Outrage (49 page)

Simpson supporters may say that this book did not discuss
all
of the defense evidence, arguments, and contentions. For example, when the
LAPD
detectives covered Nicole’s body with a blanket from inside her home, hair and fibers that
may
have been left by Simpson on the blanket when he visited Nicole at an earlier time
may
have gotten on Nicole and
may
have somehow contaminated the entire murder scene; if Simpson were wearing the blood-stained socks found at the foot of his bed, why wouldn’t his ankle have prevented blood on one of the socks from soaking through from the exterior of the left side to the interior of the left side and through to the interior of the right side? (Weren’t there innocent ways the blood could have gotten to the other side? e.g., in a phenolphthalein test [conducted at the
LAPD
Crime Lab on August 4, 1994, the date the blood was first discovered], a cotton swab resembling a large Q-tip is dipped in distilled water and the swab is then pressed into the area of interest, here, the sock. This would have moistened the dried blood and could easily have caused it to seep through to the other side, an obvious argument the prosecution never made in its final summation to the jury); Nicole’s blood on the ankle of one of Simpson’s socks didn’t look like it had dripped, and hence spattered on it. Instead it looked like it had been applied to the sock, that is, planted. (But Dr. Herbert MacDonnell, the defense’s blood-spatter expert, conceded on cross-examination that there were three possible innocent explanations: The killer brushed his ankle against Nicole’s bloody body; in Nicole’s dying moments, she grazed the killer’s ankle with her bloody hand; if Simpson were the killer, the blood could have gotten there when he removed his socks with Nicole’s blood still on his fingers); when Fuhrman found the Rockingham glove around 6 a.m. on June 13, 1994, he said it appeared to be sticky and moist. Although there is dew on California mornings, and Fung told me that even at 7 a.m., when he arrived at Rockingham, the grass was still wet from the dew, the defense argued (without a word of response from the prosecution) that if the glove had been out there all night as the
LAPD
claimed, as opposed to Fuhrman’s removing it from a bag of his or his pocket and planting it, why hadn’t it dried? and so on. But the reader knows this book is not an analysis of every single issue in the Simpson case. It is an analysis and exploration of why the case was lost by the prosecution. In the process, of course, all of the important issues were discussed, several in considerable depth. But more importantly, discussing every one of the defense points and arguments was not necessary in order to make this book’s essential conclusion about Simpson’s guilt correct.

Here’s the reason. Since we know Simpson is guilty, any defense points or arguments which have not been dealt with in this book, regardless of what they are, by definition could not change that reality. (And any reader who, at this point in the book, isn’t convinced beyond all doubt of Simpson’s guilt, certainly would not become so if I addressed myself to some additional ancillary issues.) Let me give you an example of what I mean. Say that we know X committed a bank robbery in Detroit, Michigan, on October 25, 1993, at 10:00 a.m. We know this because there are ten eyewitnesses who have positively identified him; his fingerprints are found at the teller’s window even though he lives in El Paso, Texas, and there is no evidence he had ever been in Detroit (much less at this bank) to have left the fingerprints on some prior occasion; and at the time of his arrest, all of the bank’s marked money is found in his possession.

Now let’s say that a witness comes forward and says X was actually in his presence in El Paso at 10:00 a.m. on October 25, 1993. Since we know X is guilty, we also thereby know that the witness is either honestly mistaken or is lying. Say the bank robbery was a very famous one because of a record amount stolen, and Y steps forward and actually proclaims it was he who committed the robbery (in sensational murder cases, it’s not uncommon, for instance, for innocent people called “chronic confessors” to confess to a murder just to be in the limelight). Again, we know Y is either a kook trying to get into the news, or he’s clinically psychotic. Why? Because we already know who committed the Detroit robbery.

Likewise with Simpson in this case. Since we know that in view of the evidence it’s not even possible for him to be innocent, we know that whatever evidence the defense offered on his behalf, there’s an explanation for it, even in those cases where we might not know what that explanation is. Whatever argument the defense makes, we know it is invalid. On the other hand, if we didn’t
know
Simpson was guilty, then in the absence of an examination of every single defense argument, we could not feel sanguine about any conclusion of guilt.

