quote:
Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
Good riddance.
At the time of his trial, I had a buddy who worked in the LA DA's office and he wasn't very kind to Marcia Clark or the DA Gil Garcetti.
It was well-known that Marci Clark wasn't the best DA for a murder case but she sold herself to Garcetti with the angle that she bonded with women jurors on other murder cases. She's correct that she had a 100% conviction rate with majority female juries but on this one, she begged for the case over other more skilled prosecutors. Her other cases were more slam dunk and she deluded herself into thinking it was a slam dunk here.
Bill Hodges, who started the prosecution, was a much more experienced and better skilled prosecutor, but he stepped aside during the case for health reasons and that gave us Chris Darden.
Clark simply wasn't the best and given the Dream Team of attorneys OJ had, she was out-gunned.
The other knock, again on the both of them, is the transferring the case from Santa Monica to DTLA. Since the murder took place in Brentwood, Santa Monica was the proper courthouse but Marcia argued that she had such a bond with women voters that no matter where it was heard, she could get the win. Garcetti agreed and they both liked the idea that the DA's office was in DTLA and they could bring the full effect of their office and their resources better there instead of in Santa Monica.
Both of weren't the best in the decision making but if the DA had the perfect prosecutorial team, that jury still wasn't going to convict him. The evidence didn't matter to them.
I was working very closely with members of the LADA's Santa Monica Office at the time. They'd handled plenty of "high profile" murder trials and could have easily handled this case, BUT the elected District Attorney (Garcetti) decided to make this a political matter by taking the case away from them and relocating it to the Criminal Courts Building downtown. There, it would be heard by a different jury pool (comprised of more African American juror) and a win would (in Garcetti's opinion) strengthen his base in the next election. Marcia Clark and Chris Darden were also chosen more for optics than actual abilities.
When Garcetti replaced the rule of law with a political narrative, he opened the door for what followed: A politicized jury that used "
NULLIFICATION" to arrive at a verdict no less invalid than racist juries rendered in the South when white offenders who'd victimized black victims as members of the KKK escaped justice got a pass.
Strangely, members of the LAPD Robbery Homicide unit, had actually treated Simpson with far more difference than they'd have treated the average white suspect in such a horrific murder. I had an opportunity to review their entire interview of Simpson and to any experienced investigator, it was painfully obvious how starstruck they'd been. A simple question or two posed in the correct manner probably would have resulted in an admission of guilt, but they'd dropped the ball so easily pitched to them not because of "racism", but due to awe of Simpson's history and celebrity.
Years later, when I was retired and providing investigative and expert services to indigent defendants, I worked several cases with one of the members of the "Dream Team." He told me that he and other team members were actually shocked that the jurors rejected the prosecutors' case and came back with a Not Guilty verdict. They'd underestimated the amount of sway the "race card" had, and had expected at most a hung jury. FWIW: He and other members of the defense team actually felt a degree of guilt for how things turned out. On one hand, they had a legal, moral, and ethical responsibility to provide their client with the best legal defense they could, but seeing someone they believed had actually killed these two victims get off? As human beings they were disgusted and disappointed.
"I'm not fluent in the language of violence, but I know enough to get around in places where it's spoken."
