Was it pay back???
This past week, OJ Simpson was convicted in Las Vegas by a Jury for actions he took a year ago (2007) in some crazy attempt to reclaim sports memorabilia regarding his past NFL greatness.
In case you have just awoken from a coma, in 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and her friend Ron Goldman were found murdered outside of her residence, brutally murdered by knife point. A mountain of evidence pointed towards OJ Simpson, in which he was later charged with the crimes. Actions he took leading up to his arrest, certainly didn’t speak well for the deeds of a innocent man, after seeing a nationally televised police chase of him and his friend AC Cowlings running around the LA freeways. Passport in hand and supposedly a gun on board. OJ Simpson managed to assemble a dream team of lawyers and the LAPD and district attorneys managed to assemble a nightmare team. In 1995, the case went to trial, dominating cable news coverage for weeks, in the end, OJ Simpson was acquitted by a Jury of his peers. He would later be sued for wrongful death by the victims families and he lost that case and was ordered to pay millions.
Following his acquittal, OJ vowed he would spend the rest of his life searching for the “real” killers of his ex-wife and her friend, no one really knows if that killer was hiding out on public or private gold courses, which is where OJ spent the majority of his visible time since.
The facts of the murder case supported a conviction and would have convicted a non-celebrity murderer in any other locality, with a more competent prosecuting team, regardless of the priciness of the defence team. This means that the case was the LA prosecutors case to lose, and they came through.
This case also revealed or reinforced the nations racial divide. In polls after the verdict, 85% of the black population agreed with the verdict while only 32% of whites agreed with it. The then US President, Bill Clinton, said that he was amazed about this divide the nation had considering that each demographic had the same set of facts to judge the case by.
The problem with the racial divide is that anytime a black person is a victim of a crime, the perpetrator will always be guilty of it, regardless of the facts, from the perspective of most blacks. Conversely if a black person is the perpetrator, the same demographic will argue that the perpetrator is not guilty, just couldn’t be guilty, s/he must have been framed by the establishment! This is indeed a unique phenomena, which I suppose originates from some need to make the establishment atone for the racial inequality that existed in this country for years. Some refer to it as the “black experience”, I call it a cop out. During the bad years, the racists set up a system that was supposedly “separate but equal”, what many blacks seek today, whether they realize it or not, is “equal and separate”. They cant use the system to make up for lost time, they can only demand that the system treat them equal. What I mean by all this, is that everything that is bad, unfortunate or even unfair that happens to this or any other minority is not necessarily the product of racism.
OJ Simpson was a tremendously talented and famous running back, with a storied football career with both the Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 49ers, fortunately for him, this part of his past can never be undone. He went on to star in various big and small screen movie productions, such as Capricorn One, Airplane. He became a pitch man for various products and services on TV commercials and he was a commentator for NBC sports coverage of NFL football games. This is the OJ simpson I thought I knew, we all knew, not knowing that in the background in his personal private life, some high drama was brewing.
In 1995 a jury of his peers acquitted him.
In 2008 a jury of his peers convicted him.
One cannot help but to think that this recent verdict is some sort of attempt to get even for what many feel was a wrongful acquittal back in 1995. Perhaps it is..
I bet that many whom hailed the 1995 verdict as just, will condemn the 2008 verdict as unjust, translated they want to have their cake and eat it too!
If one used the 1995 verdict as a measure of ones guilt or innocence, then you have to use the 2008 verdict the same way, unfortunately many will not.
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Today he went all the way down from hero to zero to sixteen years.
http://ginovandewalle.com/oj-simpson-from-hero-to-zero-to-sixteen-years/