The media circus

From the very beginning, the O. J. Simpson case received a vastly disproportionate amount of publicity. Although this was a highly sensational murder, this was so for one reason and one reason only, O. J. Simpson. When you remove him from the equation, there is simply no way that this case could be considered an unusual or exceptional murder case. Simpson killed Nicole (and Ron Goldman since he needed to eliminate a witness to his murdering Nicole) out of some passion and rage induced by jealousy, frustration, taunting, or what have you. But that couldn’t possibly be more common. Every year, approximately 30 percent of all female homicide victims in America are killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

And yet from the very beginning the media treated this case as if it had everything, everything that anyone would ever want in a murder case. A typical remark from the media that was uttered ad nauseam was “This case has everything: Sex, violence, mystery, celebrity, affluent lifestyle, etc.” But let’s examine this statement.
Sex
did not play any part at all in this case, and if I’m not mistaken it was not even mentioned once in the trial. The media must have been confusing what they read in the tabloids about Simpson’s and Nicole’s sex life as being a part of this case, which it wasn’t.
Violence
. I have to hand it to the media there. That’s a point I can’t rebut. A murder case with violence. Highly unusual.
Mystery
. To anyone who thinks this case was a mystery, my only response is that it was only a mystery to them. Some members of the media were a little bit more specific, and they spoke “of all the mysteries in this case. For instance, if O.J. did it, how did he dispose of the knife and his bloody clothing?” But I always thought a murder mystery was one where you didn’t know, until the end, who the murderer was. Of the thousands upon thousands of movie, television, and book murder mysteries, how many were cases where it was obvious, right from the beginning, who the murderer was, but the two-hour movie, one-hour television production, or 300-page book concerned themselves with the “mystery” of how the known killer disposed of the murder weapon and other indicia of guilt?
Celebrity
. That’s all this case had. O. J. Simpson.
Affluent lifestyle
. Number one, Simpson and Nicole’s lifestyle wasn’t that affluent, and more importantly, their easy lifestyle did not come into play as a factor in this case, nor was there even testimony about it.

Actually, this case was lacking in two ingredients that have traditionally been necessary to attract the interest of people: a love triangle, or, at least, a suggestion of a mistress or lover (e.g. the Sam Sheppard murder case in Cleveland, the Claus von Bülow case in Newport, Rhode Island, the Dr. Bernard Finch case in Los Angeles, and many, many more) where the third party is either the reason for, or somehow involved in, the murder; and mystery. Here, there was no triangle and no mystery, since we know Simpson committed these murders. How interesting can such a case be?

As the case went on, a very few interesting things happened, such as the Fuhrman tapes. But long, long before that, the media had officially anointed this case as “having everything,” and whatever happened during the trial that was even the most insignificant of surprises(e.g., allegation that there had been some friction between Mark Fuhrman and Judge Ito’s wife, Captain Margaret York, the highest ranking woman in the
LAPD
) was treated by the media as confirmation that there had never been such a case, as if surprises and unusual allegations simply didn’t occur in other cases. But this, of course, is pure drivel. Startling and unusual turns of events happen fairly regularly in major trials. For instance, in the recent trial of the woman charged with the murder of the Latin-American singing star, Selena, the defendant alleged that Selena’s father had recently raped her and she had purchased a gun to protect herself from him. This is why, she said, she was armed at the time Selena visited her on the night of the murder.

But the media would have no dissent from the orthodoxy they were preaching. Even when a July 7–8, 1994,
Newsweek
poll showed that 85 percent of Americans thought the media was giving far too much coverage to the Simpson case (only 12 percent said it was about the right amount), and just one percent said the media coverage wasn’t enough, the media would have none of it. They were hell-bent on seeing that the one percent got their way. The other 85 percent just didn’t understand. And by telling the public over and over that there had never been a case like it, and by inundating the airwaves with coverage on the case, the public eventually came to agree with the media, whereupon the media said, without blushing, “See? We only blanket the news with the case because this is what the people want.” In law school, they call this picking yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Does anyone really believe that if the trial had not been televised, and if the media had treated this case in a responsible way, that at the time of the reading of the verdict “the entire nation” (from coffee shops, bars, and offices to Wall Street and the White House, President Clinton interrupting a meeting in the Oval Office) would be holding its breath, as was so frequently reported? Of course not. It would simply have been another sensational murder case and it would not have become anywhere near the cultural and epochal event it became.

Newsweek
, which did a remarkable seven cover stories on the case, devoted almost its entire October 16, 1995, edition to the Simpson trial verdict. On the same week of the Simpson verdict, Hurricane Opal tore through Florida and contiguous states. More than 100,000 people were left homeless, thousands lost their homes and businesses, much of a 140-mile stretch of coastline between Mobile, Alabama, and Panama City, Florida, was demolished, and eighteen people died. Yet Opal’s devastation only warranted one paragraph in
Newsweek
’s Periscope section, and even then, not one single word on the damage the hurricane had wrought. The paragraph dealt exclusively with Dan Rather’s reporting on the hurricane, and a photograph showed him clinging to a pole in the wind.
Newsweek
wryly added that “Rather nabbed what some would argue [certainly not
Newsweek
] was the real story [of the week].”

The electronic media was even more excessive in its coverage, if possible, than the print media. Even though the trial was already being covered in its entirety by Court TV and other cable outlets,
CNN
also carried gavel-to-gavel coverage, thereby telling its audience that day in and day out for over nine months, in their opinion, this was the most important news story in the world. And
Larry King Live
, the principal talk show on
CNN
in the evening, dealt far, far more with the Simpson case than with any other news event. King told his viewers, “If we had God booked, and O.J. was available, we’d move God.”

The television networks weren’t too much better. From the time of the murders to the end of the trial,
CBS
,
NBC
, and
ABC
, in addition to doing a great number of specials, had thirty-eight hours and fifty-four minutes of news coverage on the case. During that same period, only four hours and fourteen minutes were devoted to the entire debate over national health care, including Medicare. Even the heretofore serious-minded
Nightline
had an outlandish fifty-nine specials on the case over an eighteen-month period. Truly the Simpson case was a story for the ages, one which was vastly more important than such mundane events as the fall of Communism, the drug crisis in America, and presidential elections. Anyone who doesn’t agree with this simple and obvious fact should have his head examined.

Not only was O. J. Simpson the
only
reason for this case being special, but he himself, though the most famous murder defendant in American history, was really not that big at the time of the murders. O.J. Simpson was a football star years ago. Since then he has had only modest success in television sportscasting and movies. Before these murders he was not someone who was being talked or written about, and even the value of his football cards was in decline. When Nicole was introduced to him she had never heard of him. Neither had her mother. Neither, in fact, had Marcia Clark. When Detective Vannatter called her at her home in the early morning of June 13, 1994, for help in the preparation of a search warrant, he told her the house to be searched was that of O. J. Simpson. “Who’s that?” he recalls her asking. “O. J. Simpson, the football player.” “Phil, I’m sorry. I don’t know him.”

Here’s the proof that the treatment of the case was totally disproportionate: If Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, each of whom is bigger, and much more of a current celebrity than O. J. Simpson was before the murders, had been accused of this type of crime, the media coverage wouldn’t have been any more intense. I daresay that if President Clinton had been accused, the media coverage wouldn’t have been more pervasive. How could it be? All three major networks, for instance, carried the preliminary hearing live. There is nothing you can do beyond that. It’s already at the max. It reflects the increasingly superficial nature of our society. We have gone from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to campaigns for the presidency—where the destiny of the nation is at stake—being conducted by sound bites. Yet the Simpson case, which originally (before the bogus issue of race was injected into the case) affected no one outside the immediate families, was covered live, all day, on the three major networks. The nation should be proud of itself. To compound the idiocy of it, the greater portion of the trial was tedious and boring because of all the scientific testimony.