a public defender. Johnny Cochran was very good at showing that OJ’s rights had been violated by the LAPD and that it gave the officers the opportunity and means to plant evidence. Barry Shek did a great job of showing how dna, while a reliable science is unreliable if its testing tainted evidence. F. Lee Baily did the best he could to show the drug lives every single player that was involved led. However, the court ruled in the criminal trial against a lot of damning drug related killing evidence. Every person accused of crimes should have the same access to great legal minds in order for the American justice system to be fair and just. The prosection was unable to meet its burden of proof in the murder trial of OJ Simpson, mainly because he was able to retain a legal team that had the means and the expertise to show the evidence was tainted, unrealiable, and weak. Johnny Cochrans passion was fighting for his clients constitional rights. One of the things that make a criminal complaint harder to prove is the protections the constitution offers the accused, (many public defenders suck at this; Johnny Cochran was the best).
The civil trial required that OJ prove he did not kill Ron and Nicole. The same blood evidence that was rejected by a jury in the criminal trial was enough to find OJ guilty. For one thing, OJ’s claim of police harrassment and corruption aren’t a defense as far as the families are concerned. That would be a whole other civil case that OJ would have had to bring on the LAPD. Civil juries are asked to decide cases based on the preponderance of evidence. This means that the evidence offered by one side or the other must outweigh the other side to win. The criminal case required once it was presented that the evidence was tainted, OJ’s rights had been violated, that the prosecution prove that the LAPD did not plant evidence when they searched OJ’s property without his knowledge or presence. OJ has to prove that the blood collected at the scenes and the blood he gave from his own veins were not the same, in the civil trial. Because the civil courts are not concerned with the defendants constitutional rights, like the criminal courts are; that all of the evidence that got him accquited was not admissable and therefore could not be used as a defense.
The newest case fair and just. OJ will be out in six years on parole. He committed several felonies that were for some reason recorded by video or audio tape. That sort of evidence is hard to refrute. His victims were not dead and they had a voice, testimony of the victim is very strong and prosecutors seldom have a problem getting a guilty verdict. The evidence was very strong in the Las Vegas case because it was the defendants own words and actions on video and audio tape that convicted him along with the testimony of the victims.
Legally based on the evidence presented in all three felony cases against OJ Simpson, American justice was well served. Many peolple want to believe that OJ was guilty of the murders and got away based on race and a black jury, the only evidence of such a thing was put out there for the public to form its opinion by the same media that stood to gain a lot by convicting OJ before a jury ever would. OJ’s civil case was fairly decided by the jury because his evidence did not outweigh the families main evidence. The latest conviction was fair because of the evidence. OJ would be doing six years regardless if he was ever accused and accquited of murder in the past. Nevada justice is not serving anyone but the people of Nevada; not of California. California had its day in court in the charges brought about OJ and like it or not justice was well served in that case as well.
OJ Simpson and the people have been well served by the American justice system. Too bad we all can’t be as fortunate.