Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so
The justice lessons we should be carrying forward in the wake of OJ Simpson's death
The death of OJ Simpson takes all of us that we’re old enough to understand back to the mid-1990s. While I was old enough to understand, I wasn’t interested in paying that close attention. Based on the dates, I’m pretty sure we had just gotten out of school for the summer the week before. I was a couple months shy of my 17th birthday and a rising senior in high school. I knew who OJ was but not old enough to have been enamored with him. Sports was always on in our home and I was a fan of NBA basketball myself. So I remember the odd picture-in-picture of the NBA finals and the infamous Bronco chase. I don’t recall being bothered by the split screen. But had I not been watching the game, I probably would not have to stopped to watch the highway police chase.
Midway through my senior year of high school the trial began. I was preoccupied with all of the soon-to-be-graduating activities that there wasn’t much interest on my part to the trial. I do remember being annoyed with the media’s response.
I’m amazed to what extent the media speaks of it as a circus, when the media was and always is the ringmaster.
CNN became more relevant in our household. Greta Van Susteran, now 30 years later, is the only legal expert that I remember that rose to prominence at that time. Of course there were more, but she’s the only one that comes to mind. I’m saying all of this to say I wasn’t as captivated with the case even though the rest of the country was. But I hoped that OJ was innocent.
By fall of 1995 when the jury reached a verdict, I was now a freshman in college. I remember walking through lobby of my dorm where the largest television was. These were the days before flat screen tvs and everyone having their own computer. I’m not even sure if laptops were around at that time. The internet was taking off, but it wouldn’t be for another two years before I would sit down to conduct my first internet search. I stopped in the lobby to hear the news of the verdict. While standing there, I remember two white girls commenting in disbelief about the verdict.
Because I wanted OJ to be innocent, the acquittal was good news to me. And I just chalked up those two white girls’ disbelief as being prejudiced against a black man. Sometime later I had a very, very brief incidental chat about the case with my friend, Melissa. I asked her if she thought he did it. Her response was short and simple. Girl yeah, all that DNA evidence…end of discussion, at least on that topic and I had to start coming around to the fact that what I wanted to be true wasn’t true. Years later, my brother was talking about some of the legal cases they studied in one of his business classes related to creating narratives. The Simpson case was one of the cases and he flat out said to me, he killed that woman. And though this wasn’t something that I thought about on a regular basis, I reckoned with what I wanted to be true turning out not to be true.
Years later when OJ decided to commit burglary I told myself, yeah he did it because there is no way that someone of his infamy would think to do something like this if he hadn’t literally gotten away with murder. Even more years later, my father had the unusual experience of helping a fugitive murderer turn himself in, though at the time, the guy said he didn’t do it. My cousin’s stepson said at the time that he fled Colorado in the middle of the night driving all the way to Indiana because he knew he would be considered a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder. On the advice of counsel, he and his family were told that he should turn himself in escorted by a minister. That’s when my father entered the picture. When my father recounted the story to me, I immediately thought of the Bronco chase. When I followed up with my dad on what happened to my cousin’s stepson, my dad told me that indeed he was in prison because he killed his girlfriend. That whole incident took me back to OJ and further solidified within me that OJ did it.
There are certain things you don’t do if you are innocent. Guilty people act guilty.
Many have been examining how the now 30 year old Trial of the Century was a multi-faceted inflection point. Though I can’t find a direct link to share, I encourage anyone that can find it to watch the first block of Episode 74 of The ReidOut with Joy Reid that aired on 4/11/24.
On TikTok, I came across an older journalist that seemed flabbergasted upon viewing resurfaced footage of several jurors stating the verdict was about the lack of justice in the brutal police beating of Rodney King which occurred also in Los Angeles just two to three years before. This journalist seemed aghast that any juror would do such a thing. While morally I agree that the jurors should have convicted him, the blame squarely lies with the flaws of our criminal justice system.
Legal experts talk about the “high standard” of beyond a reasonable doubt. To me it’s not a high standard. We just have a legal system that allows skilled lawyers to introduce doubt. The burden is on the prosecution to prove their case. Defense lawyers are allowed to poke holes in the prosecution’s case for sport, not because the defendant is innocent. I heard a legal analyst recount what a law professor said to his class.
If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your BS.
Criminal trials are not about proving innocence. As I posted on Threads,
Prosecutors have to prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt. But when race and wealth are thrown in to the mix, all that’s reasonable seems be tossed out of the window. Whites have been acquitted for crimes against people of color for centuries. Those pleased with OJ’s acquittal wanted white America to understand what injustice feels like.
Yet that message hasn’t been received. In the Zimmerman trial, the man who admitted to killing Trayvon Martin was acquitted. In the aftermath of the acquittal, I read a tweet from a woman that over heard two white men say, this was payback for OJ. I remember thinking how blind these two men are to all of the miscarriages of justices that have benefited and continue to benefit white defendants.
Injustice is a hard pill to swallow for anyone. Turnabout is NOT fair play. Everyone is left unsettled and off balance. Justice brings balance and peace to society as Dr. King says, true peace is not the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice. Justice should neutralize race. Justice should neutralize wealth. But we experience the inverse here in the United States all too often.
As for closing the books on OJ Simpson, Bob Costas sums it up best.
As for what OJ Simpson’s death, at this particular time in history, should bring to the fore for all of us as we embark upon the forthcoming trials of our nation’s 45th president…the lesson we should be carrying forward from the death of OJ Simpson is
Time does not heal the wounds of injustice. Society does not simply return to center on its own. Justice leads the way.
Onward to justice and Harmonious Balance my friends,
Johanna
